super smash bros for wii u does a lot well, i think.

something that has frustrated us a lot is the, like, gender of popular culture that agrees that switch smash bros, super smash bros ultimate, does everything better than smash wii u. when we say smash wii u, we mostly do actually refer to the wii u version, but sometimes we also include 3ds when we say it

it feels like its something that's taken for granted, as in, like, of course ultimate is better! it's not something that is really given much close inspection, and most of the analysis we've have seen come from a hugely different perspective than what we have.

core gameplay mechanics

controls

we think, probably, the most signficant difference between the games is their feel, and how they play. smash bros wii u was like the previous smash games in its control philosphy, hard to master but very precise and flexible once you did. smash ultimate has a much more accessible control scheme that works more like how you'd expect it to work. to turn around in smash ultimate while running, you press back on your stick! to turn around while running in wii u, you need to press forward and then backwards in quick succession at the end of your intitial run cycle animation. unless you're cloud mcstrife, in which case, you just press backwards at the end of your intitial run.

turning backwards is an advanced technique in smash wii u!!! in fact, there are a lot of ground advanced movement. to use a ground move out of a run, you need to hold down to crouch for a bit first, for example! smash wii, and older smash bros games, are much more systematic games in their controls. all the mechanics interact with each other and there are lots of advanced techniques that combine the properties of different mechanics to accomplish different things. smash ultimate streamlines this, and makes things like turning around and running work more like how we think most people would expect, without them having to explore the mechanics in depth and learn weird and character specific timings for everything.

we really like this!! i think it makes the game very autistic. super smash bros for wii u also has much stronger defensive options than smash ultimate, and has much slower and floatier physics, which i think makes the game more accessible competitively! it's much easier to follow what is going on and to get in the zone. fighting games are so much fun when we're thinking!

we dont necessarily think smash wii u's more difficult and slower gameplay is better, but we do find it overall more engaging and nicer to us. when we are thinking in ultimate we sometimes prefer and sometimes don't prefer it over wii u. sometimes it feels like ultimate's controls are too streamlined and too limiting for what we want to do, and other times it feels like it's very nice that we don't have to focus so much on precise inputs, and that we can do so much more without as much dexterity and practice. we like project + a lot more than melee purely because it's controls are so much more polished and streamlined, even if the actual movement mechanics are basically shared, for the most part (with notable exceptions that brawl movement tech in p+ isnt in melee)

character design

design philosphy

we think smash for wii u and smash ultimate are two sides of same coin for game design.

we think smash wii u has a pretty solid core, it's just mainly that the character design exploits it really unhealthily. smash ultimate also has solid core, but its characters are more streamlined and consistent. but, we feel the core game mechanics available in ultimate, are still weaker and less interesting!

smash bros is a abnormally air-centric series in a genre otherwise dominated by extremely ground based competitive games. street fighter has essentially one axis for normal movement, and everything else is the exception. even the most air based fighting games usually are still primarily ground focused.

in smash bros, aerial attack are bread and butter attacks and ground moves are typically more specialised and niche. the game also has a lot of mobility, and being able to move across two axis at once lets you put hitboxes in a much larger number of spots.

smash ultimate, then, is an abnormally air focused game in an air focused series.

in smash ultimate, nearly all landing aerials were directly improved by having less recovery time, letting the user act sooner afterwards! and ground moves were indirectly weakened by universal changes to the ground mechanics.

i think smash wii u physics make there be a lot more "oh my god what the fuck was THAAAT" moments and also makes it signficantly easier to track what is going on.

silly fun stuff :)

side modes and challenges

the challenges in this game are HARD. wwe've tried so hard to get all the challenges completed but they're hard and they give a lot of incentive to play the side modes!! we've completed 3ds one twice but we've never been able to beat wii u one

classic mode is AWESOME. you play it over and over and you unlock moves and trophies (which have descriptions of what they are!) and get money for more classic mode runs and also its risk reward and you get to see different things if you do it on higher difficulties. there's an entire maze level that appears on the higher difficulties with its own unique enemies. it's so fun

like all of the side modes are fun. master orders and crazy orders are cool and awesome and so are events and smash tour and smash run. we were really hoping the side modes from wii u would be carried over into ultimate and expanded on! all of the modes are good but have room to grow and iterate and flesh out.

we dont really like ultimate's side modes. you play them once and it's like " well that's that, huh". like like classic mode right every character has a themed route. some of these themes are good and some of them are weird and feel like they missed the mark. i think the ones that reference something novel and interesting is really cool, and gets you excited about what comes next and stuff. some of the themes are just "all the green characters" stuff like that.

once you've seen the routes there's not much reason to play. you don't get anything signficant from winning classic mode and the game mode is the same every time for the most part. the whole "ramping up difficulty as you go" thing is kinda cool but it also feels random and also feels way less tense than starting at really high difficulty and trying to maintain that throughout the whole run without it dropping, since you cant get it back up during wii u runs and there are challenges and certain things that only happen on the highest difficulties.

aside from classic and spirits, there really isn't much side modes at all in ultimate. there's a bunch of multi man smash modes and that's probably the most signficant. spirits mode, however, is signficantly more substantial than anything else in either of the two games.

spirits are collectable stickers that you can put on your character to change their powers and stats and also they are a part of a big single player mode called world of light. a big problem with spirits is organising them and making builds of them. it's like, impossibly time consuming. and there's no way to select a random loadout, especially not a random loadout with specifc traits (like power level, or that inlucdes a certain ability). in world of light you just press the autobuild button and play with the same things over and over again and it runs stale. it also runs stale if you make a build that destroys everything in the same way. outside of world of light, not being able to have random loadouts makes them essentially not exist. you can't even make a spirit team in the multiplayer menu! you should be able to get random ones!!

spirits mode has much more staying power and more replayability than rest of ultimate side modes. it's not something we get excited to play, though, and it mostly feels like a slog to play, not even mentioning the way the menus basically make it unfun on their on.

equipment spirits and customs

customs are COOL!!!

equipment is COOL!!!

playing smash wii u side modes unlocks customs and equipment, and trophies, and i think music.

this is such a cool way to reward people. YOU HAVE A CHANCE OF JUST, GETTING A NEW MOVE. like omg. this made us explore the entire cast so much !

kinda like the side modes, we wanted smash ultimate to expand on the customs and equipment system. customs are such a good idea and they were pretty well implemented in smash wii u, it's just the actual moves themselves were often very uninterestingly designed. we liked the different physics and applications of them, but we found that making builds with them was often uninteresting and didnt have what we wanted. i think having moves that change playstyle or matchups in a meaningful and visible way would be good