We recently crossed the two month mark for the release of “Smash Ultimate.” Yet, gameplay of many characters, including an invitational tournament and some exclusive demo releases, have been given out, and it’s brought up a lot of character based questions. How viable will this character be? Does this combo still work? Is this strategy still useful? I wanted to highlight five more of the most interesting characters, and forecast how they will impact (and be impacted on) by the new iteration of Smash.
1) Bayonetta
The much maligned Umbra Witch. The best character, by a mile, in Smash 4. Eeeeeeeveryone’s gonna have their eyes on Bayonetta when Ultimate drops. By everyone, I also mean Nintendo and director Masahiro Sakurai. Speaking of Sakurai, it’s hard to talk about Bayonetta’s prospects in Ultimate without mentioning Sakurai’s dramatically distraught reaction when professional player MK Leo recorded a ladder combo kill with Bayonetta against a Ridley at the invitational tournament. Bayonetta’s infamous ladder combo almost single-handedly dragged her to omnipresent status on the tourney scene, able to kill pretty much any character in the game in a single fell swoop of hits. Based around an extremely fast and near impossible to challenge Witch Twist, this ladder combo caused Bayonetta to draw the ire of plenty of people in the community.
I’ll be brief on this: Bayonetta’s moveset interacts with every other character in the game in such a way that it would take an unreasonably destructive sequence of nerfs for Bayonetta to fall outside of at least high tier status. Because we have little beyond speculation to go off with regards to Bayonetta receiving a nerf (though at least a minor one seems likely) it seems quite likely Bayonetta will return to the top echelon of characters in the game once more. Really, fringe top 10 alone is achieved merely off of Bayonetta’s moveset. Having a great combo game and a fantastic mindgame creator in Witch Time—in which said mind games inherently favor Bayonetta due to the move’s nature—propel her beyond ‘fringe’ status. For those wondering what it would take to lower Bayonetta below fringe top 10 status, it would literally take an entirely new moveset that would essentially have to be dedicated to strictly making Bayonetta worse, and when you consider Bayonetta’s origins from her mainstream games, this would also force Nintendo to deviate away from Bayonetta’s actual persona in those games, something they’ve always been staunchly against. Don’t count on that happening.
2) King Dedede
Ah, my main of over two years from Smash 4. In the discussion for worst character in the whole game, despite my success with Dedede on the tourney scene, it’s fair to say I wasted my personal potential into such a hopeless, awful character. Thankfully, Smash Ultimate promises to at least make Dedede usable, both with direct and indirect buffs. For the direct ones, Dedede’s Inhale can now be used to reflect his own Gordos. No word on if it can do that with other projectiles, such as Samus’ charge shot or Mewtwo’s Shadow Ball, but if it can’t do that, then this “buff” becomes pretty much useless. Even if it can, it doesn’t help Dedede deal with projectile heavy or campy play, seeing how slow his Inhale is to begin with. The other direct “buff” is that the player can now tell if the Gordo Dedede throws has last been hit by Dedede or the other player. Yawn. I already had a pair of functioning eyes, and could clearly see if my opponent had hit the Gordo or not.
Dedede indirectly benefits from the new mechanics of the game around him, which means he can now, kind of, have an actual neutral game. The mechanics of the game which make campy play a bit worse and favor offensive play will have mixed effects on Dedede, mostly due to how awful he is. On one hand, Dedede is horrible against campy play, and campy play not being as common will help. However, on the other hand, Dedede has a terrible approach game, and has a bad time dealing with heavily offensive characters, such as Fox or Captain Falcon. Dedede is technically a primarily defensive character, but this is mostly due to the fact that he has nothing for an offensive game. His defense is okay, but he can’t pressure shield effectively or consistently, threaten with any throw combos beyond 60%, and he has no kill confirm, which means virtually everyone in the cast can live to about 150% or higher against him. Oh boy, I cannot wait to see how much % Dedede has to get Snake or King K. Rool to in order to pick up the kill against them. Yeah, Dedede has a good edgeguard kit, and this will help him in a game where having a good edgeguard kit is extremely helpful, but this will do little to save Dedede from being the very worst character in the game. Yeah, the absolute single worst character in the whole entire game. I went through the roster maybe a dozen times before typing that sentence out, and I cannot even be generous and say a single character will be worse than Dedede. Not even Zelda, or Pichu, or Jigglypuff, or friggin’ Ganondorf. Can’t do it. Maybe Nintendo releases a new character who’s worse than Dedede in the near future? Right, because that’s sure to generate a whole lot of hype for their new, upcoming game.
3) Snake
I’m going to premise by saying this: Snake in Smash Ultimate looks ridiculously fun to play. Think of it like using Duck Hunt, only a Duck Hunt who is heavy, can kill reliably, and has a solid offensive game with tons and tons of mind games. Snake retains a lot of the tricks he held in Brawl, but does lose out on his Down Smash of old, being replaced by a down smash similar to Captain Falcon’s. It’s important to highlight how flexible Snake will be in Ultimate; he can be an offensive character, using his projectiles (namely his motion sensor mines) as combo tools, to throw opponents into and to begin combo strings. Alternatively, Snake can use his projectile kit, lengthy hitboxes and decent mobility to camp. He’s a heavy with good mobility, a very, very threatening close quarters game (his lethal up tilt will be returning in Ultimate) and can take a hell of a beating, being just ever so barely lighter than Bowser and King Dedede. Yep, he’s got all the tools to be a top tier in this game, and that’s where I’m predicting he ends up. We saw lots of impressive gameplay of Snake at the invitational and at various demos. Look to see more impressive gameplay from Snake mains worldwide as the game releases.
4) Peach
Peach is going to be somewhat of an enigma in Smash Ultimate. Where we have characters who are predominantly offensive or campy, Peach is kind of neither: she’s an awkward middle child of sorts. But to her credit, this has worked out pretty well in two of the three games she’s been in, and she can hardly be blamed for the mess that was competitive Smash Brawl. The secret to Peach’s success in Ultimate will be her unique float and glide mechanics. This won’t be quite as oppressive for her to use here as in Melee, but in a game where air dodging has been nerfed, Peach will definitely use that mechanic alone to be better in the game. That said, the enigma of Peach in competitive Ultimate is stimulated further by the fact that, of her two worst matchups in Smash 4 of Pikachu and Meta Knight, the former will become much, much better in Ultimate, while the latter could end up getting nerfed so badly that he becomes in the discussion of bottom five worst characters in the game. Peach was a middle of the pack character in Smash 4, but I believe there’s enough here for Peach to at least join the top 20 club in Ultimate. She will be difficult to master, but likely to draw good, advantageous matchups against high tiered characters such as Ryu, the effort could produce results which justify it. Look for Peach to be a good (but not great) character.
5) Meta Knight
My gamer name I go by when I enter tournaments has been “Knightmare” largely because of this guy. When I joined the tournament scene in Brawl, it was using this guy. Meta Knightmare Ultra in the old “Kirby Super Star Ultra” video game got me hooked on the franchise, and Meta Knight subsequently became my favorite Nintendo character. Meta Knight was a top 20 character in Smash 4. Thing is, this wasn’t because he was particularly bad in any way—it was just more so that there were characters who did what Meta Knight did, but better. Bayonetta and Zero Suit Samus did better ladder combos and had better overall attributes, Mario filled the “extremely fast character with weak attacks that can’t really kill” trope better and Meta Knight’s niche as being a hard counter to Rosalina and Luma was even overshadowed by Cloud. Cloud couldn’t hard counter Rosalina quite as badly, but he dealt with her very effectively, and was better than Meta Knight. So Meta Knight was pretty outclassed in Smash 4. Now that ladder combos might get the axe in Ultimate, Meta Knight’s viability is in great peril. Without ladder combos, Meta Knight can’t kill. Like, at all, period. Being able to threaten a kill at extremely low % is the only thing keeping Meta Knight usable. Having extremely poor range on all of his attacks, and lacking power on many of them as well, means that if ladder combos get removed from the game as feared, Meta Knight will plummet all the way from top 20 status to the bottom five worst characters in the game. Having great mobility, a great set of recoveries, and a decent edgeguard game won’t be enough to keep up with the rest of the cast. Meta Knight mains everywhere will collectively hold their breath and pray to the Smash Gods that this does not transpire.
As the launch date grows closer and closer, I hope to forecast more characters’ impact on the Smash Ultimate scene!