Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Game'scover

About the Game

Everybody knows, that there are two ultimate collaborations when it comes down to gaming, the ultimate collaboration from Square Enix and Disney that is the Kingdom hearts series and ofcourse the one from Nintendo which is none other than The super smash brothers franchise. Back in 1999 Nintendo and more specifically Mr, Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby had the bizzare idea of combining some of Nintendo's most beloved IPs into one fighting game. Thus the francgise known as Smash was born. The game was a simple fighting game that originally combined characters like Mario (Super Mario), Link(Legend of Zelda), Kirby (Kirby), Pikachu(Pokemon) and others fighting each others in stadiums that represented each of the games. Needless to say the game was received well and it spawn a fanbase which kept increasing with time. Smash had a sequel known as Smash bros Melee which had seen improvements to it's gameplay and to it;s character roaster. Mellee was a asuccesfull game which even though it was released in 2001 and had been in EVO(Annual Fighting Game tournament) all the way till 2019, 18 years after its release even though it hadnt receive any updates after its release. Years later, Super Smash Brawl was released and changed everything. Gameplay wise the game just seen improvements and new game modes additions however what shocked the world, was the fact that for the first time, third party characters not owned by Nintendo made their way in Smash. These heroes were none others than Sonic the Hedgehog (from Sonic) and Solid Snake (from Metal Gear Solid). This was the beggining of something new, as this trent, skyrocketed the popularity of smash to another level. From 2008 all the way to 2021, players were looking forward for the next Smash game and the DLCs in order to see if their hero or series will get a representation in Smash.

Smash Ultimate was released in 2018 which came after Smash for Wii U/3DS and as of 2022 is the last entry of the series. Smash Ultimate once again had noticable changes to its User interface, to its game modes but also to it's enormous character and stage selection. The playable heroes reach a total of 72 characters (this does not include Reskins Such as the female Pokemon trainer, the Male WiiFit etc.). Plenty of other heroes became assist trophies, which is an item in the game that can summon a random hero such as Waluigi (who is not playable) to temporarilly join the battle. The same can be said for the finite ammount of pokemons that can be spawned out of pokeballs/masterballs and aid the player. Furthermore, the player's Mii can join the battle. The game has Mii costumes of other iconic heroes who didnt make it into smash themselves, but their outfits and some of their iconic moves came in in the form of Miis. Heroes such as Dante(Devil May Cry), Cuphead(Cuphead), Shantae(Shantae),Doomslayer(Doom) and plenty of others. Last but not least very similar to Smash WiiU there were heroes that were added as payable DLC. These DLCs were the last chance of heroes to join the roster and so many heroes made it in either as the DLC Hero or as the Mii Costumes attached to it. The final Smash DLC was in October 5th 2021 and the hero was none other than Sora (Kingdom Hearts). Since then no news came for smash other than Tournament announcements and a few balance patches here and there. Masahiro Sakurai, the person responsible for smash since 1999 also mentioned that he will be officially stepping down from the Smash project leaving the future of the franchise open.

Story of the Game ( Minor spoilers)

Picture drom story
Smash Ultimate offers a story mode which very similar to all games it's type (Crossover Games) is not as memorable or as deep as others BUT it's inclusion is appreciated. The story mode or game mode is called the World of Light. As many people may 've seen from the trailers, the smash heroes gather in an area where a god like enemy who goes by the name Galeem appears and makes a ray of beams rain down to the heroes. The players then witness almost all of their beloved heroes getting hit by the enemy beans as they fade into ashes. Everyone but Kirby are defeated however they re not dead. Galeem used his powers to trap the heroes in a comatose state whilst they create enemy clones of a certain hero. At the same time Galeem's power increase as his light expands to the universe and allows him to create his own version of the world by erasing other life forms. Kirby being the only survivor sets on an adventure to defeat Galeem's army of enemy clones, release his friends from his posetion and then proceed with the help of his friends to take down this godly pressence. Ofourse it would not have been fair if i failed to mention that the story does include a few more plot twists the more the player proceeds. For example it's fair to assume that where ever light exist, there is always darkness lurking in the shadows. Last but not least, the game went out of it's way to include multiple endings based on the players performance.

Thoughts on the Story

The story of the game as mentioned is not the best story out there but it does to the games appeal. The mode is escorted with some amazing CGI cutscenes and amazing music. Not all of the story mode has CGI cutscenes, i would argue that only certain checkpoints have such as the start, the middle and the ending but there inclusion is fantastic. The players start by using none other than Kirby but the more they proceed with the story and the more heroes they rescue, allows them to use different member. If a player purchased a DLC hero such as Sora, he wont be available from the start, but once the players rescued at least 10-12 heroes through story, Sora will automatically join the team. In other words DLC heroes who were added after the games initial release will not have a boss battle but will join the players squaad after a given number of heroes re rescued.

Gameplay of Story mode

The story mode places Kirby (or any other hero after the player unlocks more) into a giant map board whose majority is hidden. The player can move around the map and locate enemy encounters that will either represent a hero or a monster/minion of Galeem. It is worth mentioning that the story mode of the game includes boss battles and avatars of heroes originally created for the story who do not make their appearance outside of the story mode and arcade mode such as Rathalos, the Master Hand and others. Once the mission is selected, a battle will occur and upon clearance, the map will become more visibly open for the players to proceed. There are plenty of collectables that can be unlocked by either fighting enemies or simply exploring the land of smash.

General Gameplay and Controls

Picture of heroes
Smash Ultimate is a platform fighting game, where the player can select a hero and face up againts other players or bots. Unless a DLC hero is bought, the game begins with a small roaster of 9 heroes( the 8 original ones and the player's Mii). When playing the game random locked characters will appear to challenge the player. This will be a one vs one scenario where if the players emerge victorious, they get to unlock that character and add them on their hero roaster. Losing the encounter will not unlock the hero BUT it will allow the players to rechallenge the certain boss by visiting the arcade mode and select a golden smash ball which only becomes available if the challenger defeats the player. The smash community found three ways to unlock heroes , these being:
  1. Playing through Adventure/Story mode
  2. Playing through Arcade mode (with any hero each time)
  3. Playing the game in any mode, walk aimlessly left and right and fight a bot. Once the battle is over and encounter will occur. After the battle, close and re-open the game to reset the ecnounter timer and fight any bot. At the end of the round a new encounter will occur.(Do that for all 63 encounters)
When selecting the hero, the game will proceed to place the heroes into a platform representing the fighting stage. Each hero (player's, opponents and CPU) will have their profile picture placed in the bottom of the screen with a percentage next to their picture. The percentage represents the ammount of damage the character has received. Certain heroes such as Sephiroth, Joker and others become more powerful the more damage they receive and it represents their awaken forms. Needless to say the higher the ammount of damage they receive the weaker they become in terms of their vonurability. The higher the percentage the easier it is to be launched of map. There are three standard game modes.
Timed battles
A timer is set and the contestands are task to eliminate the enemies in order to ger their kill counts up. The character who eliminated the most will be the official winner. In case of a draw, the player with the least amount of deaths will be the one who wins.
Life Stock battles
An amount of lives is given to all the participants. The ammount of each character can be seen underneath the hero's profile. Each death reduces the ammount until the final life is lost causing the elimination of that character. Last hero standing wins.
Stamina Battles
The percentage next to the character's profile represent their healthbar instead of their damage percentage. Once the percentage reaches zero the character is defeated.
Keep in mind the players can create their own costum games and alter the rules of certain modes. For example increasing the timer, the ammount of lives in stock, the starting percentage of stamina and the ammount of items that can be used (if any) and how often they ll appear during a game. In case of a draw, during a timed battle, the heroes will both spawn with 200% dmg whilst the map is slowly shrinking due to flames closing in. The first to succesfully land a smash hit/dash attack or special will most likely be the winner.

Hero abilities (Basic tutorial)

Picture of gameplay
Keep in mind that some heroes may differ from eachother nevertheless most heroes will share some common abilities. All characters can move around the stage by walking left and right. The pressure applied on the stick will result to whether or not the hero will sprint or walk. (Heroes speed depends on the character. E.G Sonic is far more faster than Mario). Holding down allows the heroes to duck and some have the ability to walk whilst ducking. Holding down whilst on a platform allows the hero to drop down a level. Heroes can jump and double jump. Similar to other games, the longer the jump button is held the higher the distance covered. Once a double jump is used, the hero cannot use another, unless they hit the ground or grap the corner of the arena. Jumping once again differs with heroes as heroes like Sora are very airborne and 'fly' up and other's such as Kirby have multiple double jumps that simply cover less height. A rare triple jump phenomenom can occur if the player bounces off the head of the opponent. Once again similar to other fighting games the players can attack whilst on air or simply force their character to land faster on the ground. There are three defensive options: The best way to deal with a player who is defending constantly is to used the grab command. Grapping an enemy allowd the player to hit them with light attack and then throw them towards a direction. Depending on the ammount of damage received to person being grapped, the longer they ll stay grapped and the furtherst they ll be thrown. Some heroes can grab enemis from the distance such as Luigi and Samus.
Each hero can attack with A. Tapping A will cause it's own combo, whilst tapping A and a direction will have a different attack pattern. Sprinting/walking towards the enemy and pressing A will have a different attack.Smash attacks are charged attacks that can be dealt by simply holding down A and charging the attack. A smash attack deals more damage and can also launch enemies out of the map. For the aerial attacks, the same rules apply. For example tapping A alone or A and a direction will cause for a different aerial attacks to occur each with their own animations and patterns. Smash attacks cannot occur in the air. Another way of attacking the opponents is with the Special attacks that can be triggered with B. Yet again all the heroes have different specials by simply tapping B or pressing B and a directional button. Most of the special attacks can be triggered whilst on air as well. All this attacks can combo with each other by simply cancelling animations. It's hard to explain but to simply put, certain combo attacks can be stopped mid way in order to reset a combo before the enemy can recover. Canceling of a combo can occur by forcing the hero to land on the ground faster and then rejump or use the dodge button midway. This is very hard to achieve and requires alot of trainning to get it right.

As mentioned above the percentage next to a characters life is important as it defies the power and current status of a hero. The higher the percentage of a hero triggers the Rage System. To sum are more visibly obvious such as Sephiroths Wing appearane and Joker's Arsene Summon and to others not. The Rage factor allows the players attack to launch the enemy further where as at the same time receiving an attack will be more fatal than usual. Graps last longer and the same is applied to status attack such as stuns, sleeps etc. The most important mechanism to master is Recovery. The most common way to defeat an opponent is to throw them of te stage as far as possible so that they cannot recover. Knowing how to recover though will allow the player to continue to battle. There's a few way to recover:
  1. One way is simply using Jump and double jump.
  2. Second way is by using double jump and UP special(that usually have a jump of their own
  3. Third way is Double Jump, Up special and (side)Directional dodge to cover extra distance.
  4. Fourth way is once again character ralted which is using the long distance grap to grap on the ledge.
  5. Fifth way very similar to fourth allows certian heroes to use certain specials to save themselves. Skills such as Sora's Sonic blade, Diddy Kong's Jet back and Hero's zoom just to name a few.
Recovering can combine all given options(3rd-4rth) based on how far a character is launched. If a succesfull recovery failed to place the hero on top of the arena it means that it manage to atleast make it all the way to the ledge preventing the death. Making it to the ledge does not guarantee the safety of the player as they opponents can easily try to punish the vonurable hero hanging for their lives. Recovering from the ledge can occur in one of five ways:
  1. Simply tapping the movemvent button forwards allows the hero to climb back to it
  2. Aggresively come up by using the A button to attack anyone near the ledge.
  3. Jumping up or tilting the movement button up, which will launch the hero further in the arena.
  4. Rolling back in can occur with the use of the shield button
  5. Let go of the ledge(by tilting away from arena or down) and use either double jump to go back in or using certain heros special attacks.
Keep in mind once again that each ledge recovery option has its ups and downs as all of them have a few frames where the opponent can punish them.
Not all heroes, but most are capable of wall jumping, this can be used for both, normal wall jump on a map, recovery and Ledge recovery. Moreover all of the heroes can pick themselves up when knockdown by perfect timing the shield or grab button right before they hit the ground. This pick up mechanic can also be used with left or right to recover and move towards any of the two directions. Furthermore by using the keypad, the players can use various emotes. These are the basic mechanicks that the player should know. Obviously like every fighting game, the more you play the more you become adjust to the open windows and enemy reading skills. The more you play a hero the better you become with them. Another factor that can change the basic gameplay is the usage of items.

Items

Picture of powerups Picture of powerups
Smash brothers always allowed people to use items if they re turned on. These items as briefly mentioned above can turn the tables as any given moment. As mentiones Assist trophies and Pokeballs summon random heroes and random Pokemon that allowed the summoned individual to help the summoner. Each summoned hero remains for a small ammount of time and cannot be targeted to attack. Some characters attack directly while other use random buff/nerf attacks such as slow time, burn effect freeze and others. Other random items can be used as mellee weapons. For example, receiving a random gun or blade can be used to shoot enemies or use various power up attacks to kill others. Some items such us bombs, cause enormous AoE attacks such as Bombermans Bombs, Samus blaster gun and others. Food items are capable of healing the heroes. Healing lowers the percentage of a hero or increases it based on the given game mode. Last but not least the famouns smash ball appears and the player who will break it will get a colorfoul aura which will allow them to use their Ultimate attack or final smash. Final smash is unique to each hero, some are close range attacks, others are AoE attacks, others are long range attacks and others spawn items in tha map. The attacks are triggered by holding down B. Landing it does not guarantee a kill but they do guarantee heavy ammount of damage.

Other Game modes

Smash Mode
This is the typical gamemode that allows the player to enjoy quick games of smash Solo, in local Multiplayer and train themselves. The settings can be easily altered by the player in the menu.
Online Mode
As the name suggest, this is the game mode that the player can face up againts other players online .
Both Smash and Online mode have their own mini gamemodes such at Solo mode, team mode and tournament mode where losing disqualifyy the player or promotes them to next round.
Adventure Mode(Story mode)
Smash Ultimate sory mode.(which was mentioned in detail above)
Classic Mode
This is the closest thing to an arcade mode. The player selects a hero and a difficulty level. They re then playing through Stamina battles until they reached the final boss. Each hero phases their own enemies and some unique forms such as Link fighting a giant Beast Ganondorf(than the usual Ganon)
Trainning Mode
As the name suggest, this is the typical trainning mode which will teach the player the game.
Other mini game modes include:
Squad Strike
People set teams of 3 or 5 and play the game. There are three gamemodes for it. First things first these are 1vs1 battles, than a battle royal. The player can then select one of three game modes. Tag team allows player A to use a hero who will be swapped when defeated. Elimination eliminating a hero prevents them from being used and also changes map with each defeat.Best of sets a goal and who ever wings best of 5(3 games) wins.
Special Smash Mode
Special smash modifies the game by creating it's own rules and modifications as the game proceeds.
Mob Smash Mode
These are enemy waves of various sets of smash heroes that re here to eliminate you.
Vr Mode
This allows the player to use the Nintendo Vr set to play the game in 3D.
Home Run Contest
This is a minigame where the players are task to launch a sandbag in the air. Whoever launches it the furthest wins.

Music and Graphics

Picture of maps

The music and the graphics are unique to the game and came with plenty of positive reviews as certain heroes not only first became available in smash as playable heroes (R.O.B) but also made their debut with 3D/2D Models after a long time (Mr Game & Watch, Castlevania). The heroes themselves look clean and although some heroes differ with each other Nintendo somehow made it work. For example Characters like Sephiroth whose model is much more detail(since he is a FFvii model) dont look as weird as they should next to characters like Super Mario. Furthermore, the developers came with beautiful ideas for Kirby's absorbtion powers, as each time he absorbs a hero, he gets some of their key features onto him (Joker's mask, Cloud's hair etc). The music is also very unique, as each hero or more specifically each of the heroes IP's are represented with audio. To elaborate each game that is included in Smash with a hero have a map representing them and audio tracks. Some of them are remix of their represented Song but others are straight up the same. For example songs like the iconic Green Hills of Sonic can be heard in the game, Red's OST from Pokemon Hikari from Kingdom Hearts and plenty of other iconic tunes. Certain heroes have more songs representing their series but keep in mind that Nintendo had to come to agreements with third parties when obtaining the rights to include certain heroes. Some companies were happy to give plenty of audios (Tekken representation) while other's may have been a bit more picky (Square Enix's Final Fantasy Vii). The game's playable arenas are all well designed with plenty of details in the background and characters. Some maps may have a few low rezolution avatars in the backgroud but have amazing design for their stage or the gameplay of the stage as some are constantly moving or have interactable surfaces. Once again each of the IPs currently in smash have their own arena representing their series and some have multiple ones such as Nintendo's Super Mario who has a plethera of games and side games which allowed them to recreate plenty of them. Whilst in the topic of Graphics it should also be mention that re/watching some of the smash ultimate trailers or hero reveals have some amazing cinematography who can get everyone hyped up for the game. Watching trailers such as Sephiroth's, Megaman's, Hero's and others can showcase the history and impact he game had since 2018.

Amiibo

Amiibo are figurines released by Nintendo who represent a given Hero. Each Amiibo have a NFC micro chip which can be scanned on the switch. By doing so the player will get the Amiibo character sprite spawn in the game. They can then choose to train the Amiibo, send it to train camp to train by itself. Moreover the players can have their Amiibo as a player inside the game during a battle. The Amiibo can join the player as a teammate and as an enemy.

Final thoughs

The game is definetely a must play for any Nintendo Switch Users as there are not many fighting games on th platform and it's a game which defined the term "smash clone". Furthermore, Smash can be seen as a Playground filled with many iconic Action figures of beloved and iconic gaming heroes for everyone to enjoy. It is not a hard game to pick up BUT there's plenty of mechanics that the players need to master in order to become top tier players. The main story of the game can last for a long time but it's completely optional as all the heroes can be obtained by simply playing the game. The roaster and map selection is huge and consist of plenty of gaming idols that represent various gaming studios, gaming generations and gaming representatives. The game offers both online and local multiplayer of up to 8 players/CPU and Amiibos. The game's last playable DLC hero is Sora and Nintendo hasn't announce a new installment for the series or a new DLC pack.

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