Originally posted by Shuyin

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King DeDeDe has been announced. Now where's Captain Falcon? =(

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Originally posted by Gimpyfish62

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General Gameplay
Alright so first and foremost, the most important thing that I can possibly stress (beyond it being very fun) is this.

THIS GAME IS NOT MELEE. THIS GAME IS NOT SMASH 64. THIS IS A NEW GAME.

Don’t expect to be flying around the stage in the same way as you did in melee, and don’t expect your combos to work like in 64. This is a completely new game. It DOES have a familiar feel though, at first you will likely not like the way it controls (for about a match or two) but once you adjust to it and start figuring things out, you’ll start to like it. Another reason for the lack of control at the beginning could’ve been just an issue with the controllers for now.

The technical aspect of the game seems less important, but seriously we are on day 4 of a game that isn’t even in its final version.

Alright…. now for SOME specifics. Everyone at first seemed very floaty and slow up and down, but after playing as much as I did (I probably played more than anyone there) it stopped seeming that way as soon as I got control of my character. The reason it probably seems that way is because its different timing to fast fall and most aerials start quicker and end quicker. It’s more of an Illusion of floatiness than everyone actually being really floaty.
Throws in Brawl seem to be toned down, harder to combo with in general. The hit-stun of the throws is almost nothing. For example, fox can’t up throw into anything; people just seem to escape really quickly from most throws. Grabs themselves seem to be pretty important however. They all seem very fast to activate, it seems like you can shield grab anything you want to, but again we don’t exactly have the best technical skill at this point in the demo. Also the faster characters on the ground have a lot of range on their dash grabs. You can grab from far away because of their speed, so that seems like it will be an important part of the game.

In general everyone seemed to live a lot longer – that or everyone got a lot weaker, depending on how you want to look at it. Most of the kills that people got in the demo seemed to be from people throwing items or the Final Smashes. After we played the game and got used to the controls some of our matches we tried to avoid using/abusing the items for kills to try and see what people are capable of, and people in general lived upwards of 120% on average - even those we assumed were supposed to be “lighter. Again this is only a demo, and there could be different weight/survival percentages in the actual game.
Edgeguarding itself seemingly has become more difficult. Most characters have a really effective auto sweetspot feature - even while still moving up during their up b’s. For example, Mario can hit the ledge after just starting his up b and it will automatically grab the ledge on the way up. It is very difficult to edgeugard. That being so, it seemed like (at least in the demo) a lot of the time characters are not abusing that fact, or even using it at all. A lot of the characters are recovering very high, it seems like most things hit higher, so recovering lower would be more awkward.

Camping with projectiles seemed to be more awkward and less effective with all of the characters that had projectiles as well. Even pits easily spammable arrows speed wise don’t seem like they would be very effective in camping, although I could be wrong on that aspect of the game. Link’s projectile game seems to be toned down (in effectiveness) in brawl as well. Projectiles themselves simply seem like they would be less useful, but again, its only the demo and we haven’t exactly mastered the game at this point.

The game is fun, very fun. After you get over your 3 match shocker that the game isn’t exactly the same as melee you’ll understand how great this game is.

On a cosmetic scale this game is beautiful, its much prettier than melee was, there is a lot going on in the backgrounds and it just looks crisp. Even with the sheer amounts of “stuff” going on we never saw frame rates drop one time. Character introductions are back and better than they were in smash 64, it really adds a nice amount of flavor to the characters. The additional taunts are also a nice feature. Final smashes are really fun, but I’m doing a whole section on those so I’ll get to that more later. Anyways let’s get to the real information! 


Basic Techniques
This section is just a general overview of the basic techniques available in brawl, most of which were in melee, but there are a few new things at the end.

Air Dodge – The phsycis of the airdodge have changed. You likely already know this. Airdodging is no longer directional, and you also can’t do it in place to sort of “stall” in the air. Airdodge simply gives invulnerability frames temporarily, and does nothing else. You can attack after airdodges. You can jump after airdodges. You can airdodge multiple times in a row if you have time to do so. There is a short amount of time where you can’t airdodge so that you can’t just stay invincible in the air forever though.

C-Stick – The c-stick does work differently in brawl then it did in melee. C-stick still does smash attacks if you aren’t holding a direction, but if you are holding ANY DIRECTION and point your c-stick it will do a tilt in the direction that you tilt the c-stick. You can also charge smash attacks with the c-stick, which is a good change. C-stick still works for airials, and you can actually catch items with the c-stick as well.

Crouch Canceling – Crouch Canceling works just like it did in melee. We honestly don’t know if it’s as effective, but it still does basically the same thing at least. It is also harder to CC (crouch cancel) into down smash because of the new c-stick functionality in regards to the tilts.

Dash Dancing – Dash Dancing is in, and seems to be equally effective if not more effective in brawl. Sonic’s dash dance in particular is especially good because of its very high speed and the distance he can go while doing it.

Sidestepping – Sidestepping is in, and appears to be basically the same as it was in Melee.

Double Jump Canceling – This appears to be out, Yoshi can’t double jump cancel anyways, but we have no way of being sure it is not in with some other characters.

Edgehogging – Edgehogging works the same way it did in melee, characters gain invincibility frames on the edge, and during a rolling animation or getup attack other characters cannot grab the edge.

Fast Falling – Fast falling is in. It works similarly to the melee fast fall, but seems to have an even greater effect on falling speed (compared to their jumping speeds at least)

Item grabbing/catching – It seems like you have to be closer to items to pick them up while they are on the ground, but catching them in the air is much easier. Oftentimes we found ourselves accidentally catching items because of a new item catching feature. You can catch items while you are in the middle of airials. So if you are peach and you throw a turnip at somebody and it hits their shield (or hits them I suppose) and you follow up with a forward air you will catch the turnip as you hit with the fair.

Jump Cancel Upsmash/Grab – Honestly I’m not sure if this is in, if it is it’s a lot more difficult, I just crouch really quickly before I up smash normally anyways, and that still works, but jump canceling seems to be harder if its in at all.

Edgehop – Edgehopping is in the game, but it seems like it might be less useful for some characters because of the overall “floatiness” factor. Also you can’t actually drop from the ledge by pressing down anymore, just a little quirk about it. I found myself messing up my ledgehops at first because of this adjustment.

Ledgetech – Didn’t see it, but using rational thought based on the seemingly improved DI and ability to still tech it seems like it’d be in, although with the new sweetspot I can’t imagine there would be much opportunity for this anyways.

Meteors – Still in, saw a couple meteor cancels (or at least I think I did) but this is one of those things that could change really easily from the demo to the real game

Rolling – Still in and very similar to the melee. Some characters (Metaknight and Pit for example) have really quick rolls that seem like they would be more useful than most rolls in
melee.

Sheild Hit Stun – At first it appeared there was more shield hit stun in the game, but then I noticed that every character seems to have a really good sheildgrab off almost any air -> ground attack combination. Visually it looks like more shield hit stun, but I don’t think it really is anything that will affect the game at all.

Sheild Grab – If you read the shield hit stun description right above this one then you will already know about this. Sheild grab is in and seems to be even more effective than it was in melee (at least in the point that getting the grab is going to be happening more often).

Shffls – Still in, done SLIGHTLY differently - aerial after the fast fall remember.

DI/Smash DI – DI is still in brawl, and seems to be a lot more effective. There is more hit stun with pretty much every move, so there are more frames to DI. It’s really a hard thing to check, all of the competitive players who played brawl have a really natural instinct to DI to survive, its hard to think not to DI on purpose for comparison purposes. It did seem like we lived for longer percentages though, especially on most of the item attacks. Honestly it seemed like it was easier to do survival DI, but harder to DI out of combos. My theory on that is that because the game and most moves are new, we simply don’t know where to DI yet to get out of combos.

Teching – Teching is still in. You can tech off walls the ground and the ceiling. You can walljump tech, tech in place, and rolltech. Teching acts more or less the same as it did in Melee.

Tumble Recovery – This is still in, you can wiggle the control stick to get out of your tumbling animation faster.

Walljumping – Still in. I saw Mario and Samus both do it, and I can’t remember if Diddy actually can or not, but I THINK he can. Don’t take this one as fact though.

Footstool Jump – Footstool jump looks really silly actually. You just jump on characters heads. I believe any character can do this, but we didn’t see them all do it (I never did it with Bowser, but I never really tried to do it either) It does no damage and seems to have very slow knockback, but we didn’t see anyone meteor cancel one, and we tried to cancel it every time it was done to us. It just sent us down really slowly and you couldn’t jump right away.

Tether Recovery – Tether recovery is different in brawl compared to how it was in melee. The hookshot/grapple/whatever goes right for the ledge where you sweetspot and automatically pulls you up right away. It is unknown at this point whether or not you can edgehog this or not (I would assume that you can). Another difference between this recovery type in brawl is that you can actually do it multiple times without touching the ground. You can drop off the edge and grapple immediately into a sweetspot, it’s a pretty cool little stall.

Gliding – Gliding is really unorthodox, I think we just didn’t try it enough because it’s so different. It’s also awkward to activate a glide. You actually press DOWN to start gliding with pit/metaknight. Seems like it’d be a great way to recover, but it might be pretty easy to edgeguard. But we really don’t know, it wasn’t researched very much.

Crawling – Crawling also looks funny, it doesn’t look very fast, and it also doesn’t look like every character can do it. It sounded more useful in early impressions than it was when we actually tried to use it in matches.

Taunts – Every character has three taunts now, and the additional taunts are really cool. Just a small feature, but I really like it myself.

Turn around neutral B – the only reason I write about this is because sadly it has been removed. You can’t turn around with your neutral b moves in the air.

The Halo – The halo that drops you off after you die still exists, and works the same, you retain invincibility I think for the same amount of time in brawl that you did in melee after a death.

Swimming – Every character in the game can “Swim” if you land in water. However, you can only swim for a short period of time. This is primarily seen on Delfino Plaza (at least for now). You can be spiked through the water, and you can do moves (like Bowser’s down b for example) through the water and still die, so be careful!

Grounded characters (results of “pitfall” item and dk’s side b attack) – If you hit somebody with these things the characters go into the ground. In melee you could just pound on them to do damage until they broke free. Well in brawl you basically get a free big hit, so don’t bother with your little combo move (unless you have them at low percent) you want to release the charged up giant punch you had right now. It’ll send them flying. Not particularly important, but it’s a change. 






“Advanced” Tactics

Alright, so here is where we get into the “advanced” tactics. Some things we discovered at the venue or we just figured out how to actually get them to work. Other things we found but we’ve been having trouble duplicating. Anyways, read on to see what kind of “advanced” techniques we found for Brawl so far. (also, since it’s a demo, every single one of these could easily be removed/changed, so keep that in mind)


Hugging – Hugging seems like its going to be big in brawl. With the lack of a solid wavedash this seems like the best way to edgehog at this point. You simply walk/run/roll/whatever off the edge and press towards the stage after you fall, you grab the edge automatically facing either direction. Its fast and its useful. Pretty cool new technique

Moonwalking – Somebody told me this was in, and acted mostly the same way, I can’t moonwalk in melee so I didn’t check myself so who knows for sure.

Ink Drop – Alright so a lot of people are trying to rename it, call it what you want, the official name is Ink Dropping as far as SWF is concerned *flexes moderator muscles* Go ahead and call it what you want though, just don’t force it on whoever else, everyone is going to know what you are referring to if you call it the Ink drop OR tripping anyways after all of these posts. So to Ink Drop you… well… to be honest we have no idea! We experimented and we couldn’t really find a way to reliably make this happen. After day one we were sure that you could dash pivot by canceling the ink drop, but we don’t know for sure. This one eluded us for now, oh well. It’ll probably be in the instruction manual or something.

Pivot – Still in, and apparently you can do it while dashing somehow. It seems like it would be very effective with sonic. Inks was the first one that did that with Mario doing a reverse grab out of a dash, and I did it later by dashing across the screen into a reverse short hop back air. We aren’t sure how it’s done, just that it can be done.

L Canceling – Alright, the very last day we had the demo we finally figured this one out. You CAN l cancel, and l canceling removes all the lag from your airials. Remember that l cancel stands for LAG cancel, NOT the button that you press. You l cancel in brawl by fast falling and then doing your airials, it takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s obviously useful to have no lag after moves. You don’t actually have to press a button, as long as you are fast falling before you do your aerial you should l cancel.

The “$ Slide” aka the Waveland – Yes, wavelanding appears to be back (at least in the demo). We called it the money slide because bob$ was the first person to be able to apply it consistently and helped us to actually figure out how to do it. It is NOT done with the airdodge in any way whatsoever. This could EASILY be removed before the actual release of the game, but it’s still in for now. To do the $ slide you have to be in the air (obviously) and do a move that pulls your character in one direction. The best example was Mario’s back air, but it can also be done with his up air (and just to give more examples, bowser’s back air, several of peach’s airials, etc etc). If you do moves like these while you are close to the ground it pulls your character over very quickly and does basically the exact same thing a waveland does in melee. We know that it slides you along the ground, but as far as applications goes that’s up to you guys to discover. If you l cancel the aerial by fast falling first then you do the move it doesn’t even come out and you just go sliding over.

On a side note (something we didn’t really have time to experiment with) it seems like peach would legitimately be able to wavedash back and forth because of this technique combined with the shortened height of float canceling, which means that peach (or somebody else with a double jump cancel, if other characters can do it) will be able to wavedash back and forth quickly

Land Canceling B moves– by this I mean things like falco’s short hop blaster from melee or needle canceling or other things like that. In general it seems like this has been removed, at least in the things we tried. Diddy can’t short hop peanut gun cancel spam, sorry guys.

“Thunders” Combo – When somebody misses a tech, tapping them no longer causes them to stand up automatically. 

Shield Drop - You CAN drop through platforms with your sheild up just like in Smash 64. This is a very good thing.

Jab Canceling - Jab canceling is in and it works just the same as it did in melee. If you jab, then press down, then jab again you will repeatedly do just the first hit of your jab instead of doing the other hits after.


Stage Impressions


Battlefield


Battlefield is basically the same layout as it was in melee without the glitch edges. It’s a very “balanced” stage. I might just die if this stage somehow wasn’t a neutral stage for us competitive players. It’s very straightforward but it’s also much more stylized than the old battlefield. The background changes from day to night and the sunsets and everything, it’s really something. Everything seems fresh and nice. The platform layout itself is as straightforward as it looks. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Main stage, two platforms that hover on the sides and one up above those in the middle. With the new sweetspot mechanics getting caught under the stage isn’t QUITE so bad with most characters. Overall I really like this stage, we spent most of our time there at first because we were just trying to learn how to play.

Norfair

Norfair will probably just be called no fair pretty soon because people make silly puns like that. This stage hasn’t been announced yet. It’s got platforms that are the size of the platforms on battlefield but there is no real bottom area. There is one platform on the bottom (same size as the battlefield platforms) two platforms above that that are on the sides of the first platform, and then there are two platforms above those just outside of the second set. That was a really poor explanation; I’ll try and get a picture up soon. Anyways, you can hang on EVERY ledge of EVERY platform. Lava comes flying in from the background, from the sides, from almost everywhere. At one point the lava rises in the background and you have to actually go to a certain part of the stage and enter this little chamber to escape the fire. It’s visually really impressive, but it isn’t exactly one of my favorites.

Yoshi’s Island


Surprisingly I didn’t really play on this stage much. I really like the graphical style of this stage. Shy guys appear on this stage carrying food again, they are WAY bigger in this game too. The stage is pretty basic, its one main platform and two on the sides outside of that, the ghosts hold those ones up. There is one platform hovering above the main platform that goes almost the whole way across the stage (at least that’s what I’m remembering now) . There are also some animated Chain chomps on the very sides of the stage that seem like they can actually hit you pretty hard if you run into them and they chomp or something, I need more confirmation on this stage I really didn’t see much of it.

Bridge of Eldin


The Bridge of Eldin from Zelda: Twilight Princess was a HUGE stage. It’s completely flat with no platforms anywhere. The stage is gigantic. And no, it’s not like final destination because it has no platforms. This stage basically has walk off edges. Every so often that thing (I can’t remember who it is ) comes out and drops a bomb on the center of the stage, this blows a pretty big hole in the middle of the stage until it gets repaired later. Did I mention yet how absolutely large this stage is? Anyways, I didn’t play here much, but I know that you can attack the guy who comes by with the bomb if you want, and if he runs into you he does some damage.

Skyworld


Skyworld initially seemed like a much better stage than what I think of it now. At first it seemed pretty normal, you’ve got a bottom level main platform, two platforms a level up from that, then one above those ones. There is also a platform that goes left and right below the main platform that you can land on. This is one of the stages that you can actually break – you break the land that is on the clouds. You CANNOT jump or fall through the platforms without breaking the land on the clouds. Now at first this seemed all well and good until we realized that there is a little bit of a hyrule problem on this stage. I quickly realized you can jump stay in the center of the stage and basically never die, you can almost always tech on something. While the stage is broken away there are some interesting things that can happen. You can spike people THROUGH the clouds that you land on which is actually pretty cool looking, but not exactly something we all want happening all the time. Fox can actually just grab you on a cloud and down throw you and you get spiked right away, it’s pretty crazy. All in all this stage appears to be less of a hassle than it really is when you play on it, it definitely has a hyrule effect (where you can just camp and tech forever) and the clouds themselves have some interesting quirks. It’s fun, but I doubt it will be a super competitive stage.

Battleship Halberd


Battleship Halberd was one of my favorite stages. You’ve all seen the main platforms on this stage. The stage moves around a lot until you actually land, that’s where the stage hazards come into play. The stage hazards on this stage aren’t NEARLY as impeding as one may think; you can ALWAYS see the laser coming (about 10 seconds before it fires) and you can ALWAYS see WHERE it is shooing before as well. Another stage hazard was a large cannonball that fires onto the stage and explodes, and it is also very easy to see. All in all I really like this stage a lot, it’s easy to maneuver around the stage and the hazards are not impeding. One of my favorite stages.

Pokemon Stadium 2


Pokemon Stadium 2… Well, it’s just like Pokemon Stadium from melee when it’s in its neutral position, but when it changes things REALLY change this time. There are a few different types that the stage transforms too this time. There is one that seems to be sort of earthy with a little hill in the center of the stage, not too big of a change on that stage, doesn’t’ seem too campy either. There is another stage (lightning I think) and the stage actually has conveyor belts on the ground, honestly this was much more disrupting to me then it would seem based on the description. It was really annoying to run in one direction and go almost nowhere, then run the other direction and go flying across the map. Another one was the “half gravity” transform. This was really, really unusual, and was really, really disruptive. It seems like it doesn’t necessarily give particular advantages to one character over the other (at least at this point) but it’s just frustrating. I didn’t particularly enjoy this stage because some of the changes were quite abnormal.

Delfino Plaza


Whoever said Delfino Plaza was going to be essentially Mute City was exactly right. Oh wait! That was me – and probably about a million others. The main platform moves around and drops you off at certain locations across Isle Delfino. This stage is BEAUTIFUL. It is so crisp and clean, I really liked this one a lot. Most of the places you get dropped off are pretty standard; almost all of them are surrounded by water. You can swim in the water, but only for a short amount of time before you sink and die. You can spike people down through the water and still kill them that way though. One of the stages you get dropped off in has a big wall on the right side, which can be a hindrance, but overall this stage is pretty fun and isn’t too random or difficult. It is a very pretty stage and is one of my favorites.

Lylat Cruise


Lylat Cruise was probably my favorite stage. With everything flying around in the background you would imagine that there are MUTIPLE stage hazards, but there are none (at least not in a 2 minute match in the demo). This stage has one bottom platform and three platforms that float above it, I really like the layout. There is a TON going on in the background, this stage is gorgeous. With everything going on in the background you can still focus on the match, so don’t worry about that. We didn’t experience a single dropped frame on this stage even with everything that was going on. No stage hazards, good layout, beautiful stage. It is a great stage overall.


Smashville


Smashville was another one of those really simplistic stages that we were all wanting. It has one main platform on the bottom and one platform above it that moves left and right as you play. There’s really not a lot going on here. Not a lot going on graphically, not a lot going on on the stage, very neutral, very nice. It’s a good stage, but it isn’t one of my favorites because it just isn’t as pretty.

Castle Siege


Castle Siege is constantly changing, you start off on one main stage, then you seemingly “fall through” the stage and it becomes just on platform with walk off edges on this part. This stage was really bizarre and didn’t get a lot of playtime. I’d assume it would be a counter, it didn’t seem like there were many stage hazards, but the stage is going all over the place. The track is NOT random though, it always follows the same path. But we really didn’t play this stage very much, so I don’t really know.
 




Item Impressions

I’m not sure if I got all of these. This is basically an items list that explains what each one does. Right now I don’t have the assist trophies or the pokemon on here, but they’ll be the next thing I update.

Food – Generally the same thing as in melee, it looks a little awkward in this game actually because of the graphical style of the food. This item heals you for about 2-5% per “meal”.

Maxim Tomato – Works exactly the same as it does in melee and in 64. Healing item, it restores 50% I believe.

Heart Container – Works exactly the same as it does in melee and in 64. Healing item, it restores 100% I believe.

Beam Sword – Wow the beam sword got quite a buff, and peach can still pull these things. The range of the beam swords increased massively, it extends as you swing it. Still works
basically the same as in melee and 64 though.

Smoke Ball – This is a weird new item. You throw it and it makes smoke go all over the place, supposed to make it hard to see. It’s really just a minor distraction that looks cool. Apparently you can hold this WHILE using a final smash because I saw Super Sonic with smoke flying out all around him from the smoke ball. It’s a pretty cool but seemingly useless item, it would be fun to have a whole bunch of these on at once though.

Banana Peel – Pretty self explanatory. You trip on these. Basically a forced Ink Drop! They don’t go away after you trip on them either; they stay for quite a while. I can’t remember if they do any damage or not, but I don’t think they do.

Spike-Ball – Some people are saying this is from the Kirby franchise, but I honestly have no clue where they got that from. He’s basically a little spiky guy that you can throw or attack. After he is “activated” (through throwing or attacking) he grows and stays in place, running into him harms you and sends you back a little bit.

Bob-omb – These are the same as they are in melee and 64. After a while they start to walk around, they seem to be less devastating in this game, although that could be because you have more frames to DI.

Bumper – The bumper from smash 64 has returned! It’s a pretty cool item, if you throw it in the air and it doesn’t land anywhere after a short while it will set itself up in the air. These things fling you all over the place, they work just like in 64 smash.

Mr. Saturn – Mr. Saturn is back and he wants his revenge on your shield. He seems to destroy shields much faster in this game. He walks around the stage, you can still attack him if you have no heart.

Screw Attack – This thing works a little differently. The screw attack item now is passive once your grab it. You get the screw attack for your jumps (which do not change height like they did in melee) and you can also hold another item while you have it, you can no longer throw this item at another player.

Lip’s Stick – As far as I’m aware, this item works the same as it does in melee. But I didn’t see it very much.

Fan – It’s back and it is SUPER quick this time. It seems to swing even faster in brawl then it did in melee and it wrecks your shield.

Star Rod – Seems to work the same, but I don’t think the stars that come out go as far or do as much damage/knockback. But I don’t remember using this item very much so I could be wrong.

Hammer – Same as in melee, the hammer can fall off of the handle occasionally which is problematic for whoever is carrying it. The hammer doesn’t seem as “broken” this time. As Bowser at least I found some of my attacks going through the hammers and still hitting the person and they are more or less helpless flying through the air with a hammer on.

Golden Hammer – This is a new item, it’s basically the normal hammer on steroids. Everyone moves SUPER fast with this thing and it looks pretty ridiculous. You can actually float while using this hammer to get them off the stage. Although we never really tried doing that, it sounds really cool. Every so often you’ll get the squeaky hammer I think is what they called it. It’s the same as the golden hammer in every way except it does no damage or knockback and you can’t float with it. So it isn’t really like it at all. It’s basically the same thing that happens when the hammer falls of the rod with the normal hammer.

Mushrooms – These items are back and do the same thing as they did in the other games. There is a poison mushroom and a super mushroom. They will make you either shrink (poison mushroom) or grow giant (super mushroom). One cool little feature I noticed of this item is that when you get it, your character strikes a nice pose sort of like they are powering up after they grab the super mushroom. It’s a really subtle addition, but it’s really cool as well.

Motion Sensor Bomb – These seem to be a LITTLE bit harder to see from what I remember. They are essentially the same thing, although they also seem to do less knockback just like the bob-ombs.

Cracker Launcher – This item is super-powered. It’s difficult to use at first but once you get the hang of it you can basically combo whatever character you are fighting right off the top of the stage with this. It’s a really cool item visually speaking and really damaging as well.

Pitfall – This item is a new one. It basically does what DK’s over b does. Once you are in the ground you can knock them with a powerful move. In this game think of being grounded like being put to sleep, you will get hit out of the ground if you get hit while you are in the ground. You can also put this item on a platform and they will go falling right through it. It’s a pretty cool new item. If you place this item on the stage it disappears completely, and anyone other than you can accidentally run into it after that. Very cool item.

Franklin Badge – I honestly don’t even know if we saw this one in the demo. Once you pick
this up it’s a passive item. You can hold other items while still under the effect of the Franklin badge. This item causes you to reflect projectiles automatically. Pretty useful in a 4 player FFA as it is difficult to tell when somebody has this on or not.

Homerun Bat – I didn’t see any homeruns, but I’m imagining this works the same as it did in the other games.

Deku Nut (at least I think that’s what it was) – The deku nut is a cool item. If you hit it it causes you to be stunned as if you just broke your own shield. You can also throw this item at people and make that happen to the other characters. It seems pretty useful, and the item itself is pretty small.

Spring Board – These things randomly fall down either on their side or upright. If you run into one that is on its side you’ll go flying off sideways (think of the springboards in the original sonic games that would push you sideways). If it lands upright you can jump off them to get a really high jump. It’s a pretty cool item. I’m not sure if you can pick this one up or not.

Fire Flower – Works mostly the same as it did in melee, one big difference is you can run and jump while you are using it, so you can basically just push people off the edge with it, which makes it much more fun to use.

Super Scope – This item got the same new traits as the fire flower did. You can run around and shoot with this, it’s much cooler looking that way, but otherwise it’s the same item as in melee.

Gooey Bomb – This item was actually really really cool. I bet you all know what this one is already, you throw it at somebody and it sticks to them (or wherever it landed if you miss). If you have this stuck to you try to run into the other players and it will stick to them instead. It explodes quickly and seems to do more knockback than a standard bob-omb does. It’s a very fun item.

Lightning Item (ala Mario Kart) – This item doesn’t need to be picked up. You just run into it and every character other than you becomes small as if they just got a poison mushroom. It’s a pretty cool addition, I like this one a lot.

Spicy Curry aka the broken item – This item is so broken I can’t even believe it. Even the non competitive players are going to have to agree with me here. This item is better than getting a star. Basically your character has become an automatic fire flower spewing combo machine of doom-death if you grab this item. The fire doesn’t stop coming out and it’s ridiculously hard to attack somebody who has this item. We were thinking you could essentially just grab somebody and rack up the damage, but unfortunately wobbling with the spicy curry didn’t work as it stopped as soon as you grab. Regardless, this item is broken broken broken. It is WAY too good.


Assist Trophies
Assist Trophies are one of my favorite additions to the game. These things are great, they are really fun and really creative. I like them a lot. It’s too bad us competitive types care about fairness and reducing luck and what not because these things are REALLY cool. You don’t have to actually do anything when you grab an assist trophy, you pick it up and your character will do a short animation and summon the AT to do whatever it is that they do.

Saki from Sin & Punishment – He basically comes out and just starts shooting randomly. Hhe is mobile, he runs all over the stage and basically chases down your opponents. He isn’t that powerful and doesn’t do that much damage. Most people didn’t know who he was, so it seemed less exciting when he came out in general.

Hammer Bro – The Hammer Bros are one of my favorite characters in all of the Mushroom Kingdom, however, they aren’t exactly the best assist trophy. When you summon this guy he stands in one place and jumps up and down throwing hammers. It’s basically like the hammer bros from Super Mario Bros. They throw single hammers, then they throw several at once, he will change directions if your opponent goes to the other side of him. The hammers do substantial damage and knockback. He seems easy enough to avoid, but in some cases he would be great to have out (hammer bros. edgeguard?)

Advanced Wars – The Advanced Wars Trophy seems like one of the less effective ones, they don’t stay out for long (unless there is a wall I’d imagine). They sort of just come out, and run both ways off the stage. They fire a few shots, but generally don’t do very much damage or knockback.

Samurai Goroh – A lot of people liked the Samurai Goroh Assist Trophy and I’m purely baffled. Maybe he is just more popular than I expected. He slashes a LOT and runs back and forth, he seems really out of control; before he fades away he jumps at you for one last series of slashes. His knockback is pretty good, but nothing crazy.

Knuckle Joe – Knuckle Joe was a personal favorite. Try to grab your opponent after you get him! He comes out and does a series of rapid punches that can combo your opponent, and after a little bit he does one final uppercut that will likely kill whoever you are fighting at a reasonable percent. He is really awesome looking and is actually one of the more effective assist trophies.

Andross – You’ve all likely seen the screenshots of Andross in the background shooting at the screen. He does basically exactly what you expect him to, Andross does fairly good knockback and CAN do quite a lot of percent, but I saw him missing a lot.

Excite Bike – Excite Bike was pretty cool visually, it looks just like the original Nintendo graphics. Several bikes appear on the screen and they just drive off in one direction. They don’t do much damage or knockback from what I saw, pretty cool though.

Devil – This is one of the assist trophies that really messes with people. Devil appears and can move the focus of the camera, at one point with this AT I saw the camera so far away that you couldn’t even see the characters anymore, they were both in bubbles off stage. Pretty cool.

Nintendogs – Nintendogs are another one of those trophies that just seem to get in the way. He just takes up almost the whole screen and tries to paw at you. He does no damage and he just gets in the way.

Metroid – The metroid is huge and he does a LOT of damage and is REALLY hard to get off of you. Luckily it seems like he follows a set flight pattern, so you can avoid him on most stages. The metroid is really intense, it’s one of the coolest ATs.

Jill (Drill Dozer) – Jill stays out for a long time and does pretty good damage. She goes left and right on the main platform, but she can also jump up at you to get you, she sort of combos you over to the edge building your percent up as she does it, but she doesn’t really have any sort of killing knockback.

Dr. Wright – Dr. Wright seemed better than he was at first. He stands there for a minute then suddenly summons a building to spring out of the ground and do a lot of knockback, sending you straight upwards. You can avoid him altogether however if you stay in the air long enough, and it seems every character is capable of avoiding him like this.

Lyn – Lyn is probably the best assist trophy at this point. She comes out, strikes a pose, and then just sits there for a few seconds. Then suddenly, regardless of where you are on the stage she flies at you and slashes doing MASSIVE knockback and likely landing a kill. She is very very strong, and we don’t know how to avoid her yet other than ledge camping invincibility frames.

Little Mac – After seeing Little Mac as an assist trophy I finally understand why everyone wanted him as a character. He was a REALLY cool assist trophy, he comes out swinging his little heart out doing some damage then after he’s done all of his standard jabs he finishes it off with his trademark uppercut doing huge amounts of knockback. One of my favorites.

Mr. Ressetti – Mr. Ressetti was a really interesting assist trophy. You may have read about him already. He talks, and talks, and talks, and talks. The chat bubble seemingly never goes away. Even if he falls off the stage, he yells at you for doing so then continues on yammering. If the match ends while he is still active (which he was in every single one of our 2 minute matches, even one that I saw where he was summoned within the first 6 seconds of the match he shouts something along the lines of “What?! Now you don’t have enough time for me?!” or something to that effect. He is a very curious character, and that chat bubble can really get in the way of your fighting.

Lakitu – Lakitu with the original Super Mario Bros. graphical style. He throws spineys that walk across the platforms and hit you, something you might not know about the spineys is that they sort of semi-spike you. Somebody recovered right into one and it hit him at a horrible angle off the stage. Lakitu is pretty cool but not one of the best assist trophies.


Pokeballs
Pokeballs work the same as they did in Smash 64 and Melee. One of the coolest items in the game, or at least they used to be back when they used first generation pokemon. Now I don’t know what is coming out of the pokeballs anymore. I seriously had written down in my notes “Off screen quick flying mcgee” because I didn’t know what to call one of them. But I THINK I have the names of all of them now, I really don’t know for sure though, so feel free to correct me if you see an error here. Just on a side note, I really really hate pokemon past the first generation, so I’m going to sound way less excited about these pokemon.

Kyogre – This is apparently some huge whale pokemon, he sprays water way above the stage from what I saw and was near useless in that regard. The water does no damage, it simply does knockback like Mario’s FLUDD. Kyogre himself does damage and knockback if he touches you though.

Piplup – Pilpup uses surf and is basically the new Marrill, but more effective. Surf seems to drag you off the stag much better than Marrill ever did. Still not that great of a pokemon though.

Munchlax – Munchlax loves to eat items. As soon as an item appears he dashes to it real quick and eats it. I don’t think he eats other pokeballs though

Bonsley – Apparently this stupid looking tree thing is called Bonsley. He doesn’t do anything but wander around as far as I can remember, but you can pick him up and throw him at your opponents for some really big knockback.

Groudon – Groudon looks like you expect. He’s really big. He doesn’t seem to really move very much if at all from what I remember, but if he touches you he does massive amounts of damage and knockback. Pretty cool visually I suppose.

Torchic – Torchic stays in place and Fire surrounds him. He is basically the Wheezing of Brawl. Does quite a bit of damage.

Chikorita – Same thing as in melee, but it seems harder to DI out of.

Snorlax – Snorlax does the same thing as in the other games, but seems to have even more knockback this time around.

Goldeen – Goldeen is again seemingly useless, HOWEVER with the new swimming feature added maybe we will see something happen if Goldeen flops into the water. But I doubt it.

Gardevoir– Gardivor basically comes out and makes a big circle force field around itself and floats around the screen. A lot of people didn’t know what this pokemon did, but it basically acts like a huge reflect zone on projectiles if they hit the circle. I’m not sure what happens if you use a projectile while inside of the circle though.

Latios/Latias – These pokemon come out of the pokeball and immediately fly off screen. Then they fly VERY quickly back onto the screen across the stage doing big knockback and big damage. They are very fast, but it seemed like they missed more often than they landed their attacks.






Final Smash Impressions

The Smash Ball - The smash balls appear randomly on the stage at seemingly random intervals in seemingly random locations. Getting a smash ball open requires a bit of strategy. The person who hits the smash ball first doesn't necessarily get the item, if you use certain moves you can combo the smash ball (which is ideal) or you hit them hard and send them flying, possibly where another player can swipe it as it goes by and steal it! I honestly think that smash balls add a lot of strategy to the game, although some people will say they are really broken, I'm assuming there will be tournaments that have the smash ball on, and tournaments that have the smash ball off (assuming that we can turn them off of course).
Once you have the smash ball you don't simply activate it right away. You can hold onto it for... well... for the rest of the match if you really wanted to. However, the opponent can attack you and knock the ball out of you and use it themselves! To activate the final smash you simply do your "neutral B" move, or whatever button is your special ("PRESS 1!")Missing with these would be an awful shame, and it is possible to do so with every character, so read on to see my impressions of the individual final smashes!


Mario
Mario’s Final Smash is something we’ve all seen before. It’s that big fireball thing. It’s really really cool looking visually. If you land this it drags them almost all the way off the stage every time, it often kills if they are caught in the center of it, but its surprisingly easy to mess up and miss with this (at least for now). This is a good final smash, it’s not great, but Mario has a lot of ways to setup for it.

Peach
Alright, Peach’s Final Smash seems to be misinterpreted as being a really bad. That is completely false. Peach’s Final Smash is really quite good, using it while your opponent is at low % seems to be a poor decision though, but peach can rack up damage with combos really quickly anyways. Peach’s Final Smash causes her to sing and dance which puts everyone on the screen to sleep. Oh wait, it puts everyone who is ON THE STAGE to sleep. It doesn’t put you to sleep if you are in the air, OR on the edge. So this one actually requires a setup to get against somebody who knows these things, seems like down throw into final smash would work, but maybe it wouldn’t because they could just stay and miss the tech, I’m not sure. There’s bound to be something though. Anyways, assuming that you just put everyone to sleep there are now peaches all over the stage that heal you quite a bit, you can easily heal up all of your percent if you manage to get them all, but it isn’t likely you’ll eat them all before you get your opponent. If you’ve used it at higher percents you can eat some peaches, then go kill your opponent with a forward smash (which got buffed quite a bit) then eat the rest of the peaches, it’s a really good final smash.

Metaknight
Metaknight’s Final Smash is short and sweet. It deals 41% in a single crushing blow. It won’t kill at under 30% or so, but just above that and most people will die. This final smash has limited range, so it looks like you have to combo into it. I saw somebody do just that, it’s essentially the new Ken Combo. Forward air into final smash! There are a lot of ways to land it I’m sure, and it can actually hit multiple people if you catch more than one person in it (which sounds really cool for teams or something like that). Metaknight throws his cape forward a ways and the action all slows down. If you catch somebody in it the screen goes black, then you suddenly see a big slash mark on the screen and the enemy goes flying away while MK stands in a pretty cool pose. It’s a great killing Final Smash, it is quick, and it is really cool looking to boot.

Pit
Pit’s Final Smash is a little bit weird. For a moment the action pauses while he summons his little winged friends to attack you. They all hover on the screen for a moment and then ONE AT A TIME in fairly rapid succession they attack you. Pit can actually move around and attack you while this is happening, basically if Pit gets a grab it’s all over. The attackers do TONS of damage and knockback, and if one of them hits you, you are most likely dead (with the exception that the one that hits you is the last one) because there are more coming and they combo you if one hits. Pit’s Final smash is pretty cool, but the bad thing about it is that you can actually fight the summons. When I was using Bowser versus a Pit who got his Final Smash I actually started Fortressing away the summons, so they can be defeated. But that’s where the advantages come in that Pit is actually still mobile during all of this, so you can get your setups this way.

Diddy
Diddy’s Final Smash honestly looked like it would be one of the worst ones for a little bit. He flies all around the screen and it’s awkward to aim his shots. You have to fly in the opposite direction you want to shoot in, so it’s difficult to control. It seemed like you could just ledge camp, but once we learned how to control Diddy we found out that his final smash is really quite powerful and also fast, it’s hard to avoid and it does a ton of knockback. It’s pretty good, although it looks incredibly weird.

Sonic
Sonic’s final smash I’m SURE you all know already. He transforms into Super Sonic. The first time I saw this it was pretty cool, the second time my excitement died down, and now it’s probably the most boring one to look at. This final smash appeared to be unbeatable at first, he just flies around dealing huge knockback that is pretty much inescapable because of how fast he is, but if you do a move when he hits you the move will clash with Sonic, canceling out the damage and knockback of Sonic. It also seems that you can time spot dodges or air dodges to escape, but if you learn how to control Sonic well enough, or use it while people are recovering, it’s going to be nearly impossible to avoid. This final smash is one of the best for that reason.

Fox
Fox summons the landmaster tank. This final smash is really bizarre. That tank is humongous, but seemingly unwieldy. You can turn around with it, you can “do a barrel roll”, you can fire the laser. It initially seemed like the laser was going to be almost impossible to hit anyone with, but if you go near the opposing ledge of the way you are facing you can hover there and shoot on ground level, and running people over always works too. Players can stand on the landmaster tank, but if you do a barrel roll it knocks them off of you. Barrel roll also spikes people who are trying to recover, which is really cool to see. This final smash got boring really quickly.

Pikachu
Pikachu’s is awkward. Really awkward. I don’t see how anyone could feasibly control this accurately. It flies on such a bizarre pattern when you use the directions it almost always goes FAR past who you are going for, and you can’t stay still with it. It slows down only for a moment at the very end of the final smash and you can actually land on somebody. During this final smash if you press the attack button he sends out massive shockwaves that do a lot of damage and some pretty good knockback. You can use this jolt multiple times, but it does have a very small recharge time. I think this final smash is one of the worst purely because of how seemingly impossible it is to control. Hopefully it was only this way because we only got a short while to experiment with it, and it will actually be possible to control it accurately in time.

Link
Link’s final smash is one of my personal favorites. Unknown to most of the first brawlers Link’s final smash actually can be landed from VERY far away. You have to be directly horizontal to the person you are aiming at for it to hit, but they can be anywhere on the stage. The coolest usage I saw of this wonderful range was one that I did myself. I got the smash ball and I was trying to think of the coolest way possible to use it, I got hit off the edge shortly thereafter and almost died, then I got an idea. I used my second jump off the stage then instantly used my final smash against the person who was standing on the stage; Link zoomed right over to him and activated his final smash, which killed him. Link actually seems to have a lot of ways to land is, the new noob link combo is down throw to final smash, and yes, that actually works. There are a lot of ways for link to land this. His final smash rushes his opponent and slashes at them several times. All of the hits before the last one are concentrated solely on the single person you aimed at, but the last hit can hit multiple people. Link’s final smash does a lot of damage and does a lot of knockback. This final smash is very effective and visually very impressive.

Bowser
Bowser’s final smash is my obvious favorite, and seems to be the most unavoidable aka broken. You can actually give Giga Bowser some percent while he is in this form, but your moves do no stun, so it isn’t worth attacking him unless you have invincibility frames after he kills you. Giga Bowser can basically be activated at any time and you should get a kill. His range is unreal, his knockback is unreal, Giga Bowser is just too good. You have full control over him and he does anything Bowser does, but better, including taunt AND crawl! Giga Bowser is awesome and intense, edge camping seems to be the most effective way to fight against this, but he can hit you out of it unless you have a fully invincible stall somehow with his massive down smash.

Samus
Samus’s final smash turns her into Zero Suit Samus. The main person to be using Samus was Hugs, and he didn’t want to use Zero Suit Samus, so we rarely saw him use the final smash. Samus’s Final Smash is a gigantic beam you’ve likely all seen. It does a TON of damage and pushes the opponent close to the edge before the final blow which does a lot of knockback, but not quite as much as you’d expect. Hugo’s favorite way to use this was to ledgehop final smash, it seemed to be purely unavoidable. This final smash does require some aim, and you can likely just combo into it, but it can be avoided if you aren’t careful in how you use it. You can also pick up and throw the pieces of her suit at people after you transform.

Zero Suit Samus
Zero Suit Samus’s final smash turns her into Samus. We saw this one multiple times used seemingly improperly. It summons her suit back to her, and does damage to those who are VERY close to her, but not an absolute ton. This one seems like it would be the most difficult to apply out of all of the other final smashes. Doesn’t seem very good, but it turns you back into samus.

Yoshi
Yoshi’s final smash is really good. You turn into an invincible dragon and you have complete control over where he moves, you shoot massive fireballs that do 25% per shot, and if you hold it down you get a nice flow of fire breath. It seems almost impossible to avoid this if you use it right, but you could for a while through air dodge jumping and ledge stalling. This final smash is really weird looking, it’s not really from any Nintendo game, but it’s really good. It's taken from Super Mario World I suppose, but it is really nothing like Yoshi with the rainbow shell from that game.

DK
Alright… Donkey Kong must’ve drawn the short straw here. His final smash is completely immobile and has almost no range whatsoever. You can press buttons on the beat to increase the range but it still seemed mostly useless. We did think of one way where you could apply this however, if you knock somebody off the stage you can use this final smash as basically an unbeatable edgeguard. The shockwaves that come out do a lot of knockback in the direction that they are moving, so if you used this near the edge it would basically be a free spike every time, nobody can stay in the air for THAT long. And yes, I’m including pit and metaknight in that statement. Generally this one isn’t that good… maybe in teams?

Ike
Alright, Ike’s final smash is another one of my favorites. You may be able to set this one up with throws or something like that, his moves in general are really slow so it would be hard to do it another way. Ike’s final smash has rage similar to metaknight’s; it hits right in front of him and is pretty limited in distance away from him, but it’s really quick. Once you land this final smash Ike launches his opponent into the air where he unleashes a massive and amazingly cool looking barrage of sword strikes and kicks, then finishes with a downward sword plant on the ground which causes a massive explosion. The explosion can hit multiple people, but the last hit can also MISS if you use this final smash in the wrong place. If you space this JUST right (or wrong I suppose) the final hit will drag them down and they will land on a platform in front of you, while you continue downwards with the explosion hit on the lower section of the screen. This one would be a fun one to do off stage if you were up by a stock because it would spike them into oblivion. This final smash is really cool looking, just like the rest of Ike’s horrendously slow moveset.





Character Impressions
COMING SOON

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