Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - DADDY SAKURAI'S WILD RIDE HAS CONCLUDED

[Sega DogTagz]

19 hours ago, Polkadi~♪ said:

Okay, hello, I just want to say a big complaint with WoL:

  Reveal hidden contents

FUCK THE BOSS

No, not any ol' boss. The Boss, from Metal Gear Solid 3.

Zero Suit Samus, timed stamina battle, poison floor, Garden of Hope Omega, enemy increases defence when takes enough damage.

She is a damn near impossible battle. After a hundred tries, taking several days to beat her, I made an observation about her AI: her goal is to chase after you and mess you up. So I figure, if you're far enough from the edge that you can't be hit from the edge, but not too far that the enemy would have to risk falling to hit you (they'll just refuse), The Boss will jump after you.

Have her follow juuust low enough, jump up above her, down aerial, smack her out of the stage. Easily cheesed.

Otherwise, you will not be able to beat her. She moves too fast, cannot be launched far enough, and is JUST TOO FAST. Some have managed to beat her the intended way, and even they're not sure how they did it.

 

Spoiler

After about 3 losses I realized how little damage I was doing to her despite playing pretty well. Then I noticed the difference in our spirit power levels and knew I had to change tactics. She's super aggressive and is begging to get dunked. Kirby makes it easy to petty dunk her into oblivion. 

 

If anyone is having trouble with Wily (the only spirit I actually had to skip and come back to later) any spirit that boons a Franklin Badge breaks it completely. Almost all the mega-man clones spam projectiles (including their smash attacks) so you can rack up a decent number of kills before the badge expires and then mop up the last 2 or 3 on your own.

 

 

 

[Salamander]

I do actually think Sora is a pretty strong contender for Smash DLC.  He strikes me as a good fit, he's got high name recognition value as a character rather than just as a franchise representative, and he strikes me as the sort of "celebrity guest" that I think Nintendo is looking for.  The only question for me is whether or not Square Enix's inept management will find some way of messing it up.

[Polkadi~☆]

I beat World of Light...

Spoiler

OR APPARENTLY NOT

Of course there's a world of dark... Not all fighters were unlocked, and the game did not congratulate me on clearing the board. Pffft, here we go again.

 

[Waveshocker Sigma]

I finally beat that shithead Chrom this morning, netting me all of the characters in the roster unlocked. I'm gonna start World of Light now.

What am I in for, forum fam? Any warnings and heads up you guys wanna give me before I dive in?

 

[JezMM]

Regarding Challenger Approaching fights, I've been assuming this entire time that if you fail them the first time, they gradually reduce the difficulty upon rematches, because some of them have SLAUGHTERED me the first time, but with one exception (I think I recall), I've always beaten them first time on the rematch, to the degree that I don't think simply getting to choose a character I'm more comfortable with is responsible for alone.

 

 

At first I REALLY didn't care for WoL, and I still find myself fatigued if I play it for more than 30 minutes or so, but I'm finding it a little more enjoyable now that more stuff is opening up.  It does still bother me though that the gameplay essentially boils down to "here's an impossible fight, fiddle around with menus while looking at jpegs of classic nintendo characters for a while or come back later to make the fight possible".  It's okay, but not what I play Smash for.  I've just been using recommended Spirits on everything, rewards be damned, and if the fight seems impossible, I just return to it later to see if the recommended spirits I have are good enough yet.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

13 minutes ago, JezMM said:

Regarding Challenger Approaching fights, I've been assuming this entire time that if you fail them the first time, they gradually reduce the difficulty upon rematches, because some of them have SLAUGHTERED me the first time, but with one exception (I think I recall), I've always beaten them first time on the rematch, to the degree that I don't think simply getting to choose a character I'm more comfortable with is responsible for alone.

 

 

At first I REALLY didn't care for WoL, and I still find myself fatigued if I play it for more than 30 minutes or so, but I'm finding it a little more enjoyable now that more stuff is opening up.  It does still bother me though that the gameplay essentially boils down to "here's an impossible fight, fiddle around with menus while looking at jpegs of classic nintendo characters for a while or come back later to make the fight possible".  It's okay, but not what I play Smash for.  I've just been using recommended Spirits on everything, rewards be damned, and if the fight seems impossible, I just return to it later to see if the recommended spirits I have are good enough yet.

I don’t know if the difficulty decreases on rematch, but if what I’ve read on Reddit is true, the A.I characters are run on 9.0 intensity and their A.I was built using actual competitive Smash players which is how they’ve got knowledge of things like techs and combos. Don’t know if either is true, but it makes a lot more sense to me given what I’ve experienced in these fights.

[JezMM]

3 minutes ago, Ryannumber1Santa said:

I don’t know if the difficulty decreases on rematch, but if what I’ve read on Reddit is true, the A.I characters are run on 9.0 intensity and their A.I was built using actual competitive Smash players which is how they’ve got knowledge of things like techs and combos. Don’t know if either is true, but it makes a lot more sense to me given what I’ve experienced in these fights.

I guess I just kind of assumed that surely the difficulty must increase each time you rematch because... jfc kids and lesser-skilled players are never gonna unlock all the characters otherwise.

Having said that, Sakurai's games do almost always tend to trip up on the whole "play whatever difficulty you're comfortable with C=" thing by giving super customisable difficulty settings but then locking content behind the hardest ones anyway.

[Tracker_TD]

Beat World of Light today. I actually found it a pretty fun time and far more engaging as far as single player content goes than the likes of Smash Tour or Master Orders. It was very, very drawn out though - I thought “THERE’S MORE!?” on at least 5 separate occasions. The conclusion is extremely satisfying though, I’ll say that much. Might actually try and clear all the spirit battles in there, though that’ll be a long-term goal.

On the whole then, I’m really, really enjoying this game. I love how the gameplay’s been tweaked, and going through unlocking the characters gave me a real nostalgia kick to back when I was little playing through Melee. The new Classic modes are a really nice concept (beat Mega Man’s on 9.9 earlier, yee) and there’s a lot of small additions and details that make it feel... well, Ultimate. I’ve also enjoyed trying the new characters - while Mega Man is still my de facto Main, Roy is extremely fun (I never got his Smash 4 DLC) and the Inkling’s agility is great to play with. Sadly I can’t reeeeeally get to grips with Richter as I wanted to, since his recovery takes some adjusting to, but I might dabble in him from time to time.

So yeah. On the whole, I’m having a damn good time. And I can’t wait for the DLC, either!

[Sega DogTagz]

4 hours ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

I finally beat that shithead Chrom this morning, netting me all of the characters in the roster unlocked. I'm gonna start World of Light now.

What am I in for, forum fam? Any warnings and heads up you guys wanna give me before I dive in?

 

advice? Don't burn yourself out by butting heads with a brick wall.
 

Spoiler

 

There are dozens of challenges that simply can be changed from borderline impossible to a straight up fair fight simply by equipping the right support spirit.

If something is giving you trouble, there is no penalty for skipping a fight and coming back when you have a better selection of spirits to boost your own power and even the playing field.

 

 

[Ruomarta]

Heh, I know I'm gloating right now, but I bet none of you have actually acquire more than one legendary spirit.

[tailsBOOM!]

4 minutes ago, Ruomarta said:

Heh, I know I'm gloating right now, but I bet none of you have actually acquire more than one legendary spirit.

Ness' Father, Ashley, Super Shadow, M. Bison, Shine Sprite, Blast-O-Matic, Queen Metroid,  James McCloud,  Victini, Viridi, The Boss, and Sheriff

[Tracker_TD]

27 minutes ago, Ruomarta said:

Heh, I know I'm gloating right now, but I bet none of you have actually acquire more than one legendary spirit.

I currently have 21 of them. They show up a fair bit more towards the end of WoL so I got a lot then. Only one I gave up on so far was Dr Wily, but that was very early in my playthrough. I’m gonna guess I just haven’t hit many of the more problematic ones yet.

They are:

Spoiler

- Dry Bowser

- Fierce Deity Link

- Calamity Ganon

- Celebi

- Arceus

- Hinawa 

- Claus

- Caeda

- Azura

- Ashley

- MegaMan.exe

- Mecha-Fiora

- Mythra

- Guile

- Akuma

- Madama Butterfly

- Alucard

- Tabuu

- Two bosses I won’t spoil

- Akira

 

[Ruomarta]

Oh

8 minutes ago, tailsBOOM! said:

Ness' Father, Ashley, Super Shadow, M. Bison, Shine Sprite, Blast-O-Matic, Queen Metroid,  James McCloud,  Victini, Viridi, The Boss, and Sheriff

 

4 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

I currently have 21 of them. They show up a fair bit more towards the end of WoL so I got a lot then. Only one I gave up on so far was Dr Wily, but that was very early in my playthrough. I’m gonna guess I just haven’t hit many of the more problematic ones yet.

Oh heaven help me.

[KHCast]

Yeah it got a lot easier for me to get legendarys towards the end. My favorite so far is either Alucard, or meta ridely. 

[Wraith]

I haven't touched world of light at all yet lol I've just been diving into online lobbies and playing local multiplayer since I unlocked all the characters. 

Classic mode was a lot of fun with all the different routes but I had my fill of that after I played it...about 20 times? Give or take. 

The main meat of this game for me has been how much of a joy it is to just play. Speeding up the jump and letting you do shorthop moves instantly makes even the heaviest of characters feel more fluid. Letting characters do anything out of a dash unlocks an insane amount of potential when pushing your attack or defending yourself. Nerfing shields, dodges and rolls into the fucking ground might feel uncomfortable at first but it accomplishes the goal of getting you out of the habit of holding the trigger for dear life. You're much more likely to either defend yourself with an attack or just move out of the way with a jump. More meaningful interactions are happening all the time and they combine with the increased damage and shorter matches to make every second feel like it counts. The new sound design and more impactful animations give attacks and finishers this really visceral feeling that they were lacking last game. The close up and flash when you hit your opponents with a critical blow at the end of the round is one of the most satisfying things ever. 

That's not even getting into how these maniacs went out of the way to overhaul almost every single character to make them all feel powerful. I've only dug really deep into like 6 or 7 characters and most of them are veterans, just testing how they made moves that seemed useless or unworkable into viable tools. Link can control the stage with his new detonator. Ganon's shortcomings are now made up by the fact that he can delete someone in 3 hits. Zelda's ranged attacks have been given a buff to let her force you into one of her powerful close ranged launchers. Ridiculous characters like Rosalina and Cloud in the previous game have been nerfed into being fair. New characters like King K Rool and Inkling come with a mindboggling amount of new mechanics and nuances. Bugtesting for this game must have been hell but it payed off.

The last thing that brings it together is the stages, and I just want to say THANK YOU to the smash team for bringing back almost every stage in the series. I've always appreciated the stages from the older games for being interesting to run around and fight on without being too chaotic with gimmicks and now they're all here to play with the new mechanics the series has accumulated over it's 20 years of existing. The hazard toggle also makes stages I didn't like before like Magicant into something I can enjoy. 

And hey I'm down for party mode too so it's good thing the new items and adjustments made for the old ones are also fun. Assist trophies interact more with fighters now and there's way less that feel...flaccid? like, in the previous games they were cool but there was many I'd consider duds. Now it's rare one comes out without changing the game in a major way or taking somebody's soul. And the changes to Final Smashes are good because it's kind of ridiculous how often they happen in this game lol. They feel really satisfying to use now and most of the "duds" here have been shaved out too. My favorite new items are the baseball and the Scythe. They just destroy people's whole shit. 

This game kicks ass. 

I have some issues with it though. I mentioned avoiding WOL above and that's because the spirit battle stuff already isn't particularly grabbing me. There's some cute ideas here but they often come off as way too gimmicky or chaotic if I don't come in with the right build. That kind of stuff is boring to me so I wrote it off pretty early.

The new lobby system is a great step up from the previous game and even beats a few other fighting games I play but it still has some issues. Having 2 rings to do matches in would do wonders for when the room is more crowded. My group for this game has 10ish people in it so full lobbies are common and waiting times can be a bit much especially when we want to play 1 one 1.

Quickplay is fun because the netcode is surprisingly solid but you're going to have to accept early on any preferred rules you have set will be ignored and the game will just drop you into the first open lobby it finds lmao. I haven't minded this that much but it's a pretty big issue that needs to be fixed very soon. It will be hard for people who don't have a group to play with to find matches online otherwise. I think they should prioritize fixing this over everything else in the pipeline. 

But yeah it's good. Probably my favorite smash game. 
 

[tailsBOOM!]

Add Ho-Oh to my list of Legendary spirits

[dbzfan7]

Yeah so Slow Super Armor does break most world of light challenges. You can smash for days. It doesn't cover all of them, but combat challenges it delivers and then some.

[Sega DogTagz]

32 minutes ago, dbzfan7 said:

Yeah so Slow Super Armor does break most world of light challenges. You can smash for days. It doesn't cover all of them, but combat challenges it delivers and then some.

Starting the fight Giant also breaks 90% of the challenge. Combine it with a character with mad range on his smashes (like Mega Man or D Hunt Dog) or a character with Super Armor built in (Bowser) and most challenges last about as long as it takes to tap the C-stick to the right twice.

Combine it with Victini and a lot of the harder ones become a cake walk as well.

[JaidynReiman]

6 hours ago, Ruomarta said:

Heh, I know I'm gloating right now, but I bet none of you have actually acquire more than one legendary spirit.

I've got a fair few, all of them are from summoning or upgrading lower level spirits. I've only beaten a few Ace spirits and 0 Legend so far.

 

My Legends:

Isaac (Dark Dawn; I summoned Isaac and then upgraded), Queen Elincia, Skull Kid & Majora's Mask, Zelda (Ocarina of Time), Dr. Kawashima (Concentration Training), Ho-oh, Sheriff

[tailsBOOM!]

I got Super Shadow before Tails or Isaac... My Spirit luck (In terms of the characters, not the value) is lacking

[tailsBOOM!]

Got another legendary:  Wind FIsh (Legend of Zelda)

[dbzfan7]

19 minutes ago, tailsBOOM! said:

I got Super Shadow before Tails or Isaac... My Spirit luck (In terms of the characters, not the value) is lacking

I got Super Shadow before Tails, but I got that Vulpix and could finally summon Tails. 

[Speederino]

Like everyone else, I’ve been sinking my teeth into Smash Ultimate for the last few days and I have some thoughts I need to get off my chest. I think I better preface this though: in terms of the fighting mechanics, the roster, the stage selection, the customization and sheer variety of multiplayer modes, this is definitely indeed the ultimate Smash game and I’ll be playing it for years to come.

But, as much as I want to, I just can’t call it my favorite of the bunch.

You see, I’m what you might call a…casual Smash player (bum bum BUUUUUUUM). I don’t care about or even pay much attention to the competitive scene, nor do I really have a group of gaming pals to play this with locally. So most of my time is spent either in the single player modes or playing against the CPU, with only the occasional online match here and there. And when it comes to Ultimate’s single player offerings, I am simultaneously having a blast yet am also somehow very underwhelmed.

Classic mode is an absolute joy and is by far and away the best version of it in any Smash game. World of Light is neat, if a bajillion hours longer than it needs to be. But…that’s basically all there is, apart from the typical training and Multi-Man Smash modes. Even All-Star has been heavily neutered and lumped in with the other Multi-Man modes, with the only difference being you’re fighting actual characters instead of Miis. There’s no little coin-related mini-game for collecting trophies/spirits (more on THAT in a second), no homerun contest, no target smashing variant, no special orders. What few single player modes exist are all variations of basic vs. matches (sure, that's obviously Smash's bread and butter but that doesn't mean it can't do anything else). I appreciate that World of Light is trying to fill in for both Adventure mode and Event Matches, but it's obvious it was intended to be *the* reason to play single player and, I'm sorry, in my opinion it's just not compelling enough to carry the entire single player portion on its own.

And then there’s the spirits. When it comes to functionality, I really like them. It’s cool that they all have different stats and abilities, can be leveled up, made into teams, etc. In spirit battles I love how they found a variety of creative ways to represent characters who aren’t actually in the game, it’s fantastic stuff. But the spirits just aren’t a good replacement for trophies, plain and simple. While the art is generally nice they lack the visual flair that makes me want to look at them in a gallery and, here’s the kicker: they don’t have descriptions. None. Zilch. Nada. The view gallery is nothing more than a collection of 2D images that say the character’s name and their respective series. This kills my excitement towards collecting them. Yeah, it’s still worth it to get new spirit abilities and all but this means I care more about what they can do for me rather than the actual character, which is a real shame.

Ultimate brings a ton of good mechanics and clever ideas to the table, but it does it at the expense of some long-time series staples. None of this is to say Ultimate isn’t an excellent game or that there’s no fun to be had in single-player (far from it), I just can’t help but feel a little disappointed considering this is supposed to be *the* Smash game to end all Smash games.

also I'm one of the maybe five people who are sad to see custom movesets go but it's no big loss

[tailsBOOM!]

@Speederino it hasn't been said that this is the last Smash Bros game

[Speederino]

Just now, tailsBOOM! said:

@Speederino it hasn't been said that this is the last Smash Bros game

I don't mean it literally, I'm saying this is meant to be the definitive Smash game.