Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Platform: Switch Release: 2018 Players: 1-8 (Smash), 1-4 (Online), 1 (Spirits) Genre: 2D Fighter / 2D Platformer Rating: 9.6 \ 10.0: Masterful
Above are four players fighting on Mooray Tower.
For as long as series has existed, no Nintendo home console has gone without a Super Smash Bros. game, and it is momentous occasion when one is finally added to a console's library. When the announcement for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate finally came, I was more excited than I've been for any other game. My expectations were set so high that they couldn't have possibly been fulfilled, but the final product ended up surprisingly close to my pipe dream. The prospect of a portable Smash game with easily accessible local multiplayer was already incredible, and Ultimate goes above and beyond to be capable of providing hundreds of hours of fun without getting stale.
The updates made to Smash's mechanics are all positive and help to make it the most competitively viable game in the franchise since Melee. SSB4 had the best over game feel of the series at the time of its release in my eyes, but Ultimate has made nothing but improvements in this category. The overall speed of gameplay has been considerably increased, directional air dodging has been added, and repeatedly dodging on the ground is now punished, as the amount of time required to dodge again increases with each time it is performed and resets after several seconds of inactivity. General game feel has been further improved thanks to wonderful sound design that make hits greatly satisfying to land, and the visual indicator of a critical hit which is usually accompanied by the camera zooming in (when two players are left in a match) makes victory feel sweeter than it ever has before. These mechanical improvements aren't very noticeable in chaotic matches with three or more players, but one-on-one fights are the best they've ever been. The added speed and intensity makes every battle incredibly thrilling, even when using the bulkiest characters in the roster. Never have I played a multiplayer game that simultaneously excels so greatly on both a casual and competitive level.
Quality of life changes have also been made to greatly increase the ease of setting up play sessions. For the first time in the franchise, you have the ability to save highly customizable rulesets that can be chosen from a list before selecting the stage and characters. Everything from the launch rate to the stages that can be chosen when "Random" is selected can be tweaked. This allowed me to create my own wacky rulsets, such as a battle royale mode, without the hassle of spending a couple minutes browsing menus each time I wanted to use them. Additionally, you can press the B button within a second of selecting a stage to cancel it, which greatly eases the potential annoyance of having to return to the previous screen if you accidentally choose the wrong stage out of the list of over a hundred - almost every single stage from the whole series has returned, and they're all placed on a single grid that's a bit of a visual mess until you realize that all of the stages are organized in order of their introduction to the series. The flat Omega forms of each stage from SSB4 have returned, and new Battlefield forms (which mirror the design of the flat stage with three platforms of the same name) have been added to offer even more options to players seeking to have as fair a fight as possible. For those who wish to test their skills with multiple characters in the same match, a mode called Squad Strike has been added in which each participant can select a group of either three or five characters, choose the order in which they will use them, and fight in a battle in which they have one life per character.
The roster consists of a whopping 70 characters, echo fighters not included. Every single character from past games has returned, along with several newcomers. The Smash bros. series has always served as a celebration of Nintendo, but this game also features eight third-party guests: Sonic, Snake from Metal Gear, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Ryu from Steet Fighter, and Cloud from Final Fantasy VII return from Brawl and Smash 4, and Simon Belmont and his echo Richter from Castlevania, as well as Ryu´s echo, Ken, are new additions. Other newcomers include the Inkling from Splatoon, Chrom from Fire Emblem Awakening, Isabelle from Animal Crossing, Incineroar from Pokemon Sun and Moon and the long requested Donkey Kong Country villain King K. Rool and the recurring boss Ridley from the Metroid series, who has appeared in every previous Smash game to some extent but has never been playable. A roster of this size is bound to have some balance issues, but it is possible to excel with any character, and those who were once considered to be on the verge of overpowered such as Chrom and K. Rool have had some of their strongest abilities weakened since launch. The newly added characters don't have the experimental movesets of Smash 4 newcomers like Duck Hunt Dog and Wii Fit Trainer, but many of these fighters rank among my favorites in the series.
Like SSB4 before it, Ultimate features various online modes. The previous game's For Fun and For Glory matchmaking option have been replaced with Quickplay, in which you can select a set of preferred rules and match only with players with matching preferred rules, or Elite Smash, which has a strictly competitive ruleset and only allows each player to user character that they have achieved a high Global Smash Power with. Although this problem has become less severe since launch, many players have reported being placed in matches that used rules that were vastly different from their preferences. The ability to play with friends in lobbies called Battle Arenas has also returned, although the feature has been both improved and downgraded. It is now possible to host public battle arenas for random players to join, which can be quite helpful when no friends are around to play with locally. However, it is sadly no longer possible for multiple players using one console to join a Battle Arena with open player slots, which is something I often did in the Wii U game.
Perhaps the largest new feature is the Spirits mode. Spirits are the replacement for trophies featured in the previous three games - a massive collection of characters from every series the game represents, both obscure and iconic. There are even Spirits from a few franchises with no playable characters, such as Shantae and Rayman. Unfortunately, these Spirits lack the descriptions featured on every single trophy from the past games, which left me without any clue of who some of the more obscure characters were. Additionally, they are not represented by highly detailed models as trophies were, but instead by official art from the source games, a change I have mixed feelings on. Unlike trophies, however, Spirits can influence gameplay. Each Support Spirit offers a stat boost or special effect such as brief invincibility at the start of a battle, starting the battle with a certain item equipped, or increased special attack power, and these can be combined with Primary Spirits, which sometimes have stat boosts as well, to create loadouts to use against enemies in Spirits mode. These enemies have have stipulations attached to the fight, such as modified gravity, the enemy being giant or metal, a team of weaker enemies being present that essentially make the encounters a successor to the Event mode from the past three Smash games which is no longer present by name. When the enemies in Spirits mode are defeated, their corresponding Spirit is added to your collection. Spirit battles can be completed either through the Spirit Board, a constantly changing selection of battles, or through the adventure mode, World of Light. I adored SSB Brawl's Subspace Emissary and was expecting a follow up to that mode's Kirby-style platforming and wonderfully produced cutscenes when the new adventure mode was first announced, but that is unfortunately not the case.
In World of Light, the world of Smash Bros is threatened by an all-powerful deity named Galeem who uses his powers to possess everyone on the game's roster and create numerous clones of them - all except for Kirby, who manages to escape Galeem's initial attack. Now Kirby must defeat Galeem and free his fellow fighters from possession. The gameplay revolves around travelling a massive map, engaging in hundreds of Spirit battles to clear the path to Galeem. Many of these fights are optional, and if one wishes to finish all of them, it can take upwards of 25 hours. This quest was not a bad one overall, but the constant Spirit battles began to overstay their welcome after several hours. The main saving grace of this nonstop string of fights is that many of them contain clever and amusing references to the Spirits' source material. For example, the Guts Man Spirit battle has a possessed Mega Man constantly using grabs and throws while using the alternate costume which corresponds to the Super Arm weapon from the first Mega Man game, which belongs to Guts Man and is used to lift and throw large rocks. My favorite instance of this was the dedicated Street Fighter area of the World of Light map, a series of fights with increased gravity and limited health of exclusively flat stages which are mean to replicate the gameplay of that series.
Although it took a few months after launch to be added, the Stage Builder has returned, and it's better than it's ever been before. The variety of materials you can use to sculpt stage geometry has been greatly expanded since the last game, which has allowed creative builders to make plenty of crude yet charming art using this mode. You can also now change the properties of objects in far more ways, such as modifying the speed of wind currents and causing platforms to rotate. ditionally, for the first time in the series, your creations can be easily shared online. Custom stages, Mii Fighters, and replays (which can now be edited) can all be shared online for anyone to download, which eliminates the need to assemble your own versions of stages that are used for popular user-created modes. Creating absurd stages to mess around on was one of my favorite parts of the last two Smash titles, and Ultimate's iteration of this mode does not disappoint.
Despite being a predominantly multiplayer series, the past few Smash games have had a wealth of single-player content, and it doesn't stop at Spirits mode. The Classic mode, in which you play through a series of fights with special conditions in a similar vein to Spirit battles which concludes with a bonus stage and boss fight, has been revamped in a way I greatly enjoyed. This time around, every single character has a personalized Classic mode. The fights are all tailored around their series and personality traits, which often resulted in clever references like those that many of the Spirit battles contain. In the past, every Classic mode run ended with a fight with either Master Hand, Crazy Hand, or both at once. This time around, many of the Classic modes end with new boss battles which will pleasantly surprise fans of certain franchises. While there are still quite a few Master Hand fights in the roster, this is definitely my favorite variation of Classic mode in the series so far.
Other options include the Training mode, which remains a helpful tool for serious players who want to carefully study the impact of certain moves and items, and the Multi-Man Smash mode from previous games in which you face a horde of weak fighters. However, some modes that were present in Ultimate's predecessors have been unfortunately excluded. These include the Home Run Derby and Target Practice modes which I admittedly hardly played, and All Star mode, which has been replaced by a variation of Multi-man Smash which replaces Mii fighters with the entire roster.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate may not be the definitive Smash experience in every way, but it is an excellent game regardless. Its numerous improvements to the franchise more than make up for its omissions, and it will not doubt be one of my go-to multiplayer games for many years to come. It is unlikely that a better local multiplayer experience will ever be available on the Switch.
Ups
Expansive yet balanced roster
Newcomers are very fun to play
Large amount of single player content
Countless clever references
Multitude of quality of life changes
News mechanics to make game competitive
Nearly every stage has returned from past games
Celebrates the history of many third-party franchises
Fleshed out and highly versatile stage builder
Downs
Lack of stage builder
Frustrating lobby system
World of Light can become tedious
Spirits lack the charm of trophies
ESRB: E 10+ Content: Cartoon Violence, Comic Mischief, and Suggestive Themes Price: $59.99 (Retail / Download)
