Review #610: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

 The battle for the Infinity Gems wages onwa… oh, wait, wrong cross-over.

 There's no way to pretend otherwise, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the perfect culmination of the series, featuring every single character that's ever set foot on the arena as well as most stages(100+!) this entry is no mere compilation: The gameplay has been polished, new characters have been added(Admittedly, it is the lowest numbers of newcomers in a new entry... but, hey, everyone is back!) and we even get a new Adventure Mode that can take upwards of 15 hours to complete... this is not a compilation and this is not a port, this is the Ultimate Smash Bros.

 There's a decent variety of modes new and old. For starters, Classic Mode is back and has been entirely revamped, being more similar to the Classic Modes before Smash 4, although each character gets his and her own 'themed route'. Snake's theme is Guns, so he'll battle enemies that fight with weapons and the only items that spawn are gun-themed. Pikachu has to fight every Pokémon, and only Pokeballs spawn for it. Roy has to battle characters that wield legendary swords. Every route is about 8 stages long, with a bonus 'Escape" mini-game and a boss at the end. The boss can be anyone, from the series' classic Master Hand to Monster Hunter's Rathalos. The Escape mini-game is the same for every character and every difficulty, and you'll have grown bored of it by the end, at least it last less than a minute... or you can just kill yourself with no penalty if you're so inclined. As for the difficulty, you have to pick an intensity level between 0.1 and 5.0, and the better you perform in the upcoming fights the higher it'll go, up to 9.9, and the higher the number, the higher the challenge. All in all, I really liked the new Classic Mode, the game has over 70 characters, so it makes sense to have a quick, but fun classic mode. The Credits mini-game, another series' tradition, is probably the best yet, no spoilers!

 If you want something a bit more gimmicky, a few of the bonus single player challenge modes are back, namely: Century Smash, which pits you against a 100 Mii fighters, Cruel Smash, which is you against the toughest of the tough Mii fighters as you try to survive, and, finally, All-Star Smash, in which you have to fight every character in the order they were first created. Once you're done with that, you're finally ready to Smash. That came out wrong. Besides the traditional 4 player matches, you can set-up  up to 32-man(or CPU) tournaments, fight under custom conditions(Everyone is made of metal! Everyone is Giant! Everyone is Giant and Metal!), fight in 3-vs-3 and 5-vs-5 Elimination matches and Smashdown, a mode in which you can't use repeated characters in matches(Say you fight Link VS Incineroar, once the match ends, those characters can't be selected again)

 Basic Smash battles can be further customized, as you're forced to create rulesets. I miss the quickness of just picking 'Stock' or 'Time', but the ruleset option allows for more options to be tweaked. Basically, if you just want a quick fix it may take a bit longer if, say, you wanna do 2 stock matches but didn't have create the ruleset yet, but if you tend to play 5 stock matches, you simply create the ruleset and just select it whenever you enter the Smash mode. In these rules you can do anything from giving everyone a Final Smash meter, as if it were an energy gauge from a traditional fighting game, make it a timed battle for points, for stocks or even by Stamina. You can turn off Stage Hazards, or if you dislike the layout but like the theme, every single stage can be played in Omega or Battlefield(basic floor, 3 platforms) too. Remember how a few stages in Smash 4 could hold up to 8 players? Every stage can be played with combatants now. If you couldn't tell by now, Ultimate Smash allows for a very robust amount of customization. That said, try to save a few basic rulesets that you enjoy so as not to have to frequent the rule edit menu too much.

 Lastly, we've got the Adventure Mode: World of Light. It's been touted as a sort-of RPG mode, but that's a lie, mostly. You're thrown on a very large worldmap that's peppered with various fights. Every fight grants you with a little money(For use in the in-game shop), a little SP(For use in various Adventure Mode shops) as well as Smash Orbs, which are used to obtain new abilities. These abilities are why this mode is called RPGish, as you can give yourself abilities such powering-up your moves, a triple jump or even a double final smash. It's very basic. Each fight in the world map is themed around various Nintendo(and a few third-parties) IPs, depending on which Spirit they reward you with. For instance, you may come across Dr. Willy's Spirit fight, so the match pits you against Doctor Mario doubling for Willy and a few Megaman clones, or the fight against Street Fighter's Blanka pits you against a green Donkey Kong. These references are actually quite endearing. Earned spirits can be equipped and leveled up in order to boost your stats. This is very important, since every Spirit has a type and you don't want to fight against a Spirit-type that's strong against yours, so you'll be swapping spirits often. Most matches have some kind of gimmick, such as 'the floor is lava', so you'll also have to equip a spirit that has lava-floor immunity. By the end of the mode I had grown a bit tired of having to constantly swap spirits, but hey, there's over 600 different fights and it took me over 15 hours to get 100%, so I got my money's worth.

 The mode is mostly fluff and fat, so don't feel obliged to finish it. While having to frequently swap spirits grew tiresome by the end, I had fun exploring the multiple dungeons, obtaining spirits that could clear obstacles in the map and what not. One big issue with the mode is character unlocking. You are forced to start the game with Kirby and unlock Mario very early on, but as for the other characters? Hopefully your main is close to the start.... My two main-mains, Ike and Cloud are VERY late unlocks, over 10 hours into the mode, and Shulk, another character I enjoyed, was gotten midway through. I think a better alternative would've been being able to select your favorite character from the start. It's not like starting the game as Kirby 'matters' since the narrative is so sparse and unimportant. Not being able to play as your favorites early on might sour the experience for a few, specially since you'll be stuck as characters you don't particularly like for a while.

 I've mentioned spirits for a while now, these are this game's version of Trophies. The game's worst change, by far, was removing trophies. Stickers are, well, 2-D cut-outs of various characters(or objects!) from a ton of different games, some that don't even have playable  characters featured. They don't even have flavor text, something that made trophies so much fun to collect. These can be earned by playing Classic Mode, buying them from the shop or by playing the Adventure Mode. Their only practical use is boosting your stats in the latter, as previously mentioned.

 Now that that's out of the way, I can finally talk about the gameplay! At a surface level, not much has changed: A coupled with different directions on the analog stick are your basic attacks, B coupled with different directions on the analog stick are your special moves, you can guard, you can grab your enemy, you can dodge and you can double jump as well. Each character still retains to use a Final Smash when they destroy the Smash Ball or fill the FS meter, when applicable. What has changed is how the physics works: The game is much faster than before(Still, not as fast as melee) which makes everything quicker and snappier, combos are back, baby. You can dodge in different directions, like in melee and now you can charge your Smash attacks by a ridiculous amount of time(The damage boost caps at 1 second, however). The travel arcs when characters are launched have changed too and you'll notice how everything has been streamlined to be quicker, Transformation Final Smashes are a thing of the past. Everything has been tweaked to make fights go by quicker, and it's all the better for it.

 Custom moves is gone completely, understandable since there are so many characters, but you can still customize Miis a bit, each one having 3 choices for each special move. One point of contention for many is having to unlock characters: You start the game with a paltry 8 and have to work your way until you unlock all 70+. That said, there're three ways to go about it: Unlock them through World of Light, by clearing Classic Mode or by playing many VS Smash battles. I unlocked everyone via Classic mode, and while it took a while... it was a fun time, and it allowed me to try returning and new characters so that I could get used to the new engine. As someone who is not gonna host tournaments, I enjoyed unlocking everyone.

 What's there left to say? Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the best Smash Bros. yet, Melee purists be damned, they'll never be satisfied anyways. The game is pretty much fantastic in every way possible, I was a bit scared at first since many of the more useless modes were gone(Hit the sandbag, platforms) and because trophies were gone too, but the end result was phenomenal. I remember how hyped I was for Smash 4, yet by the end I felt like something was missing, well, let's just say that in the few days since the game's release(Six days ago!) I've logged in as many hours(40+) as I did in Smash 4 since it's release several years ago! Whatever Smash 4 was missing, this game's got it and it's got it in spades.
10 out of 10