This article is dedicated to Chris Taylor (1997-2018), who was granted his final wish to play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Atsuko Tanaka (1962-2024), the Japanese voice actress of Bayonetta.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Everyone is Here!
Protagonist(s):
Every Super Smash Bros. Fighter Kirby (World of Light)
It features every single fighter that has ever appeared in any previous Super Smash Bros. game and fittingly uses "Everyone is Here!" as its tagline. With more newer characters from other Nintendo titles or third party franchises making their appearance in this title which shows not only how loved these characters are from their fanbase, but Nintendo caring about other game franchises not forgetting them and are given the invitation as a way to honor them.
Mii costumes referencing not only represented universes but also indie characters, such as Sans (Undertale), and Cuphead and western third-party characters, like Altair (Assassin's Creed), Vault Boy (Fallout), Rabbids, and Doom Slayer were added, and the Wii U / 3DS suits of Chocobo, and Monster Hunter are also back as well.
Speaking of these, if you purchase Sans, Cuphead and Shantae Mii Costume, you will earn a music track.
Some of the stages from previous games also return and they look better than ever.
The Nintendo Switch's ability to switch between handheld and TV mode works very well with Super Smash Bros. gameplay and its frame rate is solid.
The Story Mode finally returns as World of Light, set after the events of Subspace Emissary, and is better than that mode in almost every possible way.
It has more boss battles than the previous games.
The final boss fight with Galeem and Dharkon is epic!
Not only that, but you can play as Master Hand at one point, possibly referencing the infamous glitch from Melee where you can play as Master Hand.
As unexpected as it as, Spirits is a really innovative mode, and the idea that characters other than fighters losing their spirits is neat and it is well-executed.
If you were to enhance most of your spirits, they would look very creative and their stats would be very high.
If you send your spirits back to the real world, you gain a core from them, and by combining these cores, you can summon other spirits.
The Spirit Board events include many themes and bonus rewards that depend on the event when you beat the designated spirit battles. These events sometimes even include new spirits from recently released games.
The spirit battles themselves make clever references to the abilities of the characters and their universes as well.
The DLC Spirit Boards are really enjoyable and the backgrounds look very neat. Unlike the Spirit Board, Spirit Battles in this DLC mode can be played as many times as the player wants, and if the player defeats a spirit, they get it right away instead of having to shoot it, much like in World of Light. After you beat all the battles, it will reward you with 10,000 Gold and the support spirit with legend class has unique skills (except Tekken), which is interesting.
Many characters are now more expressive, making the characters look more entertaining than in previous games.
In addition, all of the DLC fighters are really entertaining and surprisingly good; Byleth has very strong and impressive attacks and quite an excellent recovery, Sephiroth has incredibly strong and easy-to-master attacks and a good recovery, Joker has incredible attacks, especially Eiha/Eigaon, which inflicts a poison effect, and a pretty good recovery, Min Min's attacks are flexible, strong and impressive, which makes her easy to use for many players, and like Joker and Byleth, her recovery is surprisingly good, Hero, while their attacks can be overpowered for many players, they have incredibly strong and solid attacks, especially the critical hit, and their recovery is quite good, Pyra has extremely strong and incredible attacks (although her recovery is below-average), and Mythra has very properly-balanced and surprisingly good attacks, being quite fast and high jump height, and her recovery is great, but still weak.
There are loads of content. 74 fighters (More with the 12 DLC characters, which in total are 86 fighters), 100+ stages (more specifically, there are actually 115 stages), 900+ songs, and a great amount of modes (including an adventure mode!). These loads of content will bring tons of fun and enjoyable replay value.
You can finally turn off stage hazards, allowing you to play stages outside of their Omega forms while still not having to worry about cheap deaths.
The amiibos are back, and this time, it can inherit up to three support spirits, permanently consuming them in order to gain their skills, having access to these skills even if spirits are disabled in the rules. Not only that, but the amiibo for characters from other series who are not playable in the game will grant a reward: Gold, Spirit Points, or a spirit corresponding to the character scanned. However, only one reward will be granted per amiibo. Also in 3.1.0, Figure Players can be used online in Battle Arenas, as well as be sent on a journey, where they battle other Figure Players to gain experience.
Speaking of amiibos, the non-fighter amiibos can instead be used to obtain those spirits.
The rules are comprehensive. Now, you can use a Final Smash meter for a weaker Final Smash, include Spirits in battles, and add custom balance.
Stage Morph has to be one of the best mechanics in gaming history. You can switch between 2 different stages in 1 fight, and you can set how long you play on each stage!
Classic Mode is finally original. Every fighter has their own route and some characters have different final bosses. For example, Mario's final boss is Bowser, then Giga Bowser, Link's is Ganon, Simon's is Dracula, and Kirby's is Marx, which is a nice reference to their respective series. Not to mention, after a match, depending on how well you do, your intensity rises and you will earn more rewards. Once you beat Classic Mode, the credits are shown and has the different, for a scrolling shooter that changes perspective as the player progresses and a unique end credits music track theme for each character. The player controls their fighter equipped with a Super Scope to fly around and shoot the names. The bonus game is also officially back after ten long years ago. And while we were on the topic of Classic Mode, Sephiroth's route "The Chosen Ones" is a boss rush instead of a couple battles against playable fighters, which is a creative theme.
The challenges are actually easier and even better, compared to the previous installment: they are arranged in categories in a comic book layout, and the pictures have some clever references. Not to mention, you can see the number of golden hammers that you used like the previous installment.
Besides the adventure and spirit mode, the new modes are really fun and can be enjoyed that much, such as Squad Strike.
Outstanding soundtrack, with remixes for countless amounts of tracks. It would make you want to try to get it to your head or go to the stages longer to listen to the music, or even go on YouTube and download the music on your computer, phone or tablet or if you have the game you can listen to it as if it were an MP3. Also, some songs make you want to dance.
In addition to Omega forms, stages now have Battlefield forms as well, which is a nice addition.
As of the 3.0.0 update on April 17th, Stage Builder makes it return after being excluded in the initial release as well as the 3DS version of Smash 4.
Absolutely amazing voice acting (despite voice clips being recycled from the previous games or non-SSB games), especially for English voice actors like Charlies Martinet, Roger Craig Smith, David Hayter, Skye Bennett, Haley Joel Osment, Laura Bailey, and Zach Aguilar. Even the many Japanese voice actors put a lot of effort into expressing their characters, and it feels like they enjoy their work.
Characters are designed better to fight like their original counterparts. One notable example being Ryu, Ken, Terry and Kazuya always facing their opponents in 1v1 battles, akin to Street Fighter, Fatal Fury and Tekken.
Mii Fighters return, and while the other fighters don't have their custom special moves anymore from the previous game anymore, the Miis still do, and you can now customize the Mii Fighters' voice clips. 12 voices are selectable, 6 male and 6 female, and there are also three pitch options for each voice. Also, the Mii Fighters' costume colors are no longer dependent on the Miis' favorite colors, and can now be customized. And speaking of this, like Smash 4, you can share it in order to play.
Addictive and fun gameplay that can be played for years to come.
The controls are hard to master, but are also extremely fluid and responsive.
The game overall is more properly balanced: overpowered characters were given some very necessary nerfs while weak characters were considerably necessary buffed.
The new/updated Final Smashes are very entertaining, and most characters have reactions when they are activated, which is probably a part of the game's humor.
For the first time ever in the series, you can finally grab and earn points by KOing Assist Trophies.
Tourney returns to offline mode, this time, the mode supports the use of amiibo, with up to 32 Figure Players allowed to be used at once. Multiple players can use the same characters with the same palette swaps if they like, making it the only offline mode where players can do so. The seeding can be reshuffled at the start of the tournament in order to make sure certain opponents do not face each other too early on. CPU and FP only fights can be skipped, but Figure Players do not earn experience, and as of the 4.0.0 update, Online Tourney mode has returned, making this iteration of Tournament Mode to be the first in the series to be offered both offline and online, and for the first time, Event Tourneys are introduced, and they're quite original and interesting.
Most parts of the game have an amazing grasp of the various source materials, such as Sephiroth's, Joker's and Kazuya's victory animations.
The game has an excellent dark tone in it, like Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
The game's roster may be completed, but if you have an unpatched Nintendo Switch, the game is moddable just like the previous Smash games, which does an awesome job of it. You can check out for mods for the game at GameBanana.
As of the 8.0.0 update, you can now rematch spirit battles you've already won without having to wait for them to reappear on the spirit board.
You can now read the description on each the fighter's moves, like Final Smash, during the Help section and pause the game. You can also choose many characters to see the moves. Additional moves can be found by moving down as well.
Sound Test can be used to create music playlists. The option where the music plays in handheld mode while the screen is off like a music player from Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS also returns.
Battle Arena is officially introduced in Online Mode. It allows players to battle with each other in an arena. Arenas allow a large amount of customization, including most of the rules from Smash and some exclusive to Battle Arenas. A Battle Arena room can hold up to 8 players with the matches supporting up to 4 players depending on the settings the Battle Arena creator selected. You can also use amiibo (as mentioned earlier), and can change the rules of a battle arena without needing to disband it, as of the 6.0 update.
When you pause the game, you can take screenshots by choosing many of them, like frame, and filter. You can also post in social media (example; Twitter and Facebook). And you can even put many screenshots in your videos, as of 4.0.0 update.
In characters select screen, alternate costumes are now shown at the bottom of the player's portrait, with eight small stock icons representing each palette swap. Additionally, each color is now listed with a name from the numbers 1-8 (e.g. Color 7).
Perfect shields are performed in reverse: instead of pressing the shield button a few frames before an attack connects, players have to release the shield button when an attack connects on their shield instead. The window for the technique is also larger, lasting 5 frames instead of 3. A successful perfect shield causes the screen to pause briefly, with the fighter's eyes flashing yellow (similar to Final Smash standby) to signify a perfect shield, and no shield damage being taken as a result. This updated mechanic makes perfect shielding a riskier tactic, and less likely to be performed unintentionally, but allows fighters to retaliate much faster against attacks when successful.
Pays homage to pop-culture references, like a shot in the opening movie of this game depicts Fox standing alone on Final Destination with no items in sight, in reference to the "No items, Fox only, Final Destination" meme, and Ken and Incineroar challengers being fought in the Boxing Ring like in their reveal trailer.
Bad Qualities
Similar to Fortnite and Friday Night Funkin', two great games, while the game is not to blame, there are controversies it has caused or even some people hate it because of the controversies that the game suffered, here are some perfect examples.
Also, in the edition of Daisy and a Piranha Plant, it seems that by this point that absolutely every playable Mario character was in Ultimate, all except for Waluigi, Toad, Toadette and Birdo, the former who is still an assist trophy, spawning some controversy because of this.
Toon Link, Young Link and Dr. Mario are considered to be the worst playable characters in the roster and Waluigi doesn’t get to be a playable character for some reasons.
When the game was about to be released, there was a controversy with the fighter Mr. Game and Watch because when you attack, you could see a feather on his head and it was also a reference to a Game & Watch game called "Fire Attack". "(whose game is where a cowboy had to keep away the Indians who were attacking his fountain), which was in bad taste since it's a stereotypical representation of American Indians, although fortunately, there was a patch where he corrected the head attack design.
While it was very nice that the Mii suits from 3DS and Wii U returned after the premiere of Sephiroth, Geno's suit did not wait, since he didn't enter as a fighter. Therefore, many players and Geno fans got heartbroken and depressed. If you don't believe it, see for yourself here. Also, some say its design look ugly, especially its face.
If it wasn't enough, the reactions of Dante and Shantae's Mii suits were a bit worse, since they were wanted as fighters, which like Geno, some were sad and did not like the suits.
Some Spirit challenges on the Spirit Board, World of Light and DLC Spirit Board rely on the enemy AI spamming cheap moves rather than actual fun difficulty, like the conditions call it "The enemy favors "(insert move here)" made as an excuse. A good example is the Knuckle Joe spirit battle, which has a Ryu AI constantly spamming his Side Special.
World of Light is very flawed for numerous reasons.
False advertising: During the near ending of the final direct of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that aired on November 1st 2018, Sakurai confirmed that the new adventure mode, named World of Light, was announced. At the end of the direct and start of the trailer, it had a cutscene intro with acting/voice providing given the impression that it would feature a fully dubbed story, unlike the Subspace Emissary. But when the game was released, it had little cutscenes and the acting/voice providing was only for the intro, the rest of the story went completely undubbed.
Slow pacing.
Very long loading times
Little to no cutscenes as far as for as having those cute little character interaction moments go.
Consisting of mostly spirit battles for nearly every part of the mode instead of spirit battles and collecting spirits being in some bonus rooms or some places in some levels.
No enemies to fight.
A couple of bad stages returned from the previous Smash games like Hanenbow, 75m, Pac-Land, and The Great Cave Offensive.
The Ace and Legend-class spirit battles are frustratingly difficult and/or nearly impossible (especially the Latter), which include Pauline, and other ones like Dr. Wily, The Boss, Queen Metroid, Donkey Kong and Lady, Max Brass, Hero's Comrades, Phantom Thieves of Hearts, Dark Matter and the Smash Ball. Many people have said they won these battles only because they somehow had the computer players fall off the stage. Luckily, v4.0.0 introduced Very Easy mode in World of Light, although Spirit Board spirits still have to be dealt with normally. According to Min Min presentation of Mr. Sakurai Presents for YouTube video, there is a moment where Mr. Sakurai explains how to beat some of them or simply use Kirby that you can exhale the CPU and send it to fall or exhale it and send it close off-screen (in case if you are on a stage with no bottom blast line), and there is also some tips like using the Staff in the Pauline spirit or the Super Launch Star in the Donkey Kong and Lady spirit.
Due to the death of Takeshi Aono, the Japanese actor/voice actor of Colonel Roy Campbell, in 2012, Snake doesn't have any new Codec Conversations for any characters not in Brawl or even updated codecs for characters who were in Brawl (except for Link) on the Shadow Moses Island stage. This leads to misinformation (e.g. Alph being referred to as Olimar, male pronouns being used for the female Pokémon Trainer, both Zero Suit Samus and Sheik are still described as mid-battle transformations of Samus and Zelda, respectively despite being separate characters, and the codecs for both Jigglypuff and Sonic still mention Brawl by name). Fortunately, fans have been making up Codec Conversations for characters who did not appear in Brawl.
There are still no custom Palutena's Guidance conversations for DLC Characters (Except for Piranha plant this time around, as it was planned to be in the Base Game and was being worked on at the time of the development of the Base Version of the Game). Fortunately, fans (Including Zelda Universe) have been making up Palutena's Guidance for characters who did not appear in Base-Game nor were planned into to be in base game.
Still no Playable Characters (Not from the Kid Icarus Universe) as Guest characters for Palutena's Guidance Conversations.
Unlike its predecessors up to Smash 4, Ultimate Doesn’t have many modes, which is disappointing and modes Target Test/Break the Targets, Masterpieces, Board the Platforms, Race to the Finish, All-Star (replaced by All-Star smash), Boss Battles or Coin Battle are absent. Some of these modes absent in base-game have been added in later updates, however (5.0.0 showed off Home-Run Contest in a preview on September 4th during the Sakurai's presentation for Banjo & Kazooie, who teased for Nintendo Direct and released later that day).
The Numbers of Bosses in the Boss Roster is lazily the same as Brawl's number of Bosses especially resulting in not having many good options for bosses in certain classic mode routes and the somewhat messy, confusing and dull execution. Speaking of...
while it is nice that this incarnation of Classic mode (and this game overall) gives characters different predetermined routes, does not always have Master Hand and Crazy Hand as the Final Bosses and gives more Bosses, it is very flawed for numerous reasons.
The fighters only have 1 stock, unlike previous installments where you could select your number of lives. This is also the case in World of Light and spirit battles.
After you die, you get to restart right where you left off in the middle of the fight instead of restarting the entire battle over, which is not only unusual for a fighting game with an arcade mode, but it also doesn't really provide a lot of challenge for the player.
Similar to the previous game, When the player fighter dies, the difficulty choice goes backwards or down or decreases instead of staying where it is, which is frustrating.
Classic Mode also gives the playable fighters only seven battle rounds and one bonus game, which is not only disappointing, but makes the routes way too short.
Once again, the final bosses for most Classic Mode routes are Master Hand and Crazy Hand, rather than a creative boss for most of the fighters, which is unacceptable especially because the Master Hand and Crazy Hand fights are considered extremely frustrating and difficult for players, with an absolutely unfair and broken AI that kills in 1 minute and ridiculously difficult physics to dodge, to the point where it's almost impossible to get 9.9 intensity. Plus, this makes them overused and used for wrong routes (EX:Classic Modes of Sonic, Pichu, King Dedede, Palutena, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Lucas, Ness, Pokémon Trainer, Pit, Pikachu, Ike, Wario, Cloud Strife, and Lucina)
Certain Playable fighters Opponent Choices for Classic Mode Routes Choices of Certain Playable Fighters are either wrong, stupid or for just the sake of Fanservice. (EX:Pit in Dark Pit's Classic Mode).
Certain Playable Fighters are also given wrong, overused, Lazy, or redundant Classic Mode Route Theme Choices (EX:Link, Falco, Banjo & Kazooie, Byleth)
Hypocrisy: Classic Mode allows unlockable Playable fighters and the Mii fighters to be added in Classic Mode Routes as opponents of the Starters despite not being unlocked yet, While, also not allowing DLC Playable fighters (by the time they were added into the game in updates) to be put into Certain Classic Mode Routes of Certain Base-Game Characters because they weren't purchased.
For some stupid reason, The Mii Fighters are not given Classic Mode Route Themes nor are playable in Classic Mode after creating them.
There are still balancing and development issues with the playable characters as Not all the characters are given proper balancing. Some characters were given more nerfs or buffs rather than what's necessary good.
Steve and Pyra & Mythra are Mostly overpowered.
Hero's down special is completely random, giving four random spells to select from every time you input it and their smash attacks have 1/8 chance of striking with a critical hit.
Banjo & Kazooie, while they're perfect from a gameplay perspective, they feel very poor and mediocre, as they seem a little too reliant on their absurdly powerful forward special, which can then leave them feeling helpless once they burn through its limited uses per stock.
Pichu's side special is super strong and can KO at high percent, and is borderline fast.
Ganondorf still suffers from wrongfully slow moveset and Speed, a terrible frame data and still has an abysmal recovery.
Little Mac's Airgame is mostly even worse than it was previously.
The Online Mode.
This mode is infamous for being very laggy (or choppy) (due to Nintendo using Peer-To-Peer connection and people who don't have a good internet connection can cause matches to lag), especially when playing with more than one other person. Because of this, it can become so laggy that it could make matches unplayable.
Up to only 4 players can fight against each other rather than 8 in Smash Mode that is offline, which only makes it half the fun.
Stages are decided randomly rather than allowing players to choose and that a roulette occur and decide one out of all the stages chosen by the players. Instead, the player starts on the Training Mode-exclusive stage fighting against his/her chosen character's palette swap for practice until other players around the world decided randomly join in and then the fight starts on a randomly chosen stage.
The matches don't always go by the players' preferred rules: Solo Battle, Team Battle, Time, Stock, Stamina, list of Items enabled/disabled, etc. They are decided randomly instead.
The "Spectate" option is rather pointless and unnecessary where players can simply watch other players around the world play against each other as if watching a boxing or wrestling event on live TV.
The Fighter Spirits are made pointless and serve just as cosmetics since they cannot be equipped for any World of Light battles nor any Smash battles and are just pictures of the characters' original designs and SSBU designs and like the Non playable fighter/non playable fighter form spirits, have no descriptions.
Absolutely terrible and unfinished localization for Latin America: despite Nintendo giving complete Latin Spanish translations for some games as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and WarioWare Gold, this game got limited to giving the same voice acting of the European Spanish version adapted to the American region, just as the previous Super Smash Bros. game.
If the game has a CERO A rating in Japan, then why do they still have the word "hell" in it? Thanks to CERO (one of the most infamous video game rating systems) again, there are still the following bad censorship choices.
Pyra and Mythra's (even the latter's original spirit's) clothing designs were are also shamefully altered since their provocative designs are outrageously hidden, although they are not unattractive and remain faithful, their clothing designs look degraded, unexciting and bland since they cover almost the entire body such as the legs, the hips and the boobs respectively, and it's not only despicable, it's also disgraceful especially to the people who liked the designs. (There is however, a mod that allows them to have their original designs though.)
The CERO A rating also prevented Mai Shiranui, a popular SNK character, from ever appearing in the game at all: internationally, it's because of the infamous "Smash is for good boys and girls of many different ages" mentality.
The Mii Costumes of Altaïr, Vault Boy, Travis Touchdown, Dragonborn, Dante and Doom Slayer had their logos censored and replaced with their name during the ESRB version of the costume reveal trailer (with the latter three also being censored in the PEGI version). However this was never the case with the CERO version.
The Spirits of Camilla, Carmilla and Tharja also had been censored. Tharja, for example, gets her breasts covered with her book and her entire design is not completely shown.
Ironically, some mature game elements have appeared in this game, however, like Snake's chokehold for his grab, and the word "hell" is in the game, like Captain Falcon's Blood Falcon skin on their back (in Japan only), Ken's Hell Wheel, Sephiroth's Hell's Gate and Kazuya's Gates of Hell in the Tips and Move List section (which you can see the picture here), making CERO complete hypocrites.
Most of the veterans' movesets and appearance are mostly badly unchanged, such as:
Donkey Kong, despite though his attacks are still smooth and great, still has the Headbutt and Spinning Kong, although they are not bad, they become slightly uninteresting moves that could easily be replaced with something else from his series, for example the Coconut Gun from Donkey Kong 64 for his neutral special and the Barrel for his up special, as well as the fact that his generic gorilla sound was used.
All three Links have the same sword, boomerang, and bomb attacks and specials.
Kirby's down tilt move is still a flimsy kick, when it could have been his foot dash from the Kirby series (where he dives forward with a kick) and still doesn't get the copy abilities from the Canon Kirby games whenever he inhales a fighter (or fighters).
Ganondorf, despite receiving his sword for his smash attacks, still has mostly the same attacks as Captain Falcon.
Sonic the Hedgehog's appearance is much of the same as Brawl and Smash 4 (to which thereareseveralmods) where he still has no Sonic Tornado for his Up Throw and still uses a spindash for his forward special, instead of something like the Boost or the Light Speed Dash. He also still has the Emerald Dive for his forward aerial instead of the Sonic Eagle from Battle, for example. There is a mod that allows it though.
Robin's Final Smash still has Chrom with him, despite Chrom being officially playable.
Most characters' aerial attacks are quite too much of the same, often consisting in them spinning in a circle or using a kick. Somewhat related to this, most final smashes can also feel too similar to each other as they just apply lots of damage to their opponent if they catch them, and they could have gotten more creative ones although the execution of the moves are amazing to watch however.
As mentioned in WITUS#20, the majority of the characters' voices (especially the veterans) are once again, just recycled voice clips from previous Smash Bros. installments or non-SSB games prior.
Bowser, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, King K. Rool and Ridley still have non-fictionalistic non human animal sounds instead of their respective voice providers/actors (Kenny James, Takashi Nagasako, Katsumi Suzuki, Toshihide Tsuchiya and Bradley Dee Baker).
Pac-Man and Mega Man still lack voices from actors/voice providers, despite having had them before.
While it was awesome to see newcomers and everyone return from previous games, it feels overused of adding in sword-wielding characters, especially in the case of Fire Emblem fighters, in fact, they even give Soulcalibur (another fighting game but it is a franchise that all fighters use swords) a run for its money, gaining some controversy with Byleth being the drop that spilled the glass. Perhaps even Sakurai himself admitted. These characters tend to have rather diverse movesets, however.
While the controls are fluid and responsive, there are some fighters who may have extremely unresponsive controls:
A perfect example is Bayonetta. This is because she was heavily nerfed from the last game for being too overpowered. For example, it will take more than two seconds to release the button or the right analog which can cause really cheap damage to the other player. Another terrible example is her Witch Time; she often responds horribly or worse: if you take out the Witch Time she will not be able to respond or also if the other player tried to hit you, the slowness goes less than a second or nothing, which makes it really useless and inferior, and besides the recovery is often absolutely horrendous, which is very awkward, clunky, frustrating, hard-to-master, terrible, and almost stiff, which was apparently done by a college student less than a week, and also due to unresponsive controls, which turns out to be this fighter makes it unenjoyable and dull.
Rosalina & Luma, while they both were also incredibly good fighters from the last game, suffer from some from some nerfs in this installment of the series, for example, If Luma is too far away, she will absolutely NOT respond, Like Snake, her recovery is very unresponsive and stiff, will find it difficult to move elsewhere and also cause a cheap death.
Despite certain Assist Trophies being able to be attacked, grabbed and defeated, none of the assist Pokémon are able to be grabbed, defeated or attacked (even the ones that look or feel like they should be able to be grabbed, attacked or defeated)
Even though Square Enix is not that stingy anymore (thanks to Dragon Quest, Mana series, Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default series, later Final Fantasy VII and Kingdom Hearts), Cloud and Sephiroth still lack English voices, even when you change the game’s language other than Japanese, although you can download these twovoice mods that allows them to have English voices, and one for Kazuya and one for the Dragon Quest XI Hero.
Luigi, Ness, Captain Falcon and Jigglypuff are part of the entire group of characters that needs to be unlocked, which can be very confusing and off putting, while all veterans being required to be unlocked is well executed and challenging.
While it was a good idea, there are some other fans never wanted Sora in Smash Ultimate for two reasons
Nintendo and Disney had a sour relationship after the failure of the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie.
Most of the game's visuals are good, but there are still several flaws with the characters designs in regards to the source material:
Mario and Bowser look very little like they do in Super Mario Odyssey, mainly because of the very dull and muted color palettes they were given, especially Bowser having a light brown body instead of a yellow body, and Mario's overalls and shoes being a much darker color.
Inkling's ink colors are far less vibrant than in the Splatoon games, including the orange ink being changed to a light red-orange color.
Captain Falcon's racing suit is usually a bright blue color in the F-Zero series, but Super Smash Bros. Ultimate changes the color to a very dark gray-blue color. A color like this would be more suitable for the criminal Zoda to use, not Captain Falcon.
Ken's normally blonde hair has been strangely changed to a realistic dirty blonde color, which also applies to Young Link and Zero-Suit Samus. His red-orange karate gi is also a muted burnt orange color for some reason.
The Kirby boss Marx is the worst offender. His large wings, which are usually a golden-yellow color, have been changed to a very dull looking gold color. This kind of color doesn't fit him at all. His design is also much creepier than in any of the Kirby games he appears in.
Isabelle's jade green shirt is now a light yellowish-green color. Even her model in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U gave her the proper green color. Her fur color is also much lighter.
Stage Builder has a rather narrow variety of terrain options and backgrounds to choose from where the latter is based on select existing stages in this game. Even worse, Custom Stages being made by the player cannot be played on in Training Mode or in Smash Mode with the Stage Morph functionality.
Dracula, despite his long return, is WAY overpowered for a Classic Mode boss, with the biggest offender being his second form, making weak fighters as punching bags (Luigi, Pac-Man, Simon, and Richter), except Sephiroth and in Adventure Mode.
Reception
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate received universal critical acclaim from both critics and the players, with several critics calling it the best installment in the series. They praised it's large amount of content and fine-tuning of existing Smash gameplay elements, although it's online mode received criticism. It currently holds an aggregate review score of 93 out of on Metacritic, tying it with Brawl as the highest-rated game in the series on the website, and held a score of 92.17% on GameRankings prior to it's shutdown. As of March 31, 2021, Ultimate had sold over 23.84 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling Super Smash Bros. game and also the best-selling fighting game of all time, beating Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Street Fighter II, which previously held each title respectively. At The Game Awards 2019, Ultimate was nominated for Best Fighting Game, Best Family Game, and Game of the Year. It won Best Fighting Game, though it lost to Luigi's Mansion 3 and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, respectively, in the other two categories.
Trivia
One of the game's new additions had the character Mr. Game & Watch assuming the appearance of a feather and loincloth-wearing Native American when using one of his attacks—a reference to Fire Attack (1982), in which players controlled a cowboy defending his fort from attacking natives. Some series fans saw this as racist, leading to Nintendo apologizing and removing the animation in an update shortly after release.
Two weeks before its release, a leaked copy of the game was distributed across the internet. Nintendo took steps to issue copyright strikes on YouTube videos using data mined content, while fans worked to isolate spoilers, particularly the World of Light story mode, from those that had played the leaked version.
Because of the size of the USK icon on the game's box art, the German version has a slightly different variation of the said box art: Pikachu is moved upwards, Yoshi is completely missing, and the logo is off-centered.
This was the first game to not have collectable trophies since the first game of Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo 64.
Several shots from various trailers have become memes shortly after their airing, such as Sonic punching Mario in Steve's trailer, and Mario seemingly getting stabbed by Sephiroth in his own trailer.
The official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter later acknowledged the meme regarding Sonic punching Mario in their own tweet announcing Sonic the Hedgehog content coming to Minecraft.
Fighters have been considered for the base game and DLC roster:
In a Famitsu interview, Sakurai stated that Alucard was briefly considered as a playable character, due to a lot of players probably being most familiar with him. However, he instead chose Simon and Richter, feeling that fans would probably prefer one of the Belmonts, resulting in his Assist Trophy and cameo roles.
In an interview with Nintendo Dream, Sakurai revealed that Decidueye was almost chosen to be the playable Generation VII Pokémon, but he chose Incineroar instead, as he wanted to create a character with a professional wrestling-based moveset.
In an another interview with Nintendo Dream, Sakurai confirms that due to the base roster being completed prior to the announcement of both games in January 2017, no fighters from neither Xenoblade Chronicles 2 nor ARMS could be added in the base game, resulting in Rex, Nia, Spring Man, and Ribbon Girl becoming Mii Fighter Costumes and spirits (with Spring Man also being present as an Assist Trophy). Both games would eventually get fighters through the Fighters Pass Vol. 2 with Min Min and Pyra & Mythra.
In a Dragon Quest XI S livestream interview, Sakurai had said he would have been fine with a Slime being a playable Dragon Quest fighter had Square Enix not allowed him to use the Hero, which was his first choice. Likewise, Sakurai wanted to include eight different character alternative costumes for the Hero; however, time constraints left him with half of the alternative costumes to be recolors of the previous four instead.
During Min Min's presentation reveal on June 22nd, 2020, Sakurai mentioned that he initially was thinking of either her or Ninjara to serve as the ARMS fighter. Min Min eventually beat out Ninjara for the spot on request from Kosuke Yabuki, the game's producer.
At one point in development, Rex was going to fight alongside Pyra and Mythra similar to the Ice Climbers but it was later scrapped due to technical issues with the implementation of the idea. Rex ended up being delegated to a supporting character, appearing in Pyra and Mythra's up taunt, Final Smash, and victory poses as well as on-screen appearance at the start of the battle.
Heihachi, who was previously considered as a potential fighter for SSB4, was once again briefly considered once it was decided to add a Tekken character to Ultimate, but was ultimately passed over for his son Kazuya due to the better moveset potential granted by the latter's devil gene.
Ultimate's release date falls one day after the late Satoru Iwata's birthday, December 6 (which was also the release date of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U in Japan).
Following the announcement of Pyra and Mythra as DLC fighters, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 managed to sell out on Amazon in Japan.
This is the second game to have DLC contact.
This game marks the 100th performance credit of Charles Martinet as the voice of Mario, a landmark for which he received a Guinness World Record for the most video game voice-over performances of a single character.
This holds the record of the largest Smash Bros Soundtrack, and likely the largest soundtrack in Nintendo history. Including all the DLC, there are 1068 tracks in total.[1]
Even if you combined the number of songs in Super Smash Bros, Super Smash Bros Melee, Super Smash Bros Brawl, and Super Smash Bros For 3DS & Wii U, this game would still outnumber them.
References
↑In total (including DLC), there are 1,068 tracks available to listen to in the Sounds menu, making Ultimate's library the largest in the series, and in fact, larger than every other games' libraries combined.
https://www.ssbwiki.com/Music_(SSBU)
