What a show! It started with a blast and it ended with a blast. And we just got two of the most anticipated newcomers confirmed: Simon Belmont and King K. Rool. I expected one newcomer and maybe two Echo Fighters, so my expectations got surpassed. But of course it was Mr. Sakurai's tactic to keep our expectations in bay for this one, which worked really well so far.
The Castlevania representation is overall glorious. Two weeks ago I watched the AVGN episodes of the classic Castlevania games and I really felt how all of it would great material for Smash. And they nailed it. Simon Belmont looks great and the Dracula's Castle stage is absolutely impressive with all of those bosses. 34 music tracks and an Alucard Assist Trophy... No 3rd Party franchise got so much love when it entered Super Smash Bros. like Castlevania did and it's quite amazing.
On top of that we also got Richter Belmont as an Echo Fighter, which emphasizes the lineage of the Belmont clan. Much like there are many different Links over the ages, who fought Ganon, you have many different Belmonts, who fought Dracula over the ages. And having at least one of them as an Echo Fighter feels right, even though I didn't recognize him.
Anyway, we also got Chrome and Dark Samus as Echo Fighters and while I can see the popularity, I'm not too excited about either choice. There will be a separate post about Dark Samus right after this, but I can already say that Chrome feels massively redundant. Yes, he's popular and he already got teased as an addition in Smash 4. But he's the fourth Marth in this game and the fourth blue-haired sword fighter. Is this Sakurai's way of respecting the weapon triangle? Because axe and lance wielders would have to be respectively weaker or stronger than the sword cast? Well, they could have at least added a bow user.
Chrom is also the fourth character from Awakening and I'd rather would have someone from a different game, like Celica. Speaking of, the chances of getting any more interesting Fire Emblem characters feel slim now.
And of course we got King K. Rool. I have to admit that I wasn't really sure about him before now, because to me he felt like a relic, but seeing his trailer completely changed my mind. It's certainly a worthy addition and now all we need is Dixie Kong. But seeing how Dark Samus became an Echo Fighter, Dixie will most likely be one as well. Maybe she gets revealed together with Funky Kong next time.
There were also some Assist Trophy confirmations, including Ashley and Shovel Knight. I'm a little bit disappointed about the latter, but it's still good to see that Shovel Knight got any representation at all. This is still huge deal, considering his Indie status. And Assist Trophies have now a better chance of becoming playable in the next game. I never got the recent Ashley hype, where I'm fine that she's still an Assist. But it's still noticeable how certain Assist Trophies are still absent... Mainly Shadow, Skull Kid and Isabelle.
More about Skull Kid later, but it turned out that the Vergeben leak was pretty much legit. He confirmed returning Snake, returning Ice Climbers, Ridley and Simon. That is quite a lot for lucky guesses. And that leaves the following:
- some Minecraft content (probably a Stage + Assist Trophy)
- Isabelle (probably an Echo Fighter)
- some 7th Gen Pokémon (no big surprise)
I'm mostly excited for the first part and it looks like some 3rd party franchises now get representation in form of stages and/or Assist Trophies, like Monster Hunter did. Both Minecraft and Monster Hunter don't really have a protagonist, because the player builds his own character, where a "Minecraft" stage and a Creeper Assist Trophy would be the perfect representation. But of course there could still be "Steve" as a character, who would be similar to the Villager from Animal Crossing... He's certainly very recognizable, unlike a generic hunter from Monster Hunter.
96 returning stages have been confirmed in total. I'm very happy with the selection, but more about that in a separate post. A cool feature was certainly the Stage Morph, where as a Metroid and Zelda fan I was quite happy that they used Brinstar and Skyloft to showcase this feature. Now you can switch on the fly between your favorite universes!
The new and old modes and all the different ruleset options are all pretty great. The secret hidden mode seemed like an Adventure Mode, the whole Monster Hunter boss fight seemed to take place there, unless the series is really getting just a flat stage. The Dracula fight also seemingly took place in a bigger variant of the Dracula Castle stage. Update: Apparently the mode is called "Spirits". It's likely that this will be the main mode to unlock characters by collecting their spirits.
Now, all we need is a good Stage Builder and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will really be the best Smash ever.
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