Friday, January 25, 2019

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Ruined Zelda Stages

Okay, the title of this post is probably worded a little bit too dramatic, but while playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate I've noticed that there are two Zelda stages that are noticeably worse than in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. It's the two stages that used to be DLC on the Wii U: Hyrule Castle and Pirate Ship.

Hyrule Castle



The main issue with Hyrule Castle is the camera against the fixed skybox background. The camera loves to adjust its angles a lot, especially when playing in 1on1s, where in this case the castle feels like a ship shaking on the water. It feels nauseating and makes playing this stage very uncomfortable.

While the camera can be weird in other stages as well, I've only witnessed this particular problem in Hyrule Castle and some of the other N64 stages so far, where I suspect that this is mainly caused by the fixated skybox. With other stages the background moves a lot more in relation to the camera, while here it's simply still, which lets it look like the castle is bouncing around. This is something that could potentially be fixed in a patch, though.

Also, its Omega form looks less appealing than it did on the Wii, which brings us to the next part...


Pirate Ship Ω Form


While the Pirate Ship stage itself received a visual upgrade that lets it look closer to The Wind Waker HD, the Omega (and Battlefield) form faced a significant downgrade.

On the Wii U they put a lot of love into designing the Omega variant, making it look like one of the Lookout Platforms from the original Zelda game:


In Ultimate on the other hand, they kept some of the platform's design, but it's really just a platform floating above the sea:


The pole of the tower doesn't go into the ocean and neither does the ladder in the front. The cannons are also gone. It's probably because they wanted to give all Omega forms in the game the exact same shape, where this affects other stages as well. For example the the Omega variants of Hyrule Castle and Onett in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U still looked like a building, while in Ultimate now you have a floating mess that doesn't look all that great.

With the Pirate Ship it still doesn't make much sense, however, because they could have used the same standard shape and still have the pole and the roof in the background. Other Omega stages still have background elements, like for example the laboratory in the Great Bay stage. Maybe the roof didn't look good in the Battlefield variant, but they could have removed the roof for the Battlefield version only.

Considering that the original Omega form of the Pirate Ship was a really nice idea, it feels like a loss to have this mutilated version in Ultimate.

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