Super Smash Bros. Ultimate x Minecraft Impressions

Time to troll. The "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate x Minecraft" Challenger Pack has been released yesterday and certainly offers by far the most creative and unique addition to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate yet. It's absolutely hilarious and I had a good laugh trying Steve for the first time. The moves, the taunts, the victory animations, it's all so out there and the perfect troll fighter.

However, I can't claim that this is my favorite DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate so far, because that title still goes to ARMS. Actually, my first impressions of both fighters were quite similar: you have to play them very defensively and with that they aren't really something for me personally. Well, this turned out to be completely wrong with Min Min, where she basically is my second main by now and not just a "secondary"...

Steve on the other hand is exactly what I expected him to be: super defensive. He essentially has a "mind your own business" playstyle, where your goal is to mine, craft and build things, just like in Minecraft, and your opponent is just a nuisance that's getting in the way. His weakness are seemingly rushdowns, but it's easier said than done for his opponents thanks to his defensiveness. You don't want to be under Steve when he has that iron and you don't want to be above him in any case. His anti-air game is insane. And so is his ability to ledge-trap.

He can wall off opponents from getting back to the stage, place TNT traps at the ledge or simply spam raining fire... Well, as a downside, his own recovery isn't that great either. You can't place blocks while you're falling and if you can't place blocks, your only option to get back up is the Elytra, which is very tricky to control. I'm not a fan of the gliding mechanic, really, and it's easy to mess it up. But at the same time the things that you can do to mess up any other fighter's recovery are insane.

What a character! I didn't think he's for me at first, because he's very hard to handle and I'm personally a little overwhelmed by all the mining and crafting you have to do, since this makes you quite vulnerable and I prefer to play offensively. Well, I wanted this character for the ability to build things and that turned out even more amazing than I had imagined. But it wouldn't be "Minecraft" without mining and crafting as well, so I'm not complaining... And I'm slowly getting the hang of him, where there is some potential for a new secondary / counter pick here.

And the mining is such a crazy feature, especially how every stage can be different for Steve. It's fun to do and the attention to detail with this fighter is absolutely above the charts, where you even get sand blocks on Tortimer Island, ice blocks on Summit or wool blocks on Yoshi's Story.

Some stage materials seem quite off, though, for example the Great Plateau tower is apparently made out of stone and Spring Stadium made out of dirt, even though both should probably be iron... I suppose they based this feature on what sounds are played from the materials, but it probably could have needed some more adjusting here and there.

  

Speaking of stages, the "Minecraft World" turned out much better than I thought it would. At first I was a little bit disappointed that it wasn't entirely random, but the attention to detail is again superb. There is so much to discover in the backgrounds, it's absolutely beautiful. It's really like playing in a Minecraft world with its day and night cycle, mobs running around and some generated structures.

Destroying the upper layers of the stage block by block can be fun, but the blocks can also get heavily in the way. However, the hazardless versions of the stage have all destructible blocks removed from the get-go, so that's good and each variant still feels different enough thanks to the platforms and visuals.

It's basically like getting six Minecraft stages in one and that's some amazing effort, where it's also nice how can select all six variants individually via shortcuts. I wish that some of the morphing stages, like Paper Mario, had this feature as well, so that you could go directly to a certain part of the stage or even choose it for the hazard-free variant.

The Classic Mode route for Steve was great as well. Lots of nice references to the game, like going into a Woodland Mansion, the Nether and of course the End. Using giant Kirbies as Ghasts or Pits as Vexes was quite clever, I give them that.

 

The only real downside of this DLC pack is the lack of any C418 music. And don't tell me that it's too "calm", Sakurai, there are other calm music pieces in the game and you can always remix them. In the very least the victory theme should have been the main Minecraft theme and not that weird Achievement jingle. I suppose that there probably have been issues with getting the rights here and that's a shame...