By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...Chromtent.
Did you watch the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct featuring Masahiro Sakurai yesterday? You can watch it and read my reactions here. You can also read Nintendo's very detailed press release about it here. Please familiarise yourself with the material, since this article will go in-depth about it and it's best we all have the same baseline. I'm not going to summarise it in this article, since you now already (know) everything you need to know.
Oh, one more thing: On Tuesday, I wrote an article defending Masahiro Sakurai as an exhausted, overworked person who people should stop thinking is trying to put hidden messages in his statements. People who saw Sakurai's statement about tired, red eyes as a hint for King K. Rool or something related to vampires had no humanity.
Well, it turns out that I'm wrong. King K. Rool is now playable. Simon Belmont is now playable. Richter Belmont is now playable. Alucard is an Assist Trophy. Dracula is a stage boss. Given how wrong I was to view Sakurai as a human being and not a troll, the contingency for me being wrong in that article was,
“In that case, Ludwig will never feel sympathy for Sakurai ever again,”So I'm going to be very harsh in my assessment of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct. Masahiro Sakurai has a personal grudge against me spanning years, and it's about time I have a grudge against him and stick to it.
I'll give the Castlevania folks a chance. I'd prefer no Castlevania representation at all, and then Alucard over Simon Belmont, but, okay, this isn't something to get mad over if they're promising great Castlevania music. I'm upset that Dracula's Castle will be a stage and Bowser's Castle still will not be.
There are now exactly 103 stages, which as pointed out by Sakurai, is nearly twice the amount of stages from the previous game. Only four of these are new to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (New Donk City, Great Plateau Tower, Moray Towers, and Dracula's Castle). There's a lot of stages here. Just don't expect it to be a fresh experience.
There are “roughly 900” tracks of music in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, compared to just over 500 in Super Smash Bros. For Wii U. That's fantastic. The distribution of the music is weird (Final Fantasy still only has 3 songs, Star Fox goes from 14 to 17, while Castlevania gets... 34). Of course, that 900 includes a lot of ported music from older Super Smash Bros. games, and ported music from the existing games. That isn't necessarily a bad thing if it's great. Just don't expect a ton of new stuff like, say, from Super Smash Bros. Brawl. All of the new remixes displayed on the site are amazing, though.
The music player thing is incredible, but the fact of the matter is that the Nintendo Switch in Handheld mode isn't really... handheld. They had the Japanese girl on screen put it in her giant bag. Most of Nintendo's audience don't carry around giant bags or purses or anything. Think: Wallets.
Let's talk about a character that really bothers me.
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| By the way, note the nonexistence of Miis on the Smashdown screen. Sakurai doesn't wanna talk about these things. |
CHROM.
Chrom is an Echo Fighter of Roy, but he stole Ike's Aether, too.
Chrom has absolutely no place in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. In fact, he has no place in any plane of existence. “Highly requested”? Hah.
Chrom is a loser. A traitor. A good-for-nothing. A total enemy of KoopaTV.
This is arguably as bad as Pac-Man getting in. Maybe worse. ...Eh, nah, Pac-Man's probably worse because he went and brought in a whole crappy stage and awful items with him. But Chrom really is down there. Plus, him being there probably means no Micaiah...
Which leads me to consider this: There is a big monster, Rathalos, from CAPCOM's Monster Hunter series that got a big deal in the Direct as a boss. Zero from CAPCOM's Mega Man X is also an Assist Trophy.
Does this mean that Phoenix Wright from CAPCOM's Ace Attorney series has a better chance or a worse chance of appearing? If Konami now gets three playable characters (Snake, Belmont, and Belmont) then CAPCOM could as well, right? Sakurai has “a few more [characters] to announce later.” But if he has no more stages to announce, then that suggests no more new franchises?
Shovel Knight being an Assist Trophy is great. Much better than him being playable.
Anyway, in terms of what you can do with the characters (modes), the fact that Classic Mode appears to be customised for every character and they all have event-like quests is really nice. Tourney mode coming back from Super Smash Bros. Melee is very good — a matter of returning a mode that was cut for no reason from the sequels. Squad Strike, Smashdown, and the Final Smash Meter are all things to watch out for, and customisable Stamina Battle is long overdue.
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| Mario is the face of the tourney mode, but I'll make sure he's eliminated from it. |
We're waiting to see if there will be an in-depth single-player mode. The stage that they showed Rathalos on isn't a playable Smash mode stage. “He appears as a boss...” and where? That... hints at something. If it's a single-player mode, that would give us something greatly, greatly needed.
If it has to do with everyone dying in the trailers, then, well, clearly it's not permanent death. Mario's still alive enough to get kidnapped by Kapp'n. I like Kapp'n.
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| Let's transport ourselves to the end of this article. |
It's clear that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's goal is to bring back content from the earlier games in the series. That means it has a lot of content in it. By definition, the overwhelming majority of that content is stuff we've seen already, just now in a definitive format.
...And then for the new content there is Chrom. Ew.
There is a big deal of history between KoopaTV and Chrom, that you're free to read up on in your own time. Do you think that Nintendo retreading already-existing content is a big problem, or are you fine with it? Ludwig noted that Masahiro Sakurai's eyes were just fine in the reaction log, and detests that he wrote a whole article giving him sympathy only to be tricked.
I agree with nearly everything you said, and let you off for being so biased against Chrom since you stated outright you'd be treating this review as though you have a grudge against Sakurai. And, well...okay yeah not a ton of new content but I don't think that's a bad thing, particularly if they make the old content BETTER than as it appeared in the previous installments.
ReplyDeleteTrue, HD remasters can be very popular. And I'm fine with that, as long as we all acknowledge that's what this is.
DeleteYeah, there's no way I'm going to be happy about Chrom after the crap he pulled against KoopaTV, even if I didn't have a grudge against Sakurai.
Wait, what crap did he pull against KoopaTV?
DeleteChrom, aka YoshiRider123, was one of the founding members of KoopaTV. We all knew one another as close friends for almost a decade before KoopaTV started, from Nintendo of America's Nintendo NSider Forums.
DeleteIn 2007, NoA closed NSider, and fans immediately made a new forum, NSider2. We all moved to NSider2. Several years have passed (which included a stint at running our own forum, Planet Koopa), and Chrom become a moderator and then admin of NSider2.
We founded KoopaTV as a group, and Chrom (still as YoshiRider123, since Fire Emblem: Awakening only came out in 2013) was still an entertaining guy who we'd want to hang out with. Making jokes, being irreverent, and all that.
But as he became more immersed in Fire Emblem: Awakening and Chrom (who has the personality of a pet rock, which later turned out to be his own personality), and in trying to impress some girls on NSider2 or something, he was becoming quite distant. To the point that he had banned even hyperlinking to KoopaTV on NSider2, banned us from it, and he stopped talking to us. We ultimately had to fire him. He also shed his YoshiRider123 moniker to be Chrom, full-time.
Years later, still being an admin of NSider2, it turns out that NSider2 was infected with malware. (And Chrom himself possibly was, as well.)
Later in 2016, Chrom got fired from his own website, NSider2. NSider2 has been dead ever since, and Chrom moved on to be some Fire Emblem community figurehead on Twitter, obsessing over Chrom pictures and Japanese Fire Emblem merchandise.
tl;dr: Chrom was a founding member of KoopaTV, sold us out for women (unconfirmed), lost his personality, and has been a loser on his own ever since.
"Sigh" this is how Sega died, repeated gaming...
ReplyDelete(Some Fan) But this has different stuff-
EVEN MINECRAFT HAS SOMETHING NEW! that's just sad, a game you buy just once, and all you have to do is update it.
COME ON! A GAME OF BLOCKS IS BETTER THAN NINTENDO!?!
Factually speaking, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate does have new content.
DeleteI mean, it's Super Smash Bros. What could they possibly do to make it ENTIRELY, or even almost entirely, new?
DeleteCompletely change the genre, which Rawk has been advocating for years.
DeleteTo a 3D fighter. Basically to Kid Icarus Uprising.
The new characters (besides Chrom) make great additions to the cast. I would love to see Phoenix Wright join the battle as well, but the chances of that happening seem to be slim to none. The large music library is also a nice touch that only makes me wonder why Nintendo refuses to release physical soundtracks. There is even speculation that the pixelated green icon could be a new story mode. Although we have no clue on what it could be, my interest in the game would exponentially increase if that turns out to be the case.
ReplyDelete...Yeah, that's basically a summary of my article.
DeleteAnyway, for the physical soundtracks (or even selling digital ones), clearly they'd rather you walk around with a Nintendo Switch in your hands (how else will you carry it?) listening to the music, rather than your own music player... But...
There are people who would essentially pay for the same music, twice. And there are other people, I guess, that recognise that that is what's happening and won't.
Or maybe it's another piracy concern to worry about and they're already preoccupied over piracy of their games.