So the gameplay is actually pretty fun. It gets most of what I like about Super Smash Bros Melee and other clones (minus the lack of back air, which I've sort of adapted to, and the lack of dash dancing, which I really hope gets added in the future). It's fast paced and with tons of great combo potential, so I couldn't ask for much more on that frontier.
That said, it is very clearly lacking a lot of features and polish on other ends. The graphics are serviceable I'd say; they're not especially hideous, but they look sort of comparable to a Gamecube game at times, and could use a bit of touching up. The soundtrack is just not memorable, and really could use some licensed tracks from other Nickelodeon franchise video games/original shows. The sound design is also a bit lacking; I can't recall any specific character sound effects that you would expect from Smash games/clones, and the lack of voice overs or any voice lines at all from characters makes the game feel a little lifeless at times.
A few other things; there's no stats page, so I can't tell how many games I've won online or how many games I've played locally. Sort of a minor gripe, but I don't think that's asking for much. Arcade mode is extremely barebones; you just fight 7 characters across 7 stages and they spout lines of text before the fight starts with fairly little fanfare otherwise. There are no alternate character skins/colors so different players using the same characters are only distinguished with the tag above; this does feel a little lazy, considering Smash 64 had alternate colors. Online ranked kind of sucks and I can't tell how the matching algorithm works or how I rank in comparison to others/my friends/the world. Also related to online; rollback netcode means that the game's online is generally as lag-free as possible, but if you get matched with people playing online that are on Wi-Fi instead of wired (and I ran into plenty), it's extremely excruciating to either have to suffer through those matches on moon physics lag, or quit those laggy matches and lose ranking score because there's no way to account for this happening. I don't know how this specific problem would be addressed, but I do hope that Ludosity becomes aware of this at least.
With all that out of the way, I don't actually regret my purchase because this game is that much fun to play, especially with friends you know. Ludosity has mentioned further polishing the game and adding more DLC characters (the answer to the question: what happened to Jimmy Neutron, Fairly OddParents, Hey Arnold from Hey Arnold, Rocko's Modern Life, etc) if this game gets more attention and support. Considering the amount of hubbub it's gotten from both Nickelodeon fans and players who like Smash clones, I'll remain cautiously optimistic that some of the flaws and missing features I've mentioned above get addressed and patched up, in which case I would be more than happy to improve my rating on this game.
That said, it is very clearly lacking a lot of features and polish on other ends. The graphics are serviceable I'd say; they're not especially hideous, but they look sort of comparable to a Gamecube game at times, and could use a bit of touching up. The soundtrack is just not memorable, and really could use some licensed tracks from other Nickelodeon franchise video games/original shows. The sound design is also a bit lacking; I can't recall any specific character sound effects that you would expect from Smash games/clones, and the lack of voice overs or any voice lines at all from characters makes the game feel a little lifeless at times.
A few other things; there's no stats page, so I can't tell how many games I've won online or how many games I've played locally. Sort of a minor gripe, but I don't think that's asking for much. Arcade mode is extremely barebones; you just fight 7 characters across 7 stages and they spout lines of text before the fight starts with fairly little fanfare otherwise. There are no alternate character skins/colors so different players using the same characters are only distinguished with the tag above; this does feel a little lazy, considering Smash 64 had alternate colors. Online ranked kind of sucks and I can't tell how the matching algorithm works or how I rank in comparison to others/my friends/the world. Also related to online; rollback netcode means that the game's online is generally as lag-free as possible, but if you get matched with people playing online that are on Wi-Fi instead of wired (and I ran into plenty), it's extremely excruciating to either have to suffer through those matches on moon physics lag, or quit those laggy matches and lose ranking score because there's no way to account for this happening. I don't know how this specific problem would be addressed, but I do hope that Ludosity becomes aware of this at least.
With all that out of the way, I don't actually regret my purchase because this game is that much fun to play, especially with friends you know. Ludosity has mentioned further polishing the game and adding more DLC characters (the answer to the question: what happened to Jimmy Neutron, Fairly OddParents, Hey Arnold from Hey Arnold, Rocko's Modern Life, etc) if this game gets more attention and support. Considering the amount of hubbub it's gotten from both Nickelodeon fans and players who like Smash clones, I'll remain cautiously optimistic that some of the flaws and missing features I've mentioned above get addressed and patched up, in which case I would be more than happy to improve my rating on this game.