I'm a bit biased on this one since it's the game that got me into competitive smash bros, which in turn introduced me to a lot of my dearest friends.
Trying to look at it objectively though, I see a game that may be praised too highly by the casual community and hated too strongly by the competitive one. Brawl was a groundbreaking game in the franchise in several ways, and I think overall it's positive contributions far outweigh the negatives.
First off, you can't talk about Brawl without mentioning Subspace Emissary. This took the bare bones Adventure mode from Melee and turned it into a whole adventure which feels like it's own game, complete with great cinematics and a pretty decent story, especially by fighting game standards. Maybe I praise it too much, but I would say Subspace Emissary is such a good single player fighting game experience that even to this day it remains the best of its kind.
Moving past Subspace Emissary, another major improvement that Brawl made was with 3rd party characters. This was the first smash game to reach outside of the Nintendo roster, and it did so by grabbing two extremely popular characters, especially at the time: Solid Snake and SONIC THE FREAKING HEDGEHOG. Now I'm not a sonic fan at all, but I cannot explain how big of a deal this was back then. I am almost certain this was the first time Sonic and Mario had ever shared a screen, and to see them both in Smash brothers of all places was insane. This then opened the flood gates and allowed us to get a wealth of 3rd party characters in future games.
Unfortunately, this is not a perfect game, and that's where we have to talk about the competitive side of the game. Let's start with the most obvious flaw: tripping. This is a random mechanic that makes your character sometimes trip when they move in certain ways (I think it was turning around?). This might still be the least competitive idea to be put into fighting games. Let me tell you as someone who's experienced it firsthand, nothing is worse than paying money to travel and compete then get knocked out because your character randomly tripped into an attack to get KO'd.
Unfortunately, tripping was not the only issue. This game's competitive balance is a dumpster fire. There's chaingrabs and infinites as far as the eye can see. Hitboxes are wildly unfair from one character to the next. And of course... there's Metaknight. One of the craziest characters ever developed for any real fighting game. This character was just the best at everything in this game. He had the best moves, he was the fastest, he had the most range, he had the best recovery, he abused all glitches better than anyone else, he could combo the best, kill the earliest, survive the longest... name anything in this game and Metaknight did it better. It got to the point where metaknight was winning over 90% of tournaments WORLDWIDE. Competitively this game was a mess, and it's why the competitive smash community has generally shunned this game and why its mere existence revived Smash Bros Melee.
All in all though, this was a great game and an important part of smash history. Just maybe don't play it for its competitive aspects.
Trying to look at it objectively though, I see a game that may be praised too highly by the casual community and hated too strongly by the competitive one. Brawl was a groundbreaking game in the franchise in several ways, and I think overall it's positive contributions far outweigh the negatives.
First off, you can't talk about Brawl without mentioning Subspace Emissary. This took the bare bones Adventure mode from Melee and turned it into a whole adventure which feels like it's own game, complete with great cinematics and a pretty decent story, especially by fighting game standards. Maybe I praise it too much, but I would say Subspace Emissary is such a good single player fighting game experience that even to this day it remains the best of its kind.
Moving past Subspace Emissary, another major improvement that Brawl made was with 3rd party characters. This was the first smash game to reach outside of the Nintendo roster, and it did so by grabbing two extremely popular characters, especially at the time: Solid Snake and SONIC THE FREAKING HEDGEHOG. Now I'm not a sonic fan at all, but I cannot explain how big of a deal this was back then. I am almost certain this was the first time Sonic and Mario had ever shared a screen, and to see them both in Smash brothers of all places was insane. This then opened the flood gates and allowed us to get a wealth of 3rd party characters in future games.
Unfortunately, this is not a perfect game, and that's where we have to talk about the competitive side of the game. Let's start with the most obvious flaw: tripping. This is a random mechanic that makes your character sometimes trip when they move in certain ways (I think it was turning around?). This might still be the least competitive idea to be put into fighting games. Let me tell you as someone who's experienced it firsthand, nothing is worse than paying money to travel and compete then get knocked out because your character randomly tripped into an attack to get KO'd.
Unfortunately, tripping was not the only issue. This game's competitive balance is a dumpster fire. There's chaingrabs and infinites as far as the eye can see. Hitboxes are wildly unfair from one character to the next. And of course... there's Metaknight. One of the craziest characters ever developed for any real fighting game. This character was just the best at everything in this game. He had the best moves, he was the fastest, he had the most range, he had the best recovery, he abused all glitches better than anyone else, he could combo the best, kill the earliest, survive the longest... name anything in this game and Metaknight did it better. It got to the point where metaknight was winning over 90% of tournaments WORLDWIDE. Competitively this game was a mess, and it's why the competitive smash community has generally shunned this game and why its mere existence revived Smash Bros Melee.
All in all though, this was a great game and an important part of smash history. Just maybe don't play it for its competitive aspects.