Guess this a better time than ever to do a second log for a game I’ve put thousands of hours into huh.

There’s a lot to like about Smash Ultimate I feel. Like, a LOT. The enormous character roster for starters, there’s so much attention to detail packed in and it’s absolutely insane that they just up and got every fighter from every previous Smash game EVER to return, all in one package. I know the game is well over 4 years old at this point, but it’s still surreal looking back at how enormous this character roster is, and with a few major exceptions, the character balance is pretty decent as well. I do have a couple of gripes about how the echo fighters are handled, and certain spots on the roster in general (Byleth does not deserve to be here sorry), but it’s still very impressive nonetheless. The pace of matches is incredibly quick, not quite Melee speed again but it’s much MUCH better than Smash 4. In fact, there’s a lot of mechanical changes that I honestly hope continuously make a return from this game to potential future entries, like the ability to dash cancel into tilt attacks for instance. I especially get a kick out of the dramatic zoom in after dealing a finishing blow on the last stock.

And yet…despite all these improvements, Smash Ultimate still manages to completely bork aspects that were perfectly fine beforehand. What in God’s name did they do to the platforms in this game? It’s so much more irritating to drop through them. I’ve never had an issue with platforms in any other Smash game, only this one. The removal of the ability to cross past a shielding opponent while dashing also sucks, removes a lot of interesting mix up potential. And of course, despite being an incredibly fast paced game, Smash Ultimate is absolutely throttled by the ridiculous amount of input lag, apparently it’s by far the most amount of input lag in any Smash game and I genuinely don’t understand why this is the way it is. It’s doable of course, it’s not game ruining by any means, but it’s still very problematic.

While I do have problems with the main gameplay, the other modes Ultimate contains are even more problematic in comparison. The game is back to being as content packed as previous titles but a lot of this content feels so much lesser. I do like the new Classic mode though, every fighter gets a unique route with different fights referencing the games they originate from, even if the one black hole minigame never really changes. It’s a true highlight and probably my favorite iteration of Classic mode in all the Smash games. Everything else though? Bleeeeh. All of the charm of All Star mode is completely sapped away as it’s now just a reskinned Multiman Smash mode. Master and Crazy orders are gone, no target smash mode, home run contest had to be added into the game via an update. The stage builder is far more robust and creative than the one on Wii U (which was already pretty great too) so that’s nice; though I don’t really get why the game allows touch screen controls for Stage Builder but it completely removed the ability to doodle on the pictures you took from Smash 4 and replaced the feature with a bunch of tacky filters. But a lot of the downgrades come, ironically, in the new mode the game introduces: Spirits.

So the trophies are completely gone and like…I kiiiiiinda understand why. Modeling thousands upon thousands of 3D models with an immense amount of variety is extremely time consuming, I get it. But I’m sorry, the replacement for this system was just not it. Spirits are, essentially, glorified stickers from Brawl, giving your character stat boosts and specific perks. Spirit Battles where the Spirit you face mimicks the Spirit that’s attached to it in a specific way as a reference to the original game is probably the biggest compliment I can give this system. There’s just no satisfaction in collecting these things, it’s so hollow and soulless, even worse considering they didn’t even bother to add flavor text to the Spirits you collect. Earning them as a reward in Classic mode feels so much less rewarding than trophies, and you can’t even have the fun game modes that trophies came with like that coin shooting game in Brawl, or the Trophy Rush in 4. You can’t even rearrange Spirits and take funny pictures like you could with 4.

However, the biggest offense with Spirits comes with the official story mode Ultimate contains: World of Light. Though if I’m being honest, “story mode” is really pushing it. The intro cutscene is incredibly cool and sets the tone really well, but afterwards any attempt at storytelling disappears into nothingness. Afterwards it’s the same drawn out routine of Spirit Battle after Spirit Battle, rinse and repeat for around 20 or so hours and that’s all she wrote. There’s some interesting boss fights both new and returning from previously, but there’s nothing to this mode at all, it’s a slog to get through. Subspace Emissary this ain’t, and I didn’t even LIKE Subspace Emissary in the first place.

However, I feel the biggest, most unforgivable offense Ultimate has ever put out is its sorry excuse for an online mode. It is bar none the worst online mode in any Smash game, and considering I’m also talking about Brawl in this conversation, that is admittedly very impressive they managed to mess up this astronomically bad. So for starters, the connection issues still run rampant as Nintendo’s online infrastructure is a complete and utter joke to put it lightly. Lag and stutter are incredibly frequent, and considering that this game already has a baked in problem with input lag outside of online this leads to an absolutely miserable experience, and oftentimes I got kicked from searching for a match because the game straight up failed to connect with another person’s console, and because of that I also got PUNISHED for it by the game not allowing me to play online battles at all because of how bad the connection was. Being punished for something that the game is flat out incompetent in dealing with is one thing, but trust me, that’s not even the half of it. You know how in the previous game they separated the more “hardcore” mode from the casual mode (For Glory and For Fun)? In this game however, you chose a sort of “preference” to the format you want and the game attempts to “match” you with other people with the same preference. This is already bad enough as is, but what makes it worse is that the game almost NEVER matches you with the format you want. You can prefer no items battlefield 3 stocks 5 minute timer all you want, but the game will still insist on matching you with people who have items out the wazoo piling everywhere and who have the final smash meter turned on. This is why Elite Smash doesn’t feel special, because you can just cheese your way to Elite Smash by tricking people into being matched into your items on final smash enabled one stock garbage. We had a perfectly functional (if flawed) setup in the previous game man, what happened here?? And if this wasn’t bad enough even STILL, all of the interactivity that For Glory brought with it (due to NNIDs and the name tags) is stripped as well, leaving each new encounter with a random to be a hollow unfulfilling sterile experience. I understand removing the ability to change name tags as that was heavily abused for trash talk and, even really obscene offensive toxicity to be hurled at you, but with this removed I feel like even though I’m fighting another human on the other side, it doesn’t FEEL like I am. The smash tag system is also a really lame replacement but that’s going into me missing Miiverse more than anything else lol. Even with that aside, why also remove the ability to…taunt? Was that really an issue that needed to be addressed as well? There’s also no opportunity to swap characters either; once you pick one, you’re stuck with it for the entirety that you’re matched with a person. Again, all of these problems were kinda already addressed in the previous game, why fix what isn’t broken?? I do really like online arenas, but the limited capacity really hurts it in the long run. Online in general is just a complete disaster, almost nothing positive I can say about it which is astounding. I dunno how you manage to take a feature that has historically sucked across every Smash game and make it astronomically worse, but lo and behold, Smash Ultimate found a way.

There are a million other gripes I could list as well, like how the costume changing feature lags and takes forever to render what costume you want to select (still isn’t fixed), how Sonic is horribly underrepresented with no new fighter additions, terrible stage selection, and the same boring repetitive moveset he’s had since his rushed introduction in Brawl despite being the longest running 3rd party veteran Smash has had, but I’ll end it here. Make no mistake, I do like this game. I play it a…rather unhealthy amount and I even play it competitively and have entered a couple of tournaments, but the amount of dumb irritating and questionable changes really do bring this game down. I dunno if what the next Smash game will be, IF there will be a next Smash game at all (pretty sure there will be one lol), but at this point…I wouldn’t mind wanting to see a new one come out soon.