Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 for a competitive platform fighter fan is a game with a solid foundation within a sea of negatives, many of which hold it back from any kind of greatness. It’s a decent attempt at what I’d assume many of us would consider a difficult genre to break into, and it deserves credit for that; however, its shortcomings merit highlighting, as they are lessons to be learned should other developers look to enter the arena.
NASB 2 shines when it’s faithful to the source material of nostalgic children's cartoons it’s based on—taking many well-known moments or stills from the show and confidently recreating that through a character’s moveset—many of these moves being unique, while others pay homage to other popular platform fighters. It’s a joy to see the attention to detail paid not only to the characters but to the fans of these characters as well. While this is a fantastic effort and has likely been a draw for many of us to the game, this scrutinous level of complexity does not extend to the gameplay as a whole.
The game’s competitive influence takes a lot of inspiration from the systems and mechanics of the Super Smash Bros. series, namely Melee. While this sounds great on paper to those who are fans of Melee’s ‘lightning in a bottle’ gameplay, implementing these mechanics into a cohesive and new take on the platform fighter genre is an incredible task.
Many of the classic mechanics return, such as wavedashing, dash-dancing, shield-dropping, and ledge-dashing, to name a few. However, simply including these mechanics is not enough to appease their target audience of platform-fighting veterans. This is why liberty has been taken to introduce the slime mechanic, borrowing traditional fighter resource management ideas and meshing them together with Melee’s systems. Overall, I would say this is one of the more successful endeavors when it comes to the addition of mechanics, but it doesn’t come without its flaws.
Slime adds an extra layer to the gameplay of NASB 2, encouraging players to make impactful decisions while juggling the resources they’re attempting to build. Many of these decisions feel burdened by the lack of polish in specific regards to hitboxes/hurtboxes and some frustrating character design choices. On their own, many of the characters look like loyal representations of their Nickelodeon designs, but when pitted against one another, the cracks begin to show.
The creative combo feature of Melee is one aspect the game has failed to successfully capture—many combos involving linear routes without expressive choice, combo DI being meaningless in a lot of circumstances—creating an unfortunate rippling negativity not only through the combo game but defensively too. I assume the intent behind this was to offset the addition of defensive slime mechanics such as Slime Burst, but it ended up not balancing out well.
The risk and reward of edgeguarding have also been skewed towards a more ‘Ultimate’ favoured approach, albeit not as drastic as SSBU. Still, due to the strong recoveries and mixups many, if not all, of the cast have access to, going off-stage isn’t always going to be as beneficial as controlling the stage would be. This one, I would argue, is more subjective, as personally, I don’t like it this way and enjoy the lethal nature of edgeguarding in Melee, but others may prefer the slower burn approach of NASB.
Speaking of slower burn, I find this sentiment manages to leak its way into many of the game’s matchups, and I suggest this is due to some of the flawed character design decisions. Jenny is a notable example of a ‘Zoner’ archetype that can slow the game down to a crawl at times. Slow gameplay isn’t necessarily the flaw in this case; in fact, slow gameplay can be quite rewarding when done properly, but when it comes to Jenny, she has a small hurtbox, many projectiles, and a ridiculously strong recovery. When these factors come together, it creates an uninteractive experience, and it’s not exclusive to Jenny; many of the games’ matchups can lead to time, which, in my opinion, is incredibly unhealthy for a competitive game.
(I think it’s worth noting that many of my opinions are not in a tournament setting but via the game’s ranked mode, and my critique does not pertain to that context).
Lastly, the final thing I would like to point out about NASB 2 is its huge bug problem. Since the inception of the game and, consequently, every patch, some minor and game-breaking bugs have been present in the game, leading to a severe lack of polish. This has influenced my general opinion on the game, despite many attempts to overlook it, but it is simply too continuous and apparent.
Overall, despite many of the discrepancies I have with it, I still have over 100+ hours with NASB 2, and I enjoyed the majority of them. However, the staying power begins to falter the more time I invest, with only the promise of DLC characters fueling my declining interest. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is an above-average platform fighter that is worth playing for a competitive fan, but if you’re a fan of wine, don’t buy milk.
NASB 2 shines when it’s faithful to the source material of nostalgic children's cartoons it’s based on—taking many well-known moments or stills from the show and confidently recreating that through a character’s moveset—many of these moves being unique, while others pay homage to other popular platform fighters. It’s a joy to see the attention to detail paid not only to the characters but to the fans of these characters as well. While this is a fantastic effort and has likely been a draw for many of us to the game, this scrutinous level of complexity does not extend to the gameplay as a whole.
The game’s competitive influence takes a lot of inspiration from the systems and mechanics of the Super Smash Bros. series, namely Melee. While this sounds great on paper to those who are fans of Melee’s ‘lightning in a bottle’ gameplay, implementing these mechanics into a cohesive and new take on the platform fighter genre is an incredible task.
Many of the classic mechanics return, such as wavedashing, dash-dancing, shield-dropping, and ledge-dashing, to name a few. However, simply including these mechanics is not enough to appease their target audience of platform-fighting veterans. This is why liberty has been taken to introduce the slime mechanic, borrowing traditional fighter resource management ideas and meshing them together with Melee’s systems. Overall, I would say this is one of the more successful endeavors when it comes to the addition of mechanics, but it doesn’t come without its flaws.
Slime adds an extra layer to the gameplay of NASB 2, encouraging players to make impactful decisions while juggling the resources they’re attempting to build. Many of these decisions feel burdened by the lack of polish in specific regards to hitboxes/hurtboxes and some frustrating character design choices. On their own, many of the characters look like loyal representations of their Nickelodeon designs, but when pitted against one another, the cracks begin to show.
The creative combo feature of Melee is one aspect the game has failed to successfully capture—many combos involving linear routes without expressive choice, combo DI being meaningless in a lot of circumstances—creating an unfortunate rippling negativity not only through the combo game but defensively too. I assume the intent behind this was to offset the addition of defensive slime mechanics such as Slime Burst, but it ended up not balancing out well.
The risk and reward of edgeguarding have also been skewed towards a more ‘Ultimate’ favoured approach, albeit not as drastic as SSBU. Still, due to the strong recoveries and mixups many, if not all, of the cast have access to, going off-stage isn’t always going to be as beneficial as controlling the stage would be. This one, I would argue, is more subjective, as personally, I don’t like it this way and enjoy the lethal nature of edgeguarding in Melee, but others may prefer the slower burn approach of NASB.
Speaking of slower burn, I find this sentiment manages to leak its way into many of the game’s matchups, and I suggest this is due to some of the flawed character design decisions. Jenny is a notable example of a ‘Zoner’ archetype that can slow the game down to a crawl at times. Slow gameplay isn’t necessarily the flaw in this case; in fact, slow gameplay can be quite rewarding when done properly, but when it comes to Jenny, she has a small hurtbox, many projectiles, and a ridiculously strong recovery. When these factors come together, it creates an uninteractive experience, and it’s not exclusive to Jenny; many of the games’ matchups can lead to time, which, in my opinion, is incredibly unhealthy for a competitive game.
(I think it’s worth noting that many of my opinions are not in a tournament setting but via the game’s ranked mode, and my critique does not pertain to that context).
Lastly, the final thing I would like to point out about NASB 2 is its huge bug problem. Since the inception of the game and, consequently, every patch, some minor and game-breaking bugs have been present in the game, leading to a severe lack of polish. This has influenced my general opinion on the game, despite many attempts to overlook it, but it is simply too continuous and apparent.
Overall, despite many of the discrepancies I have with it, I still have over 100+ hours with NASB 2, and I enjoyed the majority of them. However, the staying power begins to falter the more time I invest, with only the promise of DLC characters fueling my declining interest. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is an above-average platform fighter that is worth playing for a competitive fan, but if you’re a fan of wine, don’t buy milk.