#smash bros tutorial

[shawnthebro]

If we can play the game, we should be able to exit the game!

[helladventurers]

Got some more Zooey practice in, I'm almost done practicing her combos 😤👏 I'm having a bit of trouble with the timing of some of them, but I feel like with enough practice I can get good at pulling them off consistently

[phoenixcatch7]

Things tloz has not been consistent about that you'd think it would be:

Everything. Buckle up.

The hero being called Link. He's Link in the same way Frisk is the character. The player chooses the name in every SINGLE game up until botw, and that only happened because of the voice acting. It's just shorthand for the link between the player and the game.

The princess being called zelda. Wind waker, she was called Tetra.

The princess being in the game at all (links awakening)

There only being one princess (the hero of either hyrule or legend had two)

There only being one hero (hyrule warriors had three and also linkle)

The princess not being a playable character (hw, aoc, and upcoming EoW. There's also non canon games like cadence and smash bros).

The master sword being in the game (four swords, minish cap, triforce heroes (?), ooa/oos only have it as a linked game post story unlockable, zelda 1,2 and la it was the magical sword).

Ganon being in the game (basically the exact same as the last point minus the 1st 3 games)

Ganon being a bad guy (hyrule warriors and generously, GENEROUSLY aoc, where he's playable as an ally post game).

The master sword being needed to defeat ganon (in botw aoc and totk the master sword is entirely optional, and totally inverts the traditional 'zelda weakens and link deals the final blow').

Link being the main character (upcoming eow which I'm cackling about)

The existence of humanity

Link being in green (abotk made him blue :( and took his hat >:((().

Zelda being in pink (abotk)

Zelda being blonde (she's anything from blonde to brown to ginger)

Link being blonde (tp and lttp (why is he pink?! Zelda is blonde! There's brown haired people! Why neon pink??)

Gerudo having rounded ears (up until abotk)

Nintendo making the games (hw and aoc, cadence lol)

Teen/kid link (totk is the only Link over the age of 19)

Link having a companion (it's pretty evenly split)

Zelda having the companion (aoc and eow)

Link having two companions (hw with basically all of them)

The nature of humanity vs hylians

The story taking place in hyrule (literally so many... La, mm, ooa, oos, technically ww, technically ss, half points for lttp and lbw, tfh)

Just the one triforce (lbw)

Just three separate pieces of the triforce (ww)

Any triforce at all (okay this one is complicated bcz depiction/hand marks/Actual Wish Granting Triforce but hylia alone knows where the triforce was in abotk. I'm counting ooa/oos because opening cutscene. La has zilch and I'm pretty sure mc too.)

Literally any religion has come and gone INCLUDING IRL CHRISTIANITY

Knowledge of the triforce

Knowledge of hylia (it's literally just ss abotk and maaaybe lbw)

The existence of hylia (^^^

The general populace being useless (totk) (that's it)

Link being left handed (in ss and abotk he's right handed. Tp is 50% right handed because they flipped the controls (and world) for the wii).

Link being able to swim at the start of the game (only in the 3d games minus lbw and la remake)

Link succeeding in his quest (botw) (I'm not counting failed hero oot because it's a meta attempt at a working timeline)

At least a tiny bit of time travel (loz 1/2, la, fs, lbw, lttp, botw...)

The hylian shield (only appears in the 3d games! (-la remake and ww and mm))

Link using a bow! (surprisingly 50/50)

Epona!! (literally just oot mm and tp. Botk she's noncanon amiibo and she's in mc but doesn't belong to Link T-T.)

A tutorial (varying subtlety, yes, but there's a difference between the great plateau and a 'press x to open menu :D' prompt five minutes into the game while a knight is trying to kill you (lttp)).

Link having the hero's spirit (ww. I personally disagree but hey)

The hero being a hylian! (totk hero's aspect)

Sleepy boy link (botk he has power naps On Lock)

Link being masc presenting (linkle, hw)

The symbolic elements (3/5/7 combos, lightning/ice/water/fire/wind triforce, boar/owl/dragon/whatever tf)

Things tloz has been consistent about in every game:

Link being a gnc short king (tp is the beefiest he ever got and that was 4'9 male gymnast build at BEST).

Him not telling anyone anything important ever.

[tailsthetheorist]

BREAKING NEWS from the Fox Network (No, not that one):

Tails has been spotted trying to hack the moon for more gravity so Shadow can finally slow down. Meanwhile, Sonic was caught speeding through a Chili Dog drive-thru and yelled, “Keep the change, ya filthy Eggman!”

Knuckles still doesn't know how Wi-Fi works. Please do not attempt to explain it to him.

Rouge has reportedly stolen the entire economy. Again.

Rumor alert!

Tails might be building a mech suit powered entirely by G.U.N. computers and leftover ring energy. Code name? Project “YEETv2.” Sources say it can beat Shadow at Smash Bros. on 1 stock. Confirmed? No. Funny? Absolutely.

Meme of the day:

Tails holding a screwdriver

Caption: “Trust me bro, I watched one YouTube tutorial and now your GameCube’s a spaceship.”

Fan Theory Corner:

Did you know? If you play Tails’ theme backward while standing on one leg, and shout "CHAOS COOKIES," you’ll summon a ghost copy of Metal Sonic… but he just critiques your fashion sense.

[mobgabriel]

foils

ok so before echoes of wisdom came out Lin had said that she planned on making aurora as a foil to flora, wich is something that makes sense as both are zeldas who spend a long time sleeping/containing an ancient evil and return in a post apocaliptic scenario... but i swear that someone at Nintendo is reading lin's fanfic because echoes of wisdom fits waay to perfectly with lin's plans for aurora to be completely acidental especially because it makes Echo and flora perfect foils to each other

one of the big plot points in pre great calamity is that flora cant really access her divine powers that come from her royal lineage despite trying everything in her power in order to do so, only managing to use said power to barely save link when its too late and hyrule cant be saved anymore wich relegates her into damage controll as she uses herself to seal ganon

on the other hand Echo's story is packed with relevant religious symbolism and her power from the very beggining of echoes of wisdom, Echo's first and most famous weapon is the tri rod wich draws its power directly from the tri force like the tris allowing her to create echoes, the very first thing Echo does when finishing the tutorial is to change into a disguise behind a statue of hylia wich if it wasnt literal you could probably turn into a metaphor for hylia shedding her divinity in order to incarnate as sun/the first zelda, and in her first adventure she is(as far as i'm aware) the first and only character in the franchise to speak directly to the golden godesses, in her second adventure(Cadence of hyrule) her spellcasting prowess is expanded even further as she is able to cast 2 of the godess spells from smash bros (nayru's love and din's fire) while most zeldas can only acomplish one and echo of the past shows her breaking 2 of Bind's limitations from her games being able to not only cast it independently from tri but also being able to bind her lifeforce to the magician

the paralels dont even end there, both of their main enemies are what initially seems to be a mindless apocaliptic force who aims to reduce hyrule and the world into nothing(calamity ganon and Null's introduction as a primal force of nothing who wishes to consume all) only to then reveal itself as a far more intelligent and cunning threat (TOTK Ganon and Null's cunning manipulations during EOW)

flora's story begins with her being powerless to stop the looming threat but ends with her being able to reclaim atleast some of her humanity post draconification in order to help link fight ganon when the time comes, with her only growing stronger as the time passes while Echo's story is a fall from grace, she begins as one of(in my opinion the most) powerfull zeldas only to have that taken away from her as she is defeated by what is probably the weakest antagonist in the series

when flora needed the most her powers awakened wich allowed her to save herself and silence and hyrule survived the great calamity, when Echo needed the most her powers failed her(because of a spell but still), despite she being able to reduce the eventual damage by taking her killer down with her her fall still would lead to the worse tragedy in hyrule second only to the great flood

zeldas are from @linderosse wisdomverse, go take a look, she just posted a new chapter from the link's side story

[luzial]

In Overgrown and Roots who would win in a Smash Bros 1v1? This is a dire and serious question

EXCELLENT QUESTION.

First of all let me establish the parameters here: we will be discussing this question as it relates to 2001's Super Smash Bros. Melee because it is the purest expression of Smash Bros, no I am not seeking alternate opinions at this time.

Ellana plays Pikachu. She is not really a gamer but Sera once told her that Pikachu had excellent troll potential and then showed her some of the basics including, most importantly, his down special and his up smash. She vaguely understands that he's strong for edge guarding but has not figured out how or when to do that - at least not yet. She likes Pikachu because he's fast and because spamming his down special is absolutely hilarious to her, in no small part because it pisses off Solas so much.

Solas plays Samus. He tells himself she is an honest character. She is not. He is in denial about the cheese, convincing himself that because she has some abilities that are more difficult to use effectively (abilities which he learned by watching several tutorials on YouTube), that makes spamming her screw attack a reasonable thing to do. His goal is to play her more defensively, but he's just not quite good enough at the game/the character to pull it off as well as he would need to.

Which leads us to the question of the 1v1. The answer is that Solas certainly takes a few stocks initially - or just flat out wins the first few times they play. He becomes overconfident and stops playing defensively, like the YT videos told him to, and that's when things start to go downhill for him. Ellana is a chaos player. She is hitting those lightning strikes every time he goes into the air and gets in close for aggressive up smashes, taking chances she really should not take. Her unpredictability is her strength. It doesn't work for her every time, but they play enough that she begins to consistently take stocks off Solas. The first time she wins it's with a down special and Solas has to walk away for a few minutes to cool down. On the very next round, she hits him with it again. He switches to Link.

Idk who you are anon, or if you could have guessed how specifically you have triangulated my special interests, but congratulations and goodnight.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

I think one of the determines of the way FE is set up is with the support system. While it's a fun optional thing to do for mini-stories and sometimes stats. It's optional. something you don't have to do. Meaning that all these little stories are easily skippable, meaning that someone's understanding of a character can't be the same because you know this person isn't 100% S ranks with ever possible written support.

I find it the reason why most popular characters in main stream ARE main story related. People love Ninian because she's directly effecting the plot. Felix is a more recent example, being such a heavy foil against Dimirit the entire story. Bernnadetta getting this because she is part of an unskippable tutorial quest to get people drugs, making people peak interest into her story. We like Ike because of Smash bros. Robin while having less lines in game compared to chrom is more popular because ITS YOU!!!

IDK, wish there was a nicer site then fandom wiki to read through all the supports (I know Serenise Forest is there but some games don't have all the supports transcribe there) or FE is somehow able to weave the charcters more into the story for a bit longer then just the first inroductery chapter to help peak player intrest into learning more about the charcters..

.

[maaskuline]

Headcanon: Johnny would actually be pretty good at fighting games (including Smash Bros) and beat 'em ups like Streets of Rage. Don't need to do a lot of reading for them because they're more about the gameplay, and he'd probably give Carl a good run for his money.

YESSS I COULD SO SEE THAT !!

any fast-paced games that you can reasonably skip the tutorials for and just start going WHACKY on as much as you want, he'd definitely do pretty well with those for sure!! he's all about the ACTION! B)

[queensharotto]

Twisted Wonderland Headcanons: Who would the first years main in Smash Bros Ultimate

Note: These headcanons predate Ortho becoming a first year.

Context: Years ago on Instagram after seeing someone I follow do Smash Mains for characters, I decided to do my own, but this time with TWST characters. I decided to chose the fighters based on the character's appearance, personality or abilities. Let's go over them shall we?

If you have suggestions for future Smash Main x TWST Headcanons, let me know

Ace Trappola and Robin (Red): Simple, both wear red and have wind based abilities (i.e Ace's Wind Magic and Robin's Up Special, Elwind)

Deuce Spade and Dark Pit (Blue): Much like how Dark Pit serves as Pit's rival in Kid Icarus Uprising, Deuce serves as both a foil and rival to Ace. Dark Pit is also known to be hostile and aggressive, much like how Deuce secretly wishes to keep his delinquent like behavior. Finally, Dark Pit's Down Special, Guardian Orbitars could function similarly to Deuce's recently introduced unique magic, Bet the Limit, which allows him to throw another person's magic right back at them, kinda like a reflect based attack in Smash.

Jack Howl and Wolf (Brown): Both are wolves, but the former can transform into one.

Epel Felmier and Isabelle (Purple): l'm aware that I could have chosen a more masculine character for Epel because he desires to be viewed as a man, but l wanted a character that could reflect his desire to not be underestimated, hence why I picked Isabelle. Both may look cute and adorable but it's not a wise choice to underestimate someone just because they look cute.

Sebek Zigvolt and Pikachu (Green): Easy, both have connections to electricity. Sebek is meant to be the personification of Maleficent's lightning based abilities and Pikachu is an electric type Pokémon.

Grim and Kirby (Gray): Yes, I could have chosen Pikachu for Grim, both I feel Kirby and Grim have a bit more in common personality and ability wise. First off, both have a fondness for food and second (Spoiler Theories Ahead) both have the ability to obtain the abilities of their enemies. Kirby inhales enemies to copy their abilities and Grim consumes Overblot remain crystals and it is speculated by some fans that the creature fought in the RPG style tutorial of Twisted Wonderland is Grim once he succumbs to the Overblot crystals power.

[tapioca-puddingg]

The Guardians of Light and Content Creation

More headcanons that no one asked for :p

Sora ❤️

plays fornite, minecraft and roblox

plays with Ven and Lea

i think horror games might be too scary for him but he tries anyway

tries to get Riku and Kairi to play with him but they ain't havin it

occasionally enjoys RPGs too

calls Riku when he gets stuck on a hard part

sometimes plays fighting games with Riku. He always loses

Riku 💙

I can't see him doing content, I feel like he'd be more of a private person

although i feel like he might show up in Sora's streams from time to time

he's the person Sora calls when he gets stuck on a hard part

Sora also calls him to get his reaction to certain things. if not in person, then thru discord

also plays fighting games and Mario Kart with Sora and Kairi sometimes. He wins almost every time, Sora accuses him of cheating

Kairi 🌸

as for gaming, i can see her streaming rhythm games, like Project Diva

also plays Terraria

plays Animal Crossing with Xion

sometimes plays Smash and Mario Kart with Sora and Riku. she's gotten a couple wins, but Riku is surprisingly good at the game and wins a lot

very down to earth and is sweet with her chat

Bonus: Namine 🤍

artsy fartsy

does art streams

maybe art tutorial videos

likes drawing the Guardians of Light

she takes requests from the GoL too

i can also see her learning to paint

also plays lofi hip-hop

Roxas🍦

didn't even know what games were until Lea showed him

now he's hooked

likes JRPGs and MMOs

convinced Lea to play FF14 with him

he's a hardcore raider. he gets very intense

stays up til the wee hours of the night until Lea and Isa force him to stop playing and go to bed

joins Lea and Xion for meme reactions

Xion 🐚

​i can see her streaming or doing videos of chill games like Animal Crossing or the Sims

​has lofi hip-hop playing in the background

​joins Lea and Roxas for meme reactions

also likes playing party games with the squad

Lea 🔥

​Horror games and asymmetrical horror games (Dead by Daylight, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc)

also ​Lethal Company with Ven, Roxas and Isa

​he tends to scream and freak out. Isa gets frustrated with him in-game

​Everyone else laughs at him (hey what are friends for)

​meme reaction videos occasionally

​plays with funny mods

Bonus: Isa ��

Similar to Riku, he doesn't create content, but he does play games sometimes

​also enjoys listening to podcasts and reading

​will tune in to Lea and Ven's streams on occasion

​is amused by Lea's screaming when he's not playing with him

​plays games with Lea and Ven

​does not understand Roxas and Lea's memes

Aqua ❄️

i think it's canon that she likes to bake, so i think she could run a cooking channel or a cooking blog

she'll have terra or eraqus come in at the end to taste test the food

canonically is into arts and crafts, so maybe she'll make videos about jewelry-making and 3D printing

i can also see her making crystal bracelets

maybe she could run her own online shop?

Terra 🤎

defo a gym bro

​does workout tutorials

​does those videos where he shows what he eats in a day

​canonically is into woodworking so he could do content surrounding that too

​and 3D printing

​i just think 3D printing is cool okay

​plays Smash with Ven. Things get pretty heated between them

Ventus 💚

also streams minecraft, roblox and fortnite

also Lethal Company

also likes Sonic

tries to get Terra to play with him, but those type of games just aren't for him

"You kids and your video games"

Aqua doesnt too much understand it either

plays with Sora, Lea, and Isa

tries to play asymmetrical horror games

plays Smash with Terra. that game might singlehandedly tear their friendship apart

Bonus: Vanitas ☠️

plays online games

CoD, Overwatch, etc

Typical toxic gamer. You don't wanna hear him in lobbies

Has been banned from vc multiple times

None of the GoL wanna play with him lmao

Rip

[shawnthebro]

Sudden Death now only includes eligible characters! Let’s make it happen!

[glassmarcus]

Dragon Quest 4‘s JRPG vibes

So weirdly enough, I had never touched a true Dragon Quest game until this year. Sure I've played the first Dragon Quest Heroes, checked out the Dragon Quest Builders demo, watched like 5 episodes of the Dragon Quest: Adventures of Dai reboot, and played a few matches as The Hero in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, but I never experienced a numbered entry. I’m not sure if you've heard, but Dragon Quest is a bit of a big deal. Even if you don't make full eye contact with the franchise, It's pretty hard to avoid seeing it in your periphery. Dragon Quest was always something that I assumed was up my alley, but I don't want to get sucked in to playing 11 games that aren't all necessarily accessible. So I avoided its gaze. But upon the passing of franchise artist, Akira Toriyama, my attention towards the series became harder to divert.

It was never a question of if I would engage with main line Dragon Quest, but to what degree I would. First of all, its character art is helmed by the GOAT himself, so I was magnetized towards it by default. I'm willing to give everything Toriyama had a hand in a shot. If my Xbox Series S had the ability to play games that aren't Sonic Unleashed, I would have already played Blue Dragon by now. But even beyond wanting to celebrate Toriyama's legacy and appreciating his craft, Dragon Quest was always an inevitability due to its DNA being a part of every Japanese Role Playing Game that came after it. The curiosity is too strong for me to resist.

When the first entry in the series was on sale on the Nintendo Eshop, I pounced at the chance to try it out. My first reaction to this purchase was "Wait, this isn't the NES version". It seemed to be some mobile rerelease of the original game. I didn't research this, I just know in my soul that's what it was. The graphics looked a bit more modern and I assumed there were quality of life additions that would make my journey smoother while still evoking the soul of the original. So I started playing it, and seeing it in motion really caught me off guard. When you combine the constant idle movement of the sprites with the mediocre art, this game becomes profoundly ugly. I was having trouble keeping my dinner down with how ugly it was. I'm talking Greek tragedy where the goddess of beauty gets jealous of someone levels of ugly. My face was scrunched up for the next hour after seeing it. I came to this series because of the art, I wasn't going to subject myself to this much of a downgrade. I had no choice but to accept my loss of 3 dollars and drop the playthrough.

I decided to not trust Dragon Quest 2 and 3 on the Eshop and jump straight to Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen. Still seeking Quality of Life improvements, I gravitated towards the DS remake. And I was elated to see that this version of the game isn't a hideous chimera of conflicting art directions. It looks good for the most part and the sprite art for Toriyama's designs really shine in the battles. The overworld sprites leave a bit to be desired but I'm sure the original wasn't much better in that regard. Again, not researching this at, it’s just a gut feeling I have.

Going into a popular old school JRPGs such as this, I expected to get closer to the roots of the conventions I've come accustomed to. With Dragon Quest 4, it wasn't just the norms that I saw start to blossom, but the more fringe ideas as well. Dragon Quest 4 has a very odd structure. It's set up like a 5 act saga and it adds such grandeur to the whole journey. And what makes it so different is that the first 4 acts are basically nothing but set up. Each act follows a different group of main characters and their own mini adventures. They're vignettes, but they are also well connected in that they increasing build toward the main scenario in act 5. Each story in Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen acts as its own tutorial on how to play a JRPG

Chapter 1 is the base essence of the gameplay loop: Hit creatures that are weaker than you, so that you can get stronger and have more creatures that are weaker than you that you can hit. You play as a knight who can only attack and defend as options. And you won't be defending in this part of the game. It's quite dull, but I will admit there is a satisfaction to just slugging it out with the boss of the chapter after leveling up to the point in which you can do so.

Chapter 2 adds far more to the basics with party management and magic. In this part of the game you follow the adventures of a Tsarevna and her two vassals. I'm not sure how it works in the original, but in this version you have full control over each party member's actions and those actions are far more varied than just attacking. This is where the battles become even slightly interesting as you have to manage party members hp and mp and figure out which roles they will play in fights.

Chapter 3 introduces an important aspect of all RPGs, the economy. This vignette is about a merchant trying to start his own business, and the only way to do that is by completing quest and selling inventory. Gameplay wise, it's similar to chapter 1 as you only control one character without any magic. But the task you do outside of battles are far more complex and require exploration and knowledge of the world.

Chapter 4...doesn't really have a strong identity of its own. You play as 2 sisters who are both magic users so you aren't doing anything particularly new. The only lesson it serves to teach is how vital item use can be mid battle, as that lesson acts as the bouncer for the real game that comes afterwards.

Chapter 5 is where the game opens up for you to fully explore. It takes a hell of a long time to get going, but I respect the structure. It's very similar to how Mother 3 introduces its party members before chapter 4 starts. I have little doubt that Mother 3 derived its structure from Chapters of the Chosen, unless there's some other older RPG that takes this vignette approach. I'm no expert on the roots of RPG history, I really only know the bullet points. Regardless, I love seeing connections of mechanics and tropes throughout time.

I played this game mainly for research purposes and I walked away with many mixed conclusions on it. It was pretty much exactly the experience I sought out. Dragon Quest 4 has Immaculate JRPG vibes. It feels like an adventure where anything can happen and it can only achieve this by being unhinged. A lot of modern RPGs have a fair level curve where you can usually beat any enemy you encounter and can avoid the ones you can't beat. Dragon Quest plays by different rules. Every area of this game is a potpourri of monsters of varied strength and composition. Some encounters might be cake walks, others might be marathons. You'll be fighting a couple of weak healing slimes in one battle and then pulling up to a hardened gang of shamans who can Insta-kill you in the next. It is frustrating, but the friction the game provides does a lot to sell this dangerous, yet wondrous dungeon delving world.

The disorganized balancing is but a small piece to the Dragon Quest puzzle. This opposition to the player is baked into every mechanic in the game. Dragon Quest 4 is game composed almost exclusively out of monkey paws. There are a lot of really strong spells your party members can use against monsters and it adds a lot to strategies you can build in fights. But the down side of this is that enemies can use any of these spells, so those same ones can be used against you. I know spamming sleep magic is effective because I've seen the results on both the sending and receiving end.

And it's not just the spells being symmetrical in availability that acts as a double edged sword. The effects of those spells follow that same internal logic. Spells can miss you seemingly at random, but your spells can just as easily fail. Even the ability to resurrect party members isn't guaranteed on both sides. My favorite example has to be the bounce spell. It reflects spells back at the caster and can be a great counter to magic attacks. It is not however, a good counter to healing magic, as that is also reflected. Characters with this buff cannot be healed sometimes. When you cast bounce, you need to be sure your character doesn't need anymore buffs afterwards and that you have plenty of healing items to use instead. It adds this risk and reward to the spell and ends up being far more interesting than if the spell only worked with damaging spells.

Keeping up to date with the best equipment available is vital to your success in this game, so it's only natural that the most brutal double edge sword can be a literal double edge sword. Cursed items are an RPG staple. Them being present in Chapters of the Chosen is no surprise, but the commitment to the permanency is still appreciated. You will get a debuff if you have a cursed weapon, and you will not be able to unequip them. There may be some way to cleanse the curse, probably at a church or something, but when I encountered it I didn't know how and just had to adapt and accept that my tank would always go last in the turn order.

The adaptation to the brutal old RPG design sensibilities is what makes this game enjoyable. If there was no memorable adversity, I would have just been bored. Modern RPGs, hell, even just slightly later RPGs than this one, have more interesting battle mechanics and satisfying traversal. They don't really need this kind of design to be fun and would probably just get in the way. If Octopath Traveler pulled some of the shit this game pulled, I would have never gotten through it. I know this for certain because the secret final boss feels like some early JRPG bullshit and I never actually beat it because the 60 hours of game prior to that were relatively friction-less. I feel like there's a balance between mechanical smoothness and roughness that I want games to have.

I don't think Dragon Quest 4 comes close to hitting this balance, but I still had fun with it. I don’t know if it is good or bad, but it's funny and charming, which I think are all I really require to like a game. its consistency in its mechanics and indifference to the player feels brutal, but that only strengthens the contrast from the surface level coziness of the setting. That dissonance is where I think the essence of classic JPRGs comes from. If this story had a dark and grim tone, but was mechanically the same, I wouldn't fuck with it. But it's a colorful world filled with goofy Akira Toriyama Monsters. So when I get jumped by a gang of Giant Slimes and get party wiped, I can’t help but smile along with them.

[xb-squaredx]

The Many Missteps of MultiVersus

In 2022 Warner Bros. released a new platform fighter that managed to make quite the splash. MultiVersus, a 2v2 focused free-to-play title, found impressive success after it entered its open beta with well over 10 million players within the first month. The game was praised for its colorful artstyle that blended together characters from all sorts of different mediums, from the Looney Tunes to Gremlins, to the likes of Rick and Morty with Game of Thrones; it was a crossover that seemed like it had potential to rival Nintendo’s own Super Smash Bros. But then just as suddenly as the game arrived on the scene…content dried up, the devs were silent and at the conclusion of a rather underwhelming season two it was announced that the open beta was concluded and would re-launch within a year. This struck many as odd, as the game’s beta period was quite long and featured a multitude of balance patches, new content and characters being added, as well as a plethora of monetization options that certainly made it look like a full release. That year has come and gone, and MultiVersus has re-launched…but something has clearly gone wrong, as we enter a multiverse filled with a multitude of mishaps.

A REGRESSIVE RE-LAUNCH

In the first ten minutes of me booting up the re-launched MultiVersus, I found myself constantly repeating the same question: why was this feature better in the beta? For starters, the tutorial, while a bit more robust with a true level to run through as you’re taught the basics, lacks the advanced tutorials found in the beta. No more ways to learn about directional influence or how certain moves are meant to function. This is especially puzzling when this re-launch added new mechanics, such as the parry and dash attack, so you’d think they’d want to make sure people know they exist! Following this, I went into training mode, but was dismayed to see that you could no longer go into training with every character regardless of having unlocked them. In a world where every fighting game gets DLC and being able to train against them or even see how they play requires buying in, MultiVersus allowing you to “try before you buy” felt really revolutionary and fairly consumer friendly. The same held true for local play, making it a godsend for offline tournaments that would no longer have to rush to unlock everyone in preparation. That BOTH of these features are gone is troubling on its own, especially when you factor in changes to progression and monetization, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

As I went into training mode I noticed that ranked play was present on the menu, but grayed out with a “coming soon” message. The original beta eventually got some form of ranked play briefly before the beta’s shutdown, and to not see it back again is disappointing. There were also a number of options and settings that were either taken out or adjusted from the beta, such as being able to swap the inputs for your basic three-hit combo and your strong attack. I used that feature since I felt the default was a bit awkward, but now I have no choice but to leave it as it is. Training mode no longer lets you change controls, and it seemingly takes longer to swap characters while in that mode. Another puzzling change is that stats from the end of battle are no longer there, such as listing who got the most ringouts or who did the most damage, making it difficult to tell how effective you really were in a fight. You can’t even see which players agree to or decline a rematch, and there’s no longer an option to “toast back” your opponent if they toast you, making it harder to give them props for a good fight. In general the UI is…different, and while somewhat improved it still feels somewhat lacking. You no longer have to move a very slow cursor for individual menu items on console, but there’s still parts of the UI that make it feel like it was made for a keyboard and mouse first and foremost.

Really, I could list out all of these changes all day, and to be fair most beta versions of a game are going to see changes for the full release. But to see so many changes that are basically just whole features being taken out is a concerning first impression. Now, about a week into the game’s re-launch an update has gone out that now allows everyone to play as every character in training mode, though not in local battle. Player First Games has been quick to respond to feedback and are currently attempting to put back in as many of these features as they can…but that kind of begs the question…what were they doing for a full year if this is the finished result?

SACRIFCED AT THE ALTAR OF GREED

An issue this game has had since day one is that Warner Bros. is the publisher, and they’re among the greediest when it comes to Western game publishers. From prioritizing DLC rather than fixing poor PC versions of various Batman Arkham games, to adding in loot boxes to a single player game like Middle Earth: Shadow of War, I knew things weren’t likely to be great. The beta was rife with terrible monetization. They gave you a fair bit of the free currency for characters right away to trick you into thinking the game will be more generous than it actually is, because after all…the first hit is free but once you’re hooked you have to pay for the rest. We had an abundance of costumes costing twenty dollars or more, with characters at seven dollars a pop. I knew that the chances were slim that the monetization would get any better, but I wasn’t really expecting it to get worse.

For starters, characters now cost ten dollars each…at least for the older beta characters. A new character like Joker costs about $12.50. That’s not even getting into the changes to the free currency. In the beta you had Gold, which could be used for characters, perks and a small handful of cosmetics. For this re-launch, they’ve seen fit to cut Gold entirely, but ADDED three new currencies to replace it. There’s a separate currency for perks and a separate one for fighters, with a new “prestige” currency that you only acquire by…getting cosmetics, which then lets you get a small handful of EXCLUSIVE cosmetics. Speaking frankly, it’s disgusting in just how brazenly greedy it all is. Before, you had options of what to spend your hard earned Gold on, and you’d gain some for every match played. Sure, it was a drop in the bucket, but every bit helped. But with these separate but equal currencies you’re far more limited. Once I’ve bought up all the perks I want that perk currency just sits there, useless and unable to be converted into anything else. Same goes for character currency, which also takes way longer to acquire. You only get it for specific events or character mastery, and even then you’ll get like 100 of it at a time, which doesn’t mean much when every character costs THOUSANDS of the stuff. In the beta, characters cost varying amounts of Gold; easy to use characters like Garnet or Taz were cheaper at 1500 Gold, hard characters like Tom & Jerry were 3000 Gold, and everyone else was at 2000. But now you’ll find EVERY character from the beta is 3000 of the character currency, and a new character like Joker costs 6000 of it. I already disliked the idea of pricing characters differently, since it kind of sets them up to be compared. If Joker costs more than everyone else is he just better? For the record, for the past two weeks or so since release I’ve done all my daily and weekly missions and about as much of the PvE stuff as I can, and that’s netted me a little over 11,000 character currency. I’ve gotten one character from the old beta, as well as Joker, leaving me with roughly 2000 currency I can’t do anything with for some time, and knowing future characters are going to cost more I’m more likely to hoard it than anything else. Adding to this, at launch you only earned battlepass XP by doing your daily and weekly missions, severely curbing just how fast you could advance through it. A later patch granted you a comically small amount of XP for a win and even less for a loss, though those amounts were also increased with yet ANOTHER patch a bit later. Nothing’s been done with character currency, meanwhile, so hoarding continues to be the way to go there.

You’ll see people try to defend this, stating that this is just like the good old days where you’d unlock everyone by playing, but the time investment here isn’t comparable at all. A game like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate infamously locked the bulk of its 70+ character roster away, leaving you with only the first game’s 8 initial fighters, but it took me way less time to unlock the entirety of that game’s roster than it has to get TWO characters in MultiVersus. I have it better than many, as I got to retain anyone I unlocked in that beta period. I have roughly half of the roster at this point, but for anyone starting fresh all you get is Shaggy and four rotating characters every week. I remembered when completing the initial beta’s tutorial got me Wonder Woman for free, thinking it was super generous…little did I know we peaked there. In all honesty, the initial closed beta was even more generous so this is the SECOND time they’ve slowed everything down to a crawl. But nowhere is this horrible, manipulative design more apparent than with the PvE mode added here, the Rift.

At first glance, The Rift seems like a lot of fun. A full on campaign mode with mini-games and boss fights, with plenty of ways to modify fights and give you a lot of things to do cooperatively with friends rather than just fight against each other online. But as with everything else here, fun has been sacrificed at the altar of greed. For starters, to get very far in the mode you’ll need to unlock and level up Gems, power-ups you affix to your characters that can have a range of effects. These help to make you stronger and fight back against increasingly tough missions, but you’ll quickly realize how much they drag things down. You see, there’s multiple difficulties for each campaign in a given Rift, and you are outright gated out of certain difficulties if your Gem level isn’t up to snuff. Even then, some fights get so tough at the higher difficulties you might not be able to win without getting your Gem levels up even higher. You have two options to get stronger: you can either go through every mission and complete the various sub missions within, some of which are fairly tedious to do and might require a character or skin (or a specific skin of a specific character) that you don’t have….or you could just slide them some money to juice the Gems that way. So much of the Rift’s progression is designed around a grind that wears you down so you just shell out and make it stop. It’s all about the path of least resistance, and BOY does this game resist you a lot. If you want full completion on a given Rift you’ll have to do almost every submission in every fight. It’s easier if you have a friend with you, as every fight has a submission for doing it with a co-op partner, but if you don’t have a friend to play with you’ll really struggle to fully complete a Rift. The devs even got into some hot water when it was found that later difficulties would have a limited amount of lives you had to budget each day, with the option to buy more lives with real money. They lie through their teeth that this is some bug, despite this being a part of the in-game shop and has dedicated UI elements for it, but even if it was a bug, it certainly fits in with the manipulative design.

It became pretty clear early on that the Rift mode just wasn’t going to do it for me, but you’re forced to contend with it if you want to progress your daily missions among other things. They even have an event going on that will reward you with the next character, The Matrix’s Agent Smith, if you can defeat 20 bosses in Rifts…but that will require a significant amount of time and effort…or money, of course. That would mean doing pretty much every Rift on every difficulty, and later Rifts actually take away one of the easier difficulties, just outright forcing you to contend with the harder versions of these same handful of missions over and over. This could have been a great contender compared to the Smash Bros. single player experiences, but they’ve only succeeded in making a mode I’m loathe to even look at. But hey, even if the monetization is awful, and the new mode is a grindy slog AND this full release is missing tons of features from the beta, as long as the core gameplay is fun this is all worth putting up with….right?

TOO FAST OR TOO SLOW, NEVER JUST RIGHT

The original beta for MultiVersus was fun, but flawed. It had a lot of interesting ideas, but with some shoddy execution. I had hoped that with a year or more to polish things up, the game could at least come back with some kinks ironed out…but what we got instead is practically a different game in some ways. For starters, the beta was notable for being a bit “slippery” for people. You had a great amount of air control and your dodge was fast and easy to spam over and over. So it was difficult to really catch up with opponents and chase them down. Adding to that, many attacks both came out fast and had barely any recovery, meaning you could just keep swinging away with no one able to punish that behavior. This re-launch has slowed the game down considerably…but now it just feels awful to move around. Some of this might be down to taste, but most players seem to agree that something is OFF about the game now. Some have noticed that the input buffer seems ludicrously high, storing inputs for upwards of 30 frames. For reference, Smash Ultimate has a buffer of around 10 frames, and people haaaaaaate how that feels. To be fair here, I think slowing the game down in some respects actually was the right call. There were too many actions in beta MultiVersus that were basically instant and really hard to punish. Finn could throw out a gem and instantly teleport over to it, as an example. Finn’s infamous backpack spin and Taz's side special spin were also notoriously hard to deal with as if you dodged them they’d recover and be able to do it again before you could stop them. The online for the beta also got…really bad at times, with characters constantly teleporting around and acting weird due to instability. They’ve allegedly upgraded the netcode for this game, and while I still see a fair variety of issues (such as frequent desynchs), the online experience DOES seem better. A slower game makes it easier to deal with stronger moves, while also making the online experience smoother….but the problem is that they didn’t stop there.

(Credit to MadMikeYT on Reddit)

In addition to slowing the game down so much, they also increased the size of every character by a good deal, all without changing the sizes of stages at all. The camera is also zoomed in a lot more than it used to, making things seem even more claustrophobic, especially on certain stages. But I think the single worst change here was the addition of FAR more hitstun to virtually every single move in the game. All of this combined makes for a game that’s incredibly different in feel and pace. Beta MultiVersus was slippery, making it hard to run someone down and start your offensive, but the full release of MultiVersus is a sluggish time where you’re in constant danger of being stuck in a near-infinite loop that’ll lead to your death.  As a result of this, 2v2 matches feel like crapshoots, where you could just constantly get ping ponged around and suddenly have a high damage percentage seconds into a match. 1v1s run the risk of being locked into long combos that can lead to early kills too. With the more recent patches, they have attempted to look into these issues a bit, such as reducing the hitstun in 1v1s only, but also changing a number of moves in an attempt to stop all of the infinite loops and force people to get more creative with combos. That said, they still have a lot of work to do.

On that note with these patches, the balance is clearly lacking this early on. I’m not a competitive player by any means so I can only say so much about it, but the consensus seems to be that the game is still a bit of a mess, not really an improvement from the beta. Certain characters seemingly got touched up and greatly improved like Taz or Black Adam, while characters like Velma got completely gutted. Curiously, some of the reported best characters in the game like Bugs, Harley and Wonder Woman, are barely touched despite so many other characters clearly needing more work to bring them up to par. I’m still baffled at how this game has tried to balance moves with cooldowns in a very uneven way. As an example, Wonder Woman’s lasso had a cooldown in the beta, despite it not being THAT powerful, and then it was removed for the full release….and now it’s back again after the first patch. Which is it? Why does Velma’s down special have a nearly TWO MINUTE cooldown when the buff she achieves with it doesn’t last more than a few seconds? There’s also the matter of the Iron Giant, who was found to have tons of infinites and exploits, leading to him being taken offline for well over a week before returning. Now, I don’t expect any fighting game to ever be perfectly balanced, especially at launch, but for things to be so bad you have to bring an entire character (that people might have paid MONEY for) offline for several days again begs the question…why did this game release in this state?

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

At this point, MultiVersus has been out for a few weeks, with a few patches thrown out to address some issues, with more along the way. I’m sure with time bugs will be addressed and certain features will be added that were missing. Player First Games have been pretty up front that they ran out of time with this re-launch and had to prioritize certain things to meet the deadline. The upgrade from Unreal Engine 4 to 5 is also likely contributing to some of the problems in this game. I’m not a programmer but I can assume performing an engine switch in just a year’s time is a tall order for any studio, let alone a smaller, less experienced one.

I want to make clear that I’m not going after anyone from Player First Games. The ones that are in the trenches doing testing and bug fixing and putting their all into designing characters are just doing their jobs to the best of their ability. I’d never accuse anyone here of being lazy or phoning things in. I truly think this dev team wants to make the best game they can, but they are also saddled with a publisher that is known for screwing over games with their greed, not to mention the whole of Warner Bros./Discovery being on fire right now and having to cancel projects for tax write offs and trying to shake off debt. I can only imagine the issues going on behind the scenes that the devs are forced to endure when they just want to make a fun fighting game. I’m sure that no one is more frustrated with the state of this game than the people working on it day and night.

That all being said though, this is still a game that people have spent money on. A game that people are trying to compete in professionally. Just because I can be understanding of the circumstances surrounding this game that doesn’t really change the fact that this full release is littered with bugs, predatory design and gameplay changes that severely impact my enjoyment. I’m sure others are in a similar boat; I WANT this game to succeed, but I also don’t want to make excuses for it. Time will tell if Player First Games can stomp out some issues and keep a decent content stream going for this game, or if people will get burned out or impatient and just move onto something else. With a new Nintendo system on the horizon, that just means a new Smash Bros. game is a matter of “when” and not “if.” There’s also more competition with games like Nickelodeon All Star Brawl 2 or the upcoming Rivals of Aether 2 that’ll be competing for the attention of platform fighter fans everywhere, so…the clock is ticking. That’s kind of the rub with live service games; you only have so much time you can dedicate to them and there’s SO much competition. If something better comes along, people WILL flock to it. The always-online nature of this game also worries me with the fact that one day Warner Bros. could just flip a switch and take it offline forever. Hell, they’ve already done that once! I think there’s still time to improve this game and maybe down the line they can redeem themselves…but this is already their second chance and I’m not sure they’ve done anything to warrant a third.

Until next time,

-B

[originemesis]

@metaladam xxx

" Ha please babe! I'm like? The pater families! Everyday I wake up and have a huge pile of women laying on top of me that I need to get through."

"I have like? Fucking water bottles filled with vagina juice bro. It just sucks it dries so soon. When I walk by the ladies they lose their minds. Pull out your dick right now, lets put them side by side! Ill need to take a bit though, don't wanna slap the moon."

"So what you're saying is- they dry up before you can chug them all, huh? Skill issue. I can smash five whole bottles of cunt water and chase it with eight shots of titty milk and a plate of chips ahoy right after, no probs!" That right there is definitely a knocking back titty milk hand gesture and not a dick grasp and thrash tutorial.

"AHAHA?! Take all the time you need to rub one up, buttercup. We got plenty of time to wait while mine's careening out past Uranus."

[blazehedgehog]

Thoughts on Majora’s Mask it’s Probaly the most different game out of the OOT style Zelda games it’s also a game that Probaly should’ve been a disaster with the time limit they had but most of what makes it engaging for me was created because it was rushed

Majora's Mask is a game I wanted to experience but never have. Fell into that nefarious category of "When I have time" and that time never seems to manifest. I put like an hour into the N64 version once, like, more than ten years ago. I'm not sure I ever got through the Deku Scrub tutorial.

Nowadays I'd want to play it on 3DS, but that thing has entered The Phantom Zone where I'd want to play it on a New 3DS (since it takes advantage of that), which I guess specifically means a New 3DS XL, which are extremely expensive because scalpers do the thing that they do with newly retired things and are charging $300+ for something that should be, realistically, $75. Thanks, Rick & Morty.

I realize I can probably emulate it nowadays but 3DS emulation is kind of all over the place in my opinion. There's lots of little gaps in what Citra supports, to the point where first party titles like Star Fox 64 3D have massive performance problems. I haven't checked in a while but I remember New Game+ in Super Mario 3D Land being fatally busted, too.

So I do not trust 3DS emulation. It's messed up that the Wii U version of Smash Bros. 4 emulates better than the 3DS version, and it kind of never got any better, either.

And, like, you gotta mess with ROM encryption and all that other stuff, too. Just a total mess.

So I have no thoughts about Majora's Mask. I have actually avoided knowing about what happens in around 90% of that game so far, so all I really know is that "it's weird and dark" and "it's one of the rare few games Nintendo actually rushed out really quickly."