Super Smash Bros Ultimate is a very hyped up Nintendo Switch game that many people were anticipating to play. When I saw this game announced, I honestly wasn’t planning on getting the game since I started to lose interest in the Super Smash Bros series. A little disclaimer before we go any further: I don’t hate this game or the series in general, this is just a reasonable and polite way of sharing my opinion and talking about the bad things about Ultimate. Anyways, the gameplay started to get repetitive to me, and I started to like other kinds of games by Nintendo and other companies as well. That being said, let’s take a look at the negatives about Super Smash Bros Ultimate:

During the announcement of the game, they claimed to have every character from the first four games in the series, and that’s honestly not a good thing in my opinion. This means that the characters who are clones like Dark Pit, Dr. Mario, Young Link, Pichu, and Gannondorf; or felt out of place like Snake and Bayonetta make their way and take space. Negative #1 is the “Everyone Is Here” gimmick isn’t really that great. And if that wasn’t any better, they only put the eight characters that have been starters from every Super Smash Bros as starter characters, meaning that the other characters are locked on startup, which does seem disappointing to some people who don’t read about it first. I can at least understand if they wanted to go for a 20th anniversary of the series, but it’s a year early for that since Smash 64 came out in 1999 both in Japan and North America. Negative #2 is that only the original eight are available on startup. One of the things I liked about Super Smash Bros besides the music is that in Melee, Brawl, and For 3DS and Wii U has trophies which were statues that showed some of Nintendo’s past characters, settings, and features. You can even take trophies you have in Brawl and SSB 4 Wii U, and arrange them in a diorama which was really fun! Unfortunately, they were replaced by spirits, which are Google image searches of characters, items, and other things related to the games; similar to the stickers in Brawl. These are less fun to look at than the trophies, and feel more like looking at a sticker sheet or a gallery on a wiki page, since they’re supposed to powerup the characters, but that’s pretty much it. Negative #3 is the Spirits replacing the Trophies. One of the things I didn’t like about Brawl was the Adventure Mode with its lack of levels based on the franchises the characters are in, a bland villain, and a story that’s difficult to understand. But Ultimate’s Adventure Mode is actually worse in my opinion since the plot has an even more weak plot and instead of focusing on story, it mostly focuses on the Spirits, not to mention the villain’s more bland and basically the “I’m going to conquer the world just for the plot’s sake.” kind of villain. Negative #4 is Adventure Mode being worse than Brawl’s and even Melee’s. The previous games had interesting game modes that in my mind made me want to come back and play in besides the standard fight mode whether you have to break ten targets or defeat multiple non-playable enemies as fast as you can. Unfortunately, Ultimate doesn’t have many game modes that grabbed my attention. Sure, lately there were some updates where they added some other game modes like Home-Run Contest and Stage Builder, but it’s still missing some more like Break the Targets, Board the Platforms, Event Matches, and Smash Run. There’s also the Mob Smash otherwise known as Multi-Man Smash, but it only has 100-man Smash, Cruel Smash, and an All-Star mode where you fight each character until they’re all knocked out; which is disappointing for me since I enjoy playing Endless Smash in SSB4. Negative #5 is the lack of interesting game modes. As I pointed out before, every character besides the original eight and the DLC who are in the Fighter’s Pass are locked on startup, the only way to unlock them is by clearing Classic Mode as specific characters or retrieving them in Adventure Mode, however there’s also the Vs. matches where if you don’t use either of those ways you have to wait for ten minutes. Unfortunately, the timer restarts whenever you close the game and start it back up, meaning that you can purposely lose, try to defeat the character you’re going to unlock, turn off and turn on the game, and repeat until you get every character. Negative #6 is the way of unlocking characters. Speaking of unlockables, although it does have some unlockables, all you get are music, Mii costumes, gold, Spirits, Spirit points, Items, Snacks, and of course Characters. You don’t even get any secret stages since they’re already available in startup, and not even second or third special moves or upgrades for amiibo fighters or custom fighters since the latter’s not present in the game. Negative #7 is not many kinds of unlockables. One of things I really don’t like about the series in general is the clone characters who basically are characters with similar movesets of existing characters, they are common in every Smash Bros game including Smash 64, but Ultimate takes the cake for the most amount of clones. We got the returning characters as I mentioned in the beginning from three Links to two different Marios, along with the new characters Daisy, Ken, Dark Samus, and even Ritcher who is a clone of a new comer Simon, and Chrom who is a clone of a clone: Roy. At this point, they might as well put Dry Bower, Blood Falcon, Raichu, (maybe) Dragonite, Dark Meta Knight, Ms. Pac-Man, and Pink Gold Peach in the roster. Negative #8 is the amount of clones. Speaking of characters, another thing that seemed questionable to me is the new characters that were chosen. Besides the clones, there were some characters I wondered why they made it to the game like Joker from Persona and Terry from The King of Fighters, as well as some that reminded me of Bad Miiverse Posts like King K. Rool, Steve, and Ridley. Isabelle was also in my opinion seemed like a bad idea considering how I honestly feel bad for her being physically hurt, and liked it better when she was a Assist Trophy in SSB4. In fact, my friend JBHamHam wanted one of his favorite characters Rayman in the game, but after seeing the most recent Nintendo Direct, he was very disappointed we got a character with a sword which to him felt tiresome seeing lots of characters with swords in the game. Negative #9 is the choice of new characters. Sometimes games have special bundles with extra items included like game controllers, guides, books, or included codes for free DLC. This game has one too, it includes a Smash Bros themed Pro Controller, and a metal case which to me isn’t worth of a special bundle since the cases aren’t too important as the game cards. You don’t even get a free subscription to the Fighter’s Pass. Negative #10 is the Special Edition Bundle. When SSB4 announced Mii Fighters, I was excited to see that happening making myself in the game, as well as what costumes are included as well. Making them dressed up as a cowboy, pirate, ninja, karate champ, etc.and now they return in this game However, there are some costumes in the game that make you dress up like characters that are already in the game, as well as DLC costumes that have masks that cover up your Mii’s head, making me wonder what was the point of doing that if it feels like a way to fake a character in the game. Negative #11 is some Mii costumes being pointless. Finally, the worst thing I despise about the Smash Bros series beginning with Brawl is how some trailers for new characters or teaser trailers with Mario in them have him becoming a butt monkey, most noticeable in Seporiah attacking said character with his sword like he’s killing him, which to me is a recipe for disaster since Mario is Nintendo’s mascot, and it seems incredibly wrong to poke fun of their own mascot like a self-parody. Sure, the game is about fighting and Mario has been physically hurt, but it’s usually not painful like in the other games he’s in, and even if I wasn’t a fan of the character or franchise, I would still think this is awful. Negative #12 is Mario being a butt-monkey.
To be fair, this game doesn’t feel much like a cash grab since the controls are intuitive and I do enjoy the music, but the only thing worse would be if this was brutalized into a mobile game with only two starting characters, one game mode, no multiplayer, loot boxes consisting of characters, stages, and status upgrades, and controls that make the game feel like a nightmare to play using your phone or tablet’s touch screen to make the game feel like what Rerez host Shane Luis said about Doom 2016 on Stadia on a phone with touch screen controls: like a heated match of Finger Twister. If that game ever happens (And it’s pretty doubtful to me.) we can all agree that Ultimate will be a better game to play.