We live in exciting times, Super Smash Bros. fans. In this year 2018, in which many improbable things have happened, Nintendo has announced we’re getting precisely what we’ve wanted in the upcoming Smash game: every Smash fighter ever, plus Ridley from Metroid; King K. Rool from Donkey Kong; even Daisy from Mario. Great stuff, Nintendo. Thanks.
Now, in the category of “Thanks, I hate it,” here’s something else we’re getting: Seven god damn Fire Emblem characters in Smash Ultimate.
We’ve had Marth and Roy since GameCube. Then, we got Ike. After that, Robin, Lucina and Corrin. And today, Nintendo announced that, no, six Fire Emblem fighters weren’t enough for Smash Ultimate, and, actually, we need Fire Emblem Awakening’s Chrom. (We don’t need Chrom.)
For me, Chrom is the straw that broke the camel’s back, if, in this metaphor, “the camel’s back” is my patience for Smash’s transformation into a Fire Emblem fan game.
Listen—I love Fire Emblem. I played the crap out of Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright (Sorry—Jakob best boy). I’ll praise its character design from here to halfway across the world – the sea just west of Mandurah, Australia – and back. Great plot, too. Really happy about those games, Nintendo. Keep it up.
My big issue with Smash Ultimate’s roster reaching critical Fire Emblem saturation is not an issue with Fire Emblem. It’s with the fact that, as of now, one 10th of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighters will be plucked straight out of this one franchise, and for the most part, play pretty similarly to each other.
Lucina, Marth, Roy, Ike and Chrom are heckin’ similar. Lucina and Chrom are plainly referred to as “echo fighters,” which means, yes, their movesets are echoes of other fighters’. That’s great for Smash fans who want Nintendo’s 2040 Smash iteration to have twenty reskins of Marth.
For me, too many of these Fire Emblem fighters go swish-swish with their little swords. Thankfully, Smash 4’s Corrin and Robin have their own things going on, with movesets unique to their unique weapons, respectively, an evil sword and magic tomes.
If Smash Ultimate’s fate as a Fire Emblem all-stars wrestling match is secure, it would be less objectionable if Nintendo added more interesting Fire Emblem heroes!
Have you seen Rinkah, Nintendo? She’s got that sassy pout and that crazy brass club? You know her? OK. How about Orochi, the prankster diviner who fights with a literal rat spirit?
I get it. Smash Ultimate has every character from every Smash game, plus a heaping shitton of quality-of-life features that Smash’s famously finicky fanbase have requested. Nintendo wants to please everyone. Please me, Nintendo, and add Goku from Dragon Ball Z.
Comments
9 responses to “Breaking: Too Many Fire Emblem Characters In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate”
That’s not news. That was news last game.
The fact that so half of them are now echo fighters is a good thing, it just makes them glorified skins instead of wasting too much effort on designing whole new characters.
I feel like Echo characters are a great introduction. It means people are more likely to get characters they like, without taking too much away from the more unique characters
There’s always been “echo” fighters in Smash, they just haven’t had an official name until now. Up until now the community called them clones. Note that some of these characters were changed in subsequent games to have more unique movesets and weren’t considered clones anymore, though some were still referred to as “semi-clones”. If I don’t list them more than once it means they were changed in later games.
Smash 64: Luigi
Melee: Roy, Pichu, Falco, Ganondorf, Dr. Mario, Young Link
Brawl: Wolf, Ganondorf
Wii U/3DS: Ganondorf, Lucina, Dark Pit, Roy, Dr. Mario
Ultimate (so far): Dark Samus, Daisy, Lucina, Chrom, Dark Pit, Richter, Pichu (probably), Dr. Mario (probably), Young Link (probably)
I say probably to some of those in Ultimate as we haven’t seen them shown in playable demos yet, but it’s probably likely they aren’t being altered too drastically.
It’s also fewer movesets to learn to counter. Skins are fine, I’d be more annoyed at spending brain prower trying to compensate for a whole roster of boring characters.
Being echo fighters it really makes no difference.
They aren’t taking up a ‘slot’ if you disable that option and emblem fans can play whoever they want.
Not really a big deal. I mean, we have 6 Zelda characters and 3 of them are Link.
“Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright (Sorry—Jakob best boy). I’ll praise its character design from here to halfway across the world – the sea just west of Mandurah, Australia – and back. Great plot, too. ”
Ha.
Ha ha.
HA HA HA HA.
You don’t get to talk about your love of Fire Emblem when the only entries in the series you’ve played have been the mainstream hits.
Yeh, I don’t think this is a big deal. Even if they were all unique characters and not Echo characters, it’s still a pretty small proportion of the roster at this point.
Look. Adding more obscure characters from Nintendo’s least popular IP can do 1 of 2 things.
Give the IP more exposure, or turn people away from it. For me it does the latter.
I’m pretty sure Nintendo is slowly trying to make Fire Emblem a top franchise. I like the fact that they want to give it a push and it seems to be working to an extent. Also, echos are fine, as long as they make up a small amount of characters.