Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Review
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Developers: Nintendo, Sora Ltd., BANDAI NAMCO Studios Inc.
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Publishers: Nintendo
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Genres: Fighting, Action
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Platforms: Nintendo Switch
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Release date:
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December 7th 2018
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Playtime: Over 35 hours
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Note: this is a review written in the perspective of a solo offline player
I’ll get straight to the point with this one: if any video game in recent times deserves to include Ultimate in its name, then it ought to be this one. This entry in the Smash series accomplishes the motto of “Everyone’s Here” by including every single playable character available in previous entries, along with a handful of brand-new ones. To complement an enormous roster, Smash Ultimate keeps its motto for the playable stages and, most notably, introduces an incredibly fun single player mode that, while simple, is more enjoyable and engaging on its own than it has any right to be for a fighting game.
Before diving into anything else, gameplay is clearly the thing I should address first when talking about Smash. Not counting Ultimate, my experience with Smash games is honestly quite short, having only played a dozen or so hours in the past Nintendo 3DS entry, also known as Smash 4. While I thought it was fun, I couldn’t find myself actually wanting to play the game, not to mention the uncomfortable 3DS hardware. Fast-forward to December 2018 and once again the Nintendo Switch magic strikes again. From the first few moments I entered my first Smash battle I found myself enamored with its simple yet intricate gameplay. The premise is simple really, hit your enemy until you knock it off the screen without getting knocked off yourself. However, due to the variety of character movesets and playstyles, things can seem to get overwhelming rather quickly. Thankfully, because the controls are universal, it remains easy to jump into a match and have fun without worrying too much.
In the heat of battle, things can get chaotic quite fast. Items can turn the tide of battles in a matter of seconds or a well-timed Final Smash can decide the outcome of a match. That’s where the rules and play modes come in. Basically, if you want to play a Smash battle in a certain way, then chances are it’s possible to setup a battle as desired. You can choose from the simplest timed battles to see who can knock off opponents the most times, set up stock battles where each player has a set number of lives, mob smash where you literally fight mobs of enemies, and many more. There is also the option to plan more elaborate gameplay environments, such as tournaments, team fights or custom smash where there’s plenty of choice for what rules you want to set for your fight. All of these can be played in both single player against the CPU or against other players, up to eight participants, making up for some exciting moments. Though, in my opinion, I prefer smaller battles (if possible, not more than four participants), otherwise the screen gets too wide and characters become rather small and hard to track in the middle of the action.
Still on the topic of play options, Smash Ultimate does an amazing job of catering to people who play the game solo, like me. It has a remarkably fun “story mode” (which we’ll get to in a bit) and a more classic mode, appropriately called Classic Mode. Here, you’re tasked with playing through a sequence of battles which culminate in a boss battle, with battles being relatively thematic depending on the character you’re playing with. For this mode, you can set up the difficulty level, with higher difficulty levels netting you better rewards. The boss battles at the end showcase the brilliancy and effort put into this game by the developers: for example, Rathalos is one of the possible bosses you can your face and it’s actually stunning how faithful its conversion to a Smash boss encounter is, so much so that during the fight I almost react by instinct to its movements as if I am in the middle of a Monster Hunter quest. Oh, and let’s not forget about the ending credits of Classic Mode runs, but that’s something I’ll leave you to find yourself.
Before tackling the story mode, I first must address the playable characters. The roster is incredible, it’s a mix of series that could only ever happen in a Smash game. Can you honestly imagine a fight between Cloud from Final Fantasy VII and Link from The Legend of Zelda? Or Incineroar from Pokémon and Ryu from Street Fighter? Smash Ultimate allows you to create ludicrous matchups with its whopping seventy-four playable characters from over twenty video game series. However, at first, you only have access to eight of those characters, the original roster from the Nintendo 64 Smash. New characters are unlocked by completing random encounters at the end of battles or by playing through the story mode. While trying to unlock characters outside of the story mode, for some reason the more characters you unlock the harder each battle gets. This can create some frustrating moments where you fail to get your favorite character because he/she/it pulled a stupid attack out of nowhere that hit way harder than you expected. At least there’s the option to replay these encounters, so you can give it a second or third try in case you’re reluctant to play the story mode or just can’t wait to get new characters.
Now we finally get to the story mode, called World of Light. In this mode, your objective is to defeat Galeem, an evil entity that defeated all characters but Kirby and turned them into enemies. By defeating these characters, they are returned to normal and unlocked to be used both in World of Light and outside the mode. As mentioned, you only have Kirby start your journey with, but new characters like Mario, Marth and Sheik are quickly unlocked to add some variety to your pool of playable characters. It’s worth noting the available roster inside World of Light is treated separately from the one in the other modes: when you unlock a new character in here it also unlocks that character outside of this story mode, the opposite does not apply however.
But how is it to play World of Light in general? A lot of fun to be honest. Gameplay consists of fighting battles against other characters under certain restrictions to create specific environments. You see, in each battle, the opposing characters are possessed by Spirits, characters from all the series represented in the game. These Spirits appear in-game as sprites from their original games and grant you bonuses when equipped, after being defeated. If at first an encounter seems ridiculous and makes you turn off the game for the day (spoiler: a lot of them will in the beginning) then just come back later once you’ve acquired a Spirit capable of countering those conditions. All in all, these encounters are generally quick, which means in a short amount of time you can make relatively decent progress. Note how I use the word “relatively” because the amount of content in this mode alone is absurd. Whenever you think you figured out World of Light’s size then wait to be surprised. World of Light is constantly surpassing itself, be it with how faithful some Spirit encounters are, with how interesting the overworld puzzles can be or just for the sheer amount of content you can play through here. In a single phrase, if you’re wondering whether there’s any content for you as a solo player, then World of Light by itself will have you covered for at least twenty-five hours.
After all the gameplay modes I’ve talked about, the gigantic and diverse roster of playable characters and the lengthy and fun single player mode what more does Smash Ultimate have that I have not tackled yet? Well, did you know you can use this game just to listen to video game music? No, seriously, Ultimate has a dedicated section where you can listen to all the music included in the game! This section follows the trend of the rest of the game and is way more complete than any person would expect it to be: it includes the sounds for each playable character, the available songs per series, the ability to create and edit playlists and even the ability to set which songs play on each stage and their frequency. Again, this is just one of the many ways in which you can edit your experience while playing, nay, enjoying your time with Smash Ultimate.
Before getting to the conclusion, there is something I must complain about Ultimate: the acquisition of Spirits and items in general outside of fights in World of Light. Roughly half of the Spirits can be acquired by completing all of the battles available in World of Light. Though, the other half is acquired in a variety of ways: bought from shops (inside and/or outside World of Light), through fights in the Spirit Board or by completing certain requirements in the game. The big problem here is that the shops’ available items at each time are random, not to mention the general shop outside the story mode sells Spirits (which have a chance of being ones you already have), Mii costumes and music tracks. On the other hand, the Spirit Board is just a nightmare, period. Fights still have the same type of conditions they would have in World of Light but, in this case, you only have a single shot to win, otherwise the fight goes away and your only hope is that it appears again on the board at a later time. Even if you do win, at the end there’s a minigame with a circle with spaces spinning around the spirit that you have to shoot through. If you fail, well, you don’t acquire the spirit, that is, it’s as if you had lost the fight anyway. So, not only are the fights still hard, you need to complete a minigame afterwards to finally acquire that Spirit. To sum this point up, outside of World of Light, acquiring new Spirits is a lot of trouble and not necessarily due to lack of player of skill, sometimes it ends up being a case of bad luck, outside of the control of the player.
Finally, let’s wrap this up with my closing thoughts on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. For a long time, while I kept up with the various Nintendo Directs showcasing the various aspects of the game, it wasn’t until close to the release that I decided to take the chance and buy the game. Thankfully, I made the right choice and now I am having a lot of fun no matter what mode I decide to play. Getting to know the characters is always interesting, specially in a roster this big where there’s plenty of room for different play styles. On the content front, I only finished World of Light this week, after hours and hours of digging through content that kept improving itself from over and over. Now, I explore further the available game modes and try to beat my previous high score in Classic Mode or just play a couple of Smash battles for the pure fun I have with the game. The game still has an online component which I may try someday, but I have no interest in that nor do I currently own a Nintendo Online Subscription. To sum it all up, Smash Ultimate is one of the most fun and entertaining games I’ve played this year by a long shot!