Because I'm a loose cannon.
And it makes sense that a 3DS game should be discussed in the Handheld forum instead of the Console forum.
I'm not only going to make one Smash topic. I'm going to make 2 others because I feel like there are a lot of aspects of this game that deserve separate discussions. One thread on the fighters/characters and another on the stages.
As for this thread, if you want to talk about the modes, challenges, tips, trophies and general feels of the game, here you go.
For me, the first time I played this game is when I bought it Friday. (Physical Media for the win!) I went trying a lot of modes, partly because of the challenges showing what I needed to do and because I was away from internet access and didn't know how to unlock things so I going by past Smash experience, I knew that playing the stadium games would be a good start along with Classic and All-Star.
I was surprised the challenge wall seemed so small but, on getting internet access again, I found out there are 3 walls and you unlock each one upon completing a wall. As well, hammers do not carry over to the next wall so if you have 3 challenges left on a wall, just use them up. I had one challenge left and 3 hammers on the first wall. So I used a hammer to move on to the next with two useless hammers now sitting there.
I've only played Smash Run a couple of times. I definitely struggled with it as I would envariably die once and have to rebuild stats before the final battle. However, I read ClexYoshi's comments about Smash Run in one of the Podcast Discussion threads and I totally get it now. She had a great write-up about it. It's funny since the first time I played Smash Run, I created a customer character to beat a challenge requirement. So, I used the items/abilities I gave the custom character and had no problem with Smash Run. However, I then just went back to using regular characters when playing and that's when it became harder. I thought those abilities items were gone after I used them the first time but I now realize it is about building a special fighter to use in Smash Run and that fighter will always have those abilities each time you play to make it easier. I'm now more excited to play Smash Run and try this out.
Right now, I'm just trying to take care of the stadium modes. As mentioned in the Console forum, I'm playing through All-Star with all characters. I've done it with about 20 characters now. Doing that really hits home how many characters there really are. I haven't even touched some characters yet like Olimar, Wii Fit Trainer, Mega Man, Lucina, Charizard, Greninja, Lucario, and others. It's crazy.
I do appreciate however that the requirements to unlock stages and characters where very simple this time around. Having played Melee just before this, unlocking takes much longer. For instance, Mewtwo requires 20 hours of Smash which you can get around by having a 4 human player smash game that you leave the system on for 5 hours and the collective time will be 20 hours. But you need to unlock all characters to unlock All-Star Mode and then beat it to get Battlefield stage. Or unlock characters through the Subspace Emissary in Brawl. With 3DS, you just have to play 110 Smash matches to unlock all characters. And the stage requirements are easy enough that you can meet them at the same time as you are playing your Smash battles. I like that.