The changes made to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are too subtle for James' trolly brain who thrives on playing Super Smash Bros. like he's the fucking Joker.


Things like Wave Dashing are (Kinda) back! speed has been increased and defensive options have been changes and limited. Damage and UI have been amplified to make the 1 vs. 1 game far more dynamic. Stages having a Battlefield form is something that was specifically requested by the community. This game has Street Fighter 3 style throw-techs. they spent a portion of the stream highlighting that they put in a button combination specifically to make short hopped aerials easier to throw out without accidentally getting normal jump instead of short hop in the heat of the moment!


No, James. I posit that the way YOU play Super Smash Bros hasn't been catered to, and that is why you leave this demo deflated, unable to see the difference like you're an adult in a Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercial. Even the new stages shown in detail at the show (Moray Tower, Great plateau Tower)are the sorts of stable, stage-hazard and major transformation free environments that tend to be legal stages to play in Tournament.
in today's (Wednesday) treenhouse stream, the treehouse people actively talked about Directional Influence in detail and used Directional Influence to refer to it, which is a community term to describe the mechanic!


That being said, there are things that lend lots of credence to your theory. yeah, characters have gotten a lot of changes (some they didn't even talk about, like Donkey Kong's Up+B is now Super armored?!?), but it was clear from yesterday's tournament that characters like Bayonetta still have combos to carry foes to the top Blast zone from 0%. Even after the invitational, the 2-time invitational and 56 major Smash 4 tournament winner ZeRo said if he could make any one change, it's that Bayo still needs more nerfs, which paralells what the Smash 4 community has said about that game.

I do think it speaks volumes that ZeRo and MkLeo were able to play Smash Ultimate on stage with such comfort and ease, that most of Mario's Smash 4 combos still seem to work, etc.

Calling it smash 4 is a bit of a disservice. I played tons of smash 4 and while at first glance it gives off that look they made tons of changes plus sped up the game.

It's not just faster for people who enjoy competitive player either. Most anyone who spent a lot of time with Smash 4 is going to notice it. Here's a good comparison of Smash 4 Ike and Smash Ultimate from ZeRo, as well as Ganondorf (it should be timestamped for that part of the video). It's a big difference.

Yeah i personally noticed right away that the speed was different and probably a hybrid of Melee and smash 4.


Also the rolling and dodging is very noticeably changed as well. Some characters pretty much were mostly the same as smash 4 just faster and some were much different. It's still early though so lots will change.


I'm pretty sure smash Ultimate has more in common with 4 than any smash before had in common with it's predecessor but from what i played and saw it's not smash 4. It has it's own feel. You can just look at it and see it's much faster. Not melee but faster for sure.

I've actually heard many outlets making similar comments as James here that it plays very similarly to Smash 4.


Additionally, Nintendo feeling like they needed to use a healthy amount of their E3 conference outlining all the changes (besides everyone being in the new game) leads me to believe that THEY knew the hands-on impressions might be similar to James' and wanted to get ahead of it to outlined all they've changed.


Have you all played Smash 4 lately?  It is a solid game.  If this game is very similar to Smash 4 with MOAR STUFF and tweaks to the gameplay, it will still be a very good game. 

If they wanted to do something about hands-on impressions, they might have forced a round of Smash 4 on people before getting to play Smash Ultimate or something. The time they devoted to outlining the differences likely had much more do with all the "is it a port or is it a sequel" rhetoric that existed here and in many other fan communities as soon as the game was announced (or well before that really). They might as well have emailed everyone a bullet point list that they could post on message boards with the way they laid things out.

I think that's a question better asked of people who claim Smash 4 and Smash Ultimate play super similarly, actually.

I don't have a stake in "defending" authors of the articles and podcasts I've listened to making that statement of the similarity of the game.  You're right that the recency they've played Smash 4 might have some impact of being able to note differences. 


That said, I do think someone whose actually played the new Smash demos might have a bit better insight as to how big or small the changes are in practice, especially when you're comparing people who play it casually (such as RFN) vs people who visit the smash boards with regularity and attempt to play at a semi-competitive level. 


Maybe y'all have played the demo, and while I know there's plenty of video out there now of the game, video can seem a lot different than a game is in practice. 


I'll reserve judgement of the game til I get my hands on it, but also, Smash 4.5 Deluxe & Knuckles (Funky Mode Included) is generally a pretty good package for Switch, if that's what it ends up being.  I just hope them not mentioning single player content means there is none.

That's good to know, but I don't know what it has to do with the part you quoted. There was no subtext, if that's what you're getting at.

This is really what I was talking about. Sure, going hands-on with the game can tell you a lot more than watching a video, but not in every case. If someone hasn't played a lot of Smash 4 in a while, saw Smash Ultimate and said "this looks like Smash 4" and/or was expecting it to play like Smash 4 from the beginning, then I don't know exactly how much it really says when they claim that it feels similar. A lot of people were setting this up as more of a Smash 4 port every since it was rumoured, so I don't think it's out of the question that some confirmation bias may be in play.

Was just prefacing my comments.  Didn't necessarily take yours as having subtext, but didn't want to give the impression to anyone.


We live in weird internet times, I feel the need more often to frame what I'm saying so I'm not misunderstood.

to sidestep Oedo and lolmonade duking it out here, I'm going to quickly put down the list of changes I think Sakurai probably SHOULD have mentioned during Nintendo Direct rather than what he actually did.


* All aerial attacks have had landing lag almost or entirely removed. paired with the new ability to hit A+jump to perform short-hopped attacks, this means a hell of a lot more diversity in attack options.

* Air Dodge Lag, especially when it's a directional air dodge or an air dodge after you've built up the new dodge fatigue a lot, is practically a death sentence to use off-stage. air dodge was such a good option in smash 4 that it made stocks draw out and proper off-stage battles nigh impossible because anyone recovering worth their salt could easily air dodge and get back to the platform no problem.

*The speed of knockback has been increased

*the effectiveness of Smash DI (the treehouse used the term DI, so it's cannon) has been decreased, but regular DI seems to be more effective

*throws knockback farther across the board, making them worse for combos and better for kill moves.

* Overall speed increase, as mentioned in above comments.

* Dash can now be canceled into grounded normals. this means you're not committed to running attack, jump, shield, or the occasional up-smash from running. the Direct mentions running Smash Attacks, but the same is true of running tilts as well. again, this along with the lagless short-hopped normals makes for a VERY diverse and offense-charged neutral

* STAGE HAZZARD TOGGLE! GameXplain was BEGGING For this one. in addition to stages having their omega and battlefield forms, you can also turn off most of what a stage does and have what competitive smashers wanted the whole time, which is stages that have the occasional moving platform to give SOME terrain to navigate during a battle,b ut nothing overtly crazy random about it. Granted, this won't make all stages able to be unbanned because who wants to have a 1-on-1 in Great Cave offensive or a stage where a character with a wall jump can camp out a character without one all day like Saffron City? there's also stages with ridiculously small blast zone spacing like the Game n' Watch stages too, and I don't think it's reasonable to have a blast zone standardization option.