So I've been mulling over Dark Samus' Echo status since the recent Nintendo Direct. Conclusion: she is appropriately an Echo fighter given she made her first full appearance in Metroid Prime 2:
Echoes. That's just corny enough for me to find endearing. Still, it would have been cool if she was more of a partial clone like Chrom who has some of Ike's moves or Ganondorf who has Cloud's Down Smash etc. Dark Samus had three moves as an Assist Trophy: scattershot, homing energy/Phazon orbs, and Phazon "tentacles" (for lack of a better word) which should have been integrated into her moveset.
Neutral Special: Scattershot, charge for Phazon tentacles (basically Ike's Neutral Special, Eruption)
Forward+Special: No change, she has missiles in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Up+Special: High jump with shockwave landing (basically King Dedede's Up+Special, Super Dedede; Dark Samus does the shockwave landing in Echoes and Corruption)
Down+Special: Clone (basically Zelda's Down+Special, Phantom Slash)
Up Smash: Energy/Phazon orbs (no longer homing because that'd be cheap as hell)
Final Smash: Transform into Metroid Prime (final form without exoskeleton), wreak havoc. She doesn't do this in the games, but who cares? It’d be a cool Final Smash.
Get rid of the Grapple Beam; everything else can be copied from Samus. Dark Samus was essentially Nintendo's Venom in which she copied/got stronger versions the hero's powers so I don't mind her having most of Samus' moves. I still think Sakurai and co could have taken more from the source material.
The roster has never really been all that important to me, what I'm really hoping for is more good single player content.
I definitely don't buy Super Smash Bros. for single player content, but I think there's a great opportunity in Ultimate to do something special with the single-player mode. The reveal trailers could be a few different CGI cutscenes edited together to look like they're the same clip. So maybe the CGI cutscenes we've seen in the reveal trailers are actually much smaller snippets in a story mode, and they're all loosely connected into a larger (hopefully not super-serious) narrative. So like, you play through a simple Melee-esque Adventure mode level, watch a short cutscene to set the stage, then have whatever Smash match/boss fight was established in the cutscene. Rinse, repeat.
Let's use Simon's reveal trailer.
1. Cutscene: Luigi is deep in Dracula's castle
2. Play through a short Castlevania stage as Luigi
3. Cutscene: Death murders the **** out of Luigi, Simon arrives at Dracula's castle
4. Play as Simon through a different Castlevania stage, fight Death
5. Cutscene: Richter saves Simon
6. Play as Richter and help Simon defeat Death
This idea would require a lot of cutscenes so I don't know if that's possible in every sense of the word. Additionally, I wonder how many Adventure levels would be needed to make it worthwhile. 20? 30? One for each character? One for each non-Echo fighter? They wouldn’t have to be super long or anything. However, it’s imperative that each level be designed with a specific character in mind, or they’ll feel generic and boring like The Subspace Emissary. I don’t know if we can have a stage that takes advantage of say, both Kirby and Little Mac’s strengths and still be fun. I realize this would be an absurd amount of work thus probably asking too much. Either way, I think it would be best to nix co-op in an Adventure Mode because it doesn’t work unless it was only via Switch handheld mode.
With Smash Run on the 3DS, it felt like a blending of the two. I liked racing around to collect as many treasure chests as I could and getting myself powered up for an unknown final battle that could just be a race to the finish or climb as high as you can.
Smash Run worked pretty well as a single player mode. However, I think it's true potential is as an 8-player online/local battle royale with everyone on the same map.
At the moment, Smash Ultimate seems to be taking the approach that characters and stages are all there up front with nothing to find or unlock. That's the kind of thing lousy modern games do but I guess at this point in time Smash may have no choice but to cater to modern day gaming babies who need to have everything spoon-fed to them because they can barely figure out how to sit up without the game telling them to.
I believe the stages are available from the start but the characters aren't. I'd rather unlock the stages but have all the music from a series once at least one stage from a series is unlocked. I don't like unlocking music and never bothered to in Brawl and For Wii U.
I'm hoping Ultimate is the Super Smash Bros. title in which the Stage Builder isn't a generic miserable pile of secrets.