Smash Bros 3DS (in glorious moonrunes) : Been playing this, it is very Smash. It doesn't lend itself to on-the-go playing as you'd think. Whenever I play it, I feel like I want to genuinely start unlocking all the game's secrets in one mad rush, but that would require a whole lot more time than the 20-30 minutes of commute I have every morning and evening.
There's also the issue of "Jesus Fuck the 3DS LL is uncomfortable after like an hour..."
That aside, the game itself kinda floored me with how much it is exactly what I wanted out of a new Smash Bros game. I think my only complaints might be the lack of Snake and Ice Climbers, and the new "break the Targets" mini-game isn't nearly as fun or creative.
Field Smash (Smash Run, I think the English version is called?) is tons of fun and I can't wait until I can play this in a room full of Smash nerds someday soon (I need a day off of work...). I still haven't figured out a 'perfect' route through the Field to maximize stat gains and equipment drops, but the equipable field items are gonna be the key to it, I'm thinking.
Having trouble figuring out who I want to Main. Since 64, I always mained Pikachu - he was fast and maneuvered well, plus "yay,RPGcharacter". But he's been nerfed pretty hard since Brawl... and I even feel like he's down compared to Melee, his weakest showing. Also, there's a lot more options since Melee. I continued to main him in Brawl since that's his unequivocally strongest appearance, but with this new roster and his weaker performance, I might be ready to move on.
In Brawl and Melee, my secondaries were Samus, Peach, Kirby, and Snake. I also started playing around a bit with Captain Falcon just as people stopped playing Brawl much anymore. Peach was my best secondary, and she seems just as powerful, if not more than her Brawl self. Kirby still feels the same, but he was a secondary of mine for a reason. Samus being unable to turn into ZS Samus midbattle kinda bugs me and takes away some options that I enjoyed in competitive play, so I'm shying away from her as well. Snake doesn't handle well AT ALL in this game, FOR SOME REASON~. Captain Falcon I still haven't actually tried out (dear god there are so many characters in this game, it's awesome).
So Peach and Pikachu are the only returning fighters I initially considered. Of the newcomers, there's A LOT I'm excited about. First off, just look at all the "yay,RPGcharacter"s there are! The FE crew, Shulk, New Pokemonz, heck, even the new Kid Icarus game has some significant JRPG stylings. (I'm still mildly sad that we got Pac-Man instead of a Tales character, but I concede he is the more important character to video game history.)
My first hope was to jump to Robin. Heck yeah, a FE main whose mechanics actually work like FE. Very cool concept. Very unique playstyle and moveset. Very difficult to actually use. She's just too light for as much damage as she needs to do to get kills - and she's not agile enough to really mitigate that lack of staying power. Palutena and Shulk have proved more competent - much heavier fighters with stronger smash attacks. I feel like Robin's limited ammo attacks are -way- too weak considering that they are inherently unreliable. Shulk's on-the-fly stat-min-maxing achieves a much more controllable version of what I think Robin (and possibly Shiek/Zelda from Melee/Brawl) were intended to do. While it can be difficult to switch up stats midbattle against a human opponent, it's just a very satisfying mechanic and allows him to counter different threats very well. Lots of damage and your opponent has strong smashes? Switch to the defense monado mode and now your staying power just tripled! Fighting a slow and damaging opponent? Speed mode or percent damage mode for exploiting his weaknesses.
So I'm leaning towards Shulk as my new Main, but despite how fun he is, I find myself doing much better when I'm using other characters I don't even care about. Link, Bowser, and Peach just feel like Easy Mode compared to trying to use most of the characters I -want- to use. I might've mained Palutena, but since I'm 100% positive that Meeple will main her, I feel like I should just have her as a secondary to avoid Meeple-mirror-matches when we inevitably smashdown.
Also, my opinions on customizable moves because that's the popular thing to do:
-Yes, they are kind of obnoxious to unlock them all.
-No, I don't think that's a bad design choice overall. When I played the previous games, I LOVED unlocking stuff and I feel like it's good that they put more stuff to unlock in for the people who have the time to play more of the game. And hey, they even made it optional stuff! But... it's not great for me since as mentioned, my play time is limited.
-Yes, I like the customizable moves. Pikachu's in particular feel like they put him back into his Brawl-level self. With customizable moves though, I feel like Mii Fighter might be the most broken thing...
-Yes, I'd like to see them in competitive play. I think it kinda sucks that you can't use them in Classic and All-Star modes, though I can appreciate that it was done for balance and for making them optional enough that casuals shouldn't feel the need to collect them all.
Final thoughts: I still want Simon from Castlevania.
