So, I’m back again, again. I think I’ve figured out some decent load management and stretching exercises to ensure I can continue playing each night. Unfortunately, this means setting strict time limits on my playtime. So, if I want to continue playing Smash at the same pace I’m going to have to back off other videogames.
I didn’t end up taking the whole week off the previous week. I did play a bit on the weekend and spent some time testing out Bowser, Ice Climbers, and Sheik. I was surprised at how good Bowser could be. In the past I’ve mostly used him for cheese tactics. But he’s actually more well-rounded than that. For both Ice Climbers and Sheik, they’re fun to play but not viable. You’d have to put in a lot of time to be any sort of competitive with them.
Also during my week off I started looking into the Brawl mod Project M. I ended up going down a rabbit hole because first I got Project M up and running and then I downloaded Project+, Legacy XP TE, Legacy XP Lite, and Smash 2. I’m not sure why I’ll probably only play them a few times a year. Also, I refuse to hack my Wii. It’s a launch model that is still running and I’m not messing it up now. It already sounds like an airplane taking off when the disc drive is running. So I only downloaded the mods that don’t require using the Homebrew channel.
Ok, so this week, the main thing to practice was looking at your opponent instead of your own character.
Night One
So on Night One I was starting to get into the character exploration, so I decided I would work on Zelda. I went into Training Mode with her and labbed out her moves, combos, and confirms. Then I played three level 5 CPUs and beat each one. But I had a lot of missed or incorrect inputs. Like I’d be going to a Down-B and do a side-B instead or vice-versa. I’m not sure if this a character problem, an issue with my controller getting older, or just operator error. I didn’t have this issue with any other characters I tested.
Then I went to Online Quickplay. I was planning on playing three matches, but the third one was so laggy I played one more. I lost the first two but won the last one. I think I won the laggy third match but can’t remember. It did end with someone missing a very easy recovery because of the lag though.
I think Zelda is either a low mid-tier or high bottom tier. She does have a few ways to take stocks, but her speed and lag really hurt her. Her specials are too slow to be effective for neutral spacing and I couldn’t hit any combos Online because she’s to slow.
Of all the characters I’ve tried out over the previous weekend and Night One only Bowser and Sheik I may come back too. They’re actually fun to play.
After testing out Zelda I went into World of Light. The first thing I did was unlock Doc Louis’s Gym so I could get that achievement. Then I started to go back to the Sacred Land so I could unlock Mii Brawler, the one Fighter I missed somehow. But I ran out of time.
I checked out the Adventures Achievement page while signing out of the game. Apparently you have to unlock each location and win all battles in the World of Light in addition to some still hidden unlocks. So, maybe I won’t do that, there were quite a bit of battles I skipped throughout the map. I’m not sure how fun it would be to g back and finish what I missed.
Night Two
Night Two I continued the character research. I played Pichu. Same drill as always – practice all moves in Training Mode, get down the bread and butters and kill confirms, and then play the CPU. Of the three Level 5 CPUs I played I actually lost to a Ness. So go Ness! CPUs who don’t miss inputs can make him a high tier.
Then I played five matches in Online Quickplay. Because it took me until the fifth match to win. I know I have usually been doing three but I may go until I win if I have the time.To verify that you can actually win with all characters. Though when I get to some later characters like Rosalina I may not do that, because I can’t see winning a match with her.
Night Three
Night Three is when I started the Mod Madness. First I booted up Legacy XP Lite. I wanted to try out the “new” characters and some of the stage modifications. I was impressed. Legacy XP adds eight additional characters on top of the characters already added by the Project M Mod. I think I’ll create a separate post that looks into all the different Brawl Mods and compares them. Legacy XP also adds some new stages and variants for each stage available. I played a few stages and a few stage variants and they were well-designed for competitive play.
I tried out Waluigi, Geno, Shadow (the Hedgehog), and Mage Ganondorf. The modded characters also have movesets with some entirely new moves. I think the movesets given are actually pretty good. They aren’t balanced quite as well as the movesets in an official Smash Bros. game. Some feel a bit overpowered. But they do fit the characters nicely, and it’s close enough.
Then after playing XP Lite for a while, I decided I needed to get a feel for the mods. So first I played 3 matches in Original Brawl. I played as Ness, Pikachu, and Marth against Meta Knight, Ice Climbers, and Olimar. I put them on Level 5 so I was able to beat them. I played at Battlefield, Castle Siege, and Pokemon Stadium (Melee). And I even though I won each match I remembered why everyone hates this game. The movement is slow and at one point I got in a nice aerial and then tripped when I hit the ground. And even though PS2 and Castle Siege are legal stages in most Brawl tournaments they have stage transformations. Which I don’t think you can turn off in Brawl?
Then I ran through the same matches on the same stages in Project M. Right away I could tell the game was faster. The stages were modified to have no stage changes. You could wavedash (which I don’t really have down). It was a more competitive based game. Though it was actually harder for me to win since the CPU was faster too.
Then I ran through it all again on Legacy TE. It was pretty much the same game as Project M just with a few more cosmetic character options and alts given to each stage. This time I actually lost to the Ice Climbers with Pikachu, but I don’t think that’s because of any difference in the gameplay.
And then my time was up before I could try out any additional mods that night.
Night 4
So on Night Four I played the Brawl Mod Project+. I ran through the same three matches again. And I do think that Project+ is the most balanced of all the different Brawl Mods. I think if there’s a mod that I’m going to play with my friends, it would be this one. When I’m not playing Ultimate. Or Melee. Or Smash 64.
Then I played some more Legacy XP Lite. Just more to try the additional characters. I played some Ridley and some Metal Sonic. I wasn’t impressed to be honest. Ridley’s moveset is similar to Ultimate, but I think Ridley is a more fun character in Ultimate. And Metal Sonic is just too similar to normal Sonic.
Then I booted up the Smash Bros 2. Mod. It’s tagline is “Bringing you back to Melee” or something like that. I tried to play the same characters and levels as when I tested the other mods but couldn’t, because they removed them! I don’t know if they replaced them with other characters or what, but I couldn’t find Olimar and Meta Knight to play against. But Diddy and King Dedede were available. So I’m not sure what the deal is. And couldn’t select Castle Siege as a stage to play on. And then when I played on Pokemon Stadium it had stage transformations. And the game also has the annoying Melee camera zoom. If you can’t tell, I don’t like this mod. It’s basically trying to make Melee with Brawl graphics. But why? I mean it looks nice, definitely the most polished visually of the mods I’ve tried. But again why?
Then I tried out Smash Bros. Infinite. This is a crazy mod with characters like Goku and Spiderman and levels like Kame Palace. It has way more characters and way more levels than the other mods. And the fighters alt costumes are actually different characters altogether. Like Lara Croft is an alt for Bayonetta. It’s pretty insane. Playing as Goku I got to 245% before I lost a life. And I was fighting a Sephiroth with a sword that took up half the screen. To be honest, the characters and levels don’t look too great. And the movesets aren’t very good. It looks low quality and feels poorly balanced compared to other mods. This mod is just for funsies.
Night 5
No Smash Night 5.
Night 6
So, on Night Six I decided to lab out Marth, even though I’ve previously tried to main his Echo Fighter Lucina. Which you may recall didn’t go well. So, I did the usual – tested out all his moves, worked on his bread and butters, etc. He doesn’t really have kill confirm combos so much as just kill moves. Then I played three matches against Level 5 CPUs. And I pretty easily destroyed them. And then I went online. And I lost 12 matches in a row. I have actually yet to win with Marth online. I think there are a few reasons for this. I played more than once against a Samus, a Captain Falcon, and a Sonic. For some reason, it seemed like the attacks of all three of those characters had priority over Marth’s attacks. I thought Sword attacks had one of the highest priorities in this game, but I guess not. I also have a theory that Marth works better offline – maybe it’s easier to hit sweet spots, space with dash dance, and get the correct angles on your attacks without any the online lag. And the final reason, I”m just not very good with sword characters.
So, did I learn anything about how to play Marth or play against him? In the moment no, I got too tilted. But if I think back on it I did. If you’re a faster character use your speed advantage. If you’re a projectile user, projectile camp. If you’re a heavy character use your attacks that have armor to hit Marth with priority. Playing as him? I guess dash-dance? Two frame your opponent’s recoveries? I didn’t learn how to win too well with all the losses.
Night Seven
So, back to World of Light for Night Seven. Even after unlocking Mii Brawler, I still hadn’t unlocked the achievement for Unlocking all the characters in World of Light. So after poring over the character list, I finally realized I had missed Lucina somehow. So I went back to the Dark Realm East and clearing the remaining stages, which opening up Lucina’s Fighter Battle. After I unlocked Lucina, I went back to the Final Battle.
Before unlocking Lucina and a few battles after I unlocked her, I continued to play as Mii Brawler. He’s actually got some decent kill moves, but they don’t seem like they’d work against, you know, anyone who sees them at all. But they work well against CPUs. I played him longer than I usually would have but I was trying to determine the best of which was the best of my original Gamecube controllers for Smash. So I was playing a few matches and then changing controllers. But don’t worry, I won’t put a ranking out for those.
Then after playing Brawler, I switched to Lucina. In the Final Battle section. I cleared a few more not too difficult challenges with Brawler on Normal. Then I switched to Lucina, set it to Very Easy, and played against all the 4 Stars stages and all the 3 Star Stages with annoying conditions. After I cleared all those, I went back to clear all the remaining spaces in the Final Battle, because that’s apparently the way to get the “true” ending. I set the difficulty back to normal and beat a few stages. I switched off of Lucina to Joker after I lost a few times. And I eventually cleared all the remaining spaces. Then the boss battles for Dharkon and Galeem were open. I went to fight Dharkon and lost two or three times. Then I switched to Dark Samus and lost three times, though I was a few hits away on the last try. I’ll try again next time I play that mode and maybe lower the difficulty.
I’m getting close to the end of the Story Mode. Will I ever go back and clear every space? I’m not sure, the conditions are really annoying. There are so many spaces where you’re fighting a CPU character plus an assist trophy. There were a few spaces I barely cleared on Very Easy.
The new Dharkon fight at least introduced some new elements Hopefully the Galeem fight does as well.
But I’m excited. I’m getting very close to being ready to start my ranking of Smash Bros. games!
So, with Christmas and New Year coming up, I’m not sure how much time I”ll be spending playing Smash. I’ll have days with lots of time to play videogames and days where I won’t. And I’ll probably have new games to play as well. So this series may not be back for a week or two.