Super Smash Bros has always been a way to find out how iconic characters across gaming franchises would stack up against each other in combat. From Link v Cloud, Mario v Sonic, Pacman v Kirby and many more, any arguments over who would win can be settled in Smash. This game has been paramount in many people’s lives and the creator, Masahiro Sakurai, knows this, as he puts his all in developing each instalment. In this latest one, he puts all the cards on the table from the get-go by bringing back all of the characters from every previous title, which he announced grandly at E3. Six months and two more Directs later, we finally got the game in our hands. Now the question is: does Super Smash Bros Ultimate live up to its name?

Gameplay

There are so many things that you can jump into from the get-go. You could play the new Spirits mode and get some Memorabilia, explore World of Light and save the world or go online and test your skills against the world to increase your Global Smash Power

It’s tough to choose where to begin; this game is brimming with content. Overall, the pace in this game is a lot faster than Smash 4, and the mechanical changes help to make the game more dynamic, fluid and exciting to watch.

Spirits


Sakurai did away with trophies this time around, stating that they were far too time-consuming to develop. In their place, we now have Spirits, which are hundreds of characters from throughout gaming history.

There are two kinds of spirits; primary and secondary. Primary spirits can be equipped straight onto the character and give you buffs/special abilities, while secondary spirits equip to the primary and offer smaller abilities such as an item at the start of a match, healing shields etc. All of the spirits are interesting (even though there are some tongue and cheek ones) and it’s fun to experiment with them and see how they work.

World of Light

World of light starts strong with Kirby being the only character to survive the wrath of Galeem, the lord of light. Kirby is tasked with freeing the other fighters as you get to explore a whole new world. It does get quite tedious during later parts of the adventure, as sometimes when you want to get from point A to B, there can be too many spirits in the way, and unlike subspace, there isn’t much of a story to follow. However, with a few twists, and levels that are excellent references to games, this mode is great fun.

Online

Having retired the For Fun and For Glory formula from last game, they have decided to use a matchmaking system that judges you on your preferred ruleset and tries to match you with opponents that want to play with the same format or similar. At the moment it has its flaws, for example, I’ve set my preference to 1v1’s but still get added to free-for-alls (much to my dismay). Also, Elite Smash system is too simple to get let in as you could play classic mode and have enough GSP to be allowed in or win a handful of times to be let into Elite Smash as points are plentiful with GSP. However, with a bit of tinkering and adjusting, I think that it could be a great system in the future.

Summary

Smash Ultimate is a must have for any Switch owner! As Sakurai said, you get more bang from your buck in this Smash Bros than any other one. This game has a wide variety of modes to play, 74 characters with more coming soon and one of the biggest music libraries from any fighting game thus far, all before DLC! With Melee/Smash 4’s competitive depth, Brawl’s ease of use and plenty of single-player content, this game lives up to the hype and its namesake.