Peach and Daisy used to be slightly different. The turnip would send opponents in different angles. Sadly, this was later changed in one of the patches
@@Masaru_kun Even something as simple as having Daisy deal slightly more damage on physical attacks, a higher ground speed/jump height, and no float to reflect how most of her appearances are from the sports games, while Peach would have more damage with "magic‐element" attacks/turnips, higher air speed and retain float to keep more in line with the magical theming Peach and Zelda have had since Brawl.
What kills me about the Dark Samus echo Fighter is that she had different moves as an assist trophy in Smash 4 but instead of developing that and adding a few Samus moves, the just made her almost an exact clone 😢
Even worse was Peach/Daisy, because on release they had distinct mechanical differences between the characters, but like halfway through the first fighter's pack they removed the differences between them, and never did anything to make them different after. At least Dark Samus has some moves with different element properties and animation differences that can make interactions unique between the two.
@@orangeslash1667 This game has Kirby, actual Goddes Palutena, reincarnated Goddeses Zelda, people who have killed gods and/or received blessings from gods, evil incarnate Ganondorf, etc. fighting a dog&duck, the AC Villager, fitness trainers, a boxer whose first apparition in Smash was as an assist trophy, etc. as equals. Balance goes out the window in Smash. Dark Samus' moveset could have been different and be as balanced as everyone else. It was a shame she ended up a clone.
I'm with you on the whole "echo fighters should get more unique moves or attributes to justify them more." Shoot, I would take a Smash bros game with a reduced roster size if every character was unique or given the "DLC treatment"
I think the only way they can top ultimate is if you go like 35-50 characters but they’re FULLY fleshed out. We need a Mario move set that features something that’s not based just on 64 and Sunshine for example (ik cappy and p coins but that’s visual) Or a legitimate move set for Ganondorf.
@@callumloader8713 dude I agree. I wouldn't mind a Super Smash Bros Ultimate "Deluxe" for the Switch 2, kinda how like they ported Mario Kart, but honestly, I would loooove a reduced roster with fully fleshed out and updated moves. I also want SKINS man!
I’m also on Team Reboot, I really care about keeping every single character I mean they already had their chance at being playable, let other characters who’ve never been playable before get their chance.
@@callumloader8713 For the next Smash I want a fresh, new, made from the ground up game; not the same assets and stuff ported for who knows how many times now. Every other fighting game franchise has cuts between games. Smash fans have been spoiled by Sakurai's unhealthy hoarding habit. Smash 6 doesn't have to be Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, it can be MVC3.
@@callumloader8713 Ganondorf is that he has the Triforce of Power, so his moveset needs to reflect that. The problem is how to due you properly balance power in a fighting game???????? It really shows that some characters are a lot easier to design than others based on concept.
Bringing a character in as a clone or echo can lock them into an unrepresentative representation. Ganondorf is the poster child for this. Instead of being brought into a later game with a design that was actually based on his source material, he was introduced as a Captain Falcon clone just because his 3D model was a good match for Falcon's. And once he was brought in as a Captain Falcon clone, that cemented his Smash identity. Characters tend to see only minor design tweaks between games, and Smash Ultimate Ganondorf (even with his newer sword moves) is still arguably more of a Captain Falcon clone than a source material Ganondorf. And we'll likely never see an true source accurate Ganondorf, unless the devs go the route of multiple Ganondorfs similar to how they have multiple Links and Zeldas.
Ganondorf is that he has the Triforce of Power, so his moveset needs to reflect that. The problem is how to due you properly balance power in a fighting game???????? It really shows that some characters are a lot easier to design than others based on concept.
@@orangeslash1667 Various Zelda games have given plenty of abilities for Ganondorf, which Smash Bros completely ignored. Ocarina of Time: Ganondorf freely flies, or at least freely hovers. Phantom Ganon is armed with a trident, fires an electric orb, effectively teleports through paintings, and can create decoy images. Ganondorf has a strong diving punch with a wide area of effect, lobs a electric orb projectile and also charges up for a homing multi-shot projectile. Ganondorf has some form of "darkness" energy attack. You could argue that Ganondorf can naturally reflect projectiles by hitting them, or you could argue that is instead a property of his basic projectile (as Link can also reflect them.) Wind Waker: Ganondorf can fight unarmed, but dual wields two long swords for the real fight. Instead of flight, he has a floaty jump that can deliver fast horizontal movement. Unarmed, he punches Link (and seems to have a martial arts stance at one point) and backhands Zelda hard enough to knock her out of the battle. Armed, he has a few wide sword swings, a spinning attack, and a flippy jump. He blocks front attacks with his swords. Twilight Princess: As Zelda Puppet Ganondorf (Ganondorf possesses Zelda's body), he flies freely, uses her sword to launch/reflect his OoT electric projectile, and summons a triangular area of effect attack. As Dark Beast Ganon, he teleports while dashing forward with attempted goring attacks. As Ganondorf riding his horse, he uses a rather long sword one-handed and fires a circling orb that breaks into multiple projectiles. As Ganondorf on foot, he still has that long sword which he uses for a variety of attacks. He has a running slash, a thrust, a wide swing, a spin, and also does a rushing elbow into sword swing combo. He has both a quick evasive jump and a high vertical leap that he follows with a sword attack. He also tends to block front attacks with his sword. Link to the Past: This is pig-monster Ganon instead of Ganondorf, but he has enough moves to warrant using him as an example. He fights with a trident that he can spin and throw like a boomerang. He can summon a ring of fireballs that circle around him. He can temporarily expand that fireball ring, and he can transform the fireballs into firebats that fly away. He can summon a firebat that flies in a spiral while setting fires on the ground. He can summon a firebat that flies in a straight line while leaving a fire trail. He has a jumping stomp that temporarily stuns. He has an afterimage dash/teleport. He can turn invisible.
Smash identity is a serious problem for a lot of characters. Ike for example is not remotely similar how he is in his own game but at the same time more people have played smash ike than fire emblem ike. It's gotten so bad that ike in recent fire emblem games is smash ike and not fire emblem ike.
@@BainesMkII The problem is giving Ganondorf all that stuff would make him broken. Characters like R.O.B, Game and Watch don't have this problem because their not very strong in their games, so Sakurai made them more powerful. It's a sad fact that overpowered characters have to be extremely nerfed for Smash.
Dark Samus in the prime games has a lot of moves unique from Samus, and even had a lot of this as an Assist Trophy. Of all the Echos , Dark Samus got robbed of its potential.
Yeah, I was gonna say this. In the Prime games Dark Samus only bears a resemblance to Samus physically. Her actual moveset is completely different, so while I'm happy Dark Samus is in the game, it's very much a wasted opportunity, especially given her Smash 4 assist trophy actually had some of her unique moves already.
@@WhitePointerGaming Yeah, a lot of echoes are just the epitome of wasted potential, outside of Ken since that's the whole point of his existence in general and they did a great job pulling from his more varied fighting styles from street fighter 3 onwards. But for the others I'd rather they not be in the game at all or just be alt costumes if all that was gonna be done were some stat changes or just visual flair. And even if changes get made if there's a new smash, it'll just be like the Ganondorf situation given history. Though I'd like if they proved me wrong.
@@MagillanicaLouM Some echoes have been de-cloned and redesigned over time though, like Luigi, Falco and Roy, so it can happen. But you're right, the chances of any of them receiving significant changes at this point, especially the new ones they introduced in Ultimate, are probably pretty slim. They are more likely to be removed in the next game than redesigned.
I remember Sakurai using the term "Variations" in one of his videos to describe Fighters like Isabelle. It would make sense to have a Fox or Villager variant since characters in their respective series function near identically. But a variation of a Fighter doesn't constitute as an "Echo Fighter" because they would have to essentially re-create that existing Fighter to implement. So if creating a character like Wolf takes 70% of effort of a new character, it'd still be quicker to implement while offering actual gameplay differences. The Echo Fighters in Ultimate are solely just to boost series representation for casual audiences as well as to address people who complained about clones in every prior Smash game, but they still have to justify the inclusion with some gameplay attribute (competitive or not). I still think Melee had a better approach to clones because they addressed either player criticism (i.e. make a faster Link) or the differences were gameplay-focused rather than boost the # of characters. Now that Ultimate got casuals to like clone characters, I can see it being reasonable for clones to use existing movesets with tweaked properties that fit their canonical personalities in future games. Daisy being a faster, more aggressive Peach is a great example. I also wish Sakurai clearly identified variations, since it does seem baffling that Dr. Mario isn't an Echo Fighter while Ken is. Hope that adds to your points early in the video.
I almost feel like Ken is an Echo instead of a regular fighter simply because of his history in Street Fighter, where he was also a direct clone of Ryu's moveset. Otherwise it'd be more like Isabelle compared to Villager, where they just happen to have similar moves because of the franchise.
@@lasercraft32 pretty much yeah. Even in Street fighter past early versions of 2, him and Ryu have so much different stuff going on in moveset and playstyle
If Ninten got in how would you envision him? Personally I’d see him as a Ness/Shulk Hybrid with Buffing and Debuffing PSI Abilities with a Mewtwo Recovery and him using his Bat more than Ness and maybe his Boomerang, yes you can equip him with a Boomerang in Earthbound Beginnings.
As a Chrom main, I find it very refreshing to hear some Chrom positivity. I think the character is broken as well and I just don't find playing around Roy's sour spots very fun. While I wouldn't mind Chrom being a bit more of a clone to Roy *cough* up b *cough* I still think he is amazing.
I’m the opposite the only confirm I consistently hit with Chrom is Nair-Fsmash… His knockback is worse for kill setups compared too Roy for me. Granted I do enjoy them both but they each definitely have their own flaws
While he does have a bit less kill power than Roy, it's not by a crazy amount and he doesn't lack for kill setups. Jab bair is an execution barrier, but you still have jab fsmash, dtilt tech chase kills, fthrow tech chase kills, fthrow to pivot cancel ftilt being a good chaser. Stray bairs and ftilts. Side b kills decently too, it just looks weak compared to Roy's ridiculous side b.
Honestly I love chroms up B. When there was speculation for him being a character in smash 4 I always thought it would be cool for him to have an aether style up B and years later when he had it in ultimate I was so happy. Sure it might be a terrible recovery but the fact that they did it warms my heart😂
Lucina and Chrom should've been parallel to each other. It's quite baffling that the devs insist they take after Marth and Roy considering they're father and daughter literally holding the same sword.
@Eternal Indifference Not a cutscene bro, it's the entire first half of the game she pretends to be "Marth". It actually makes some sense that she's a Marth echo fighter because Chrom never taught her how to fight in his style of combat because he literally dies in her timeline. What's baffling is the option to make Chrom a Roy echo, though I guess with his style of combat, it makes more sense to be a Roy echo fighter than Marth. I'm still pissed off that Ike can't shoot out projectiles though or the fact he's so damn slow when he was decently fast in his game.
@@kimoota-kun Chrom never told her how to fight? Dude, Chrom and Lucina’s literal conversion when they were fighting was Chrom: “who taught you how to fight”, Lucina: “My Father” with the literal cutscene this dialogue is taken from SHOWING that they fight the same. Lucina also performs the same upward aether attack that Chrom does. Go one step further and outside of cinematics and instead gameplay and it makes less sense for why Lucina should echo Marth. While Marth is technically also of the “lord” class in Fire Emblem, more recent entries have made his class lodestar, a type of lord, but clearly meant to differ from the lord class that Chrom and Lucina are tied to, almost to say that they aren’t the same.
@@kimoota-kun Lucina literally says in Awakening that Chrom taught her how to fight. In the arena Ferox cutscene they are evenly matched 1 to 1. Take this further into Fire Emblem Warriors, Lucina and Chrom have almost the exact same moveset.
@@nydeity9100 Yes, really. Teams have deadlines, and resources, and they're only going to put in so much. Echo Fighters take fewer resources, so they can make it in. And unless you're making the argument "there are not enough unique characters in Smash Ultimate" it doesn't really make sense to demand that they make more unique characters.
You know what? For cases like daisy/peach and Simon/richter, I’d prefer nothing or the echo being an alternate costume over having two functionally identical characters who add nothing in terms of gameplay. Even the alternate costume method would likely have been (marginally) less time consuming than implementing them as echo fighters
10:41 I really like the handling of Bowser Jr. and Olimar/Alph. I think it makes sense to represent characters that would have the same or extremely similar movesets as reskins (with their own names representing how they have different animations), so that different characters can be obviously different and each character feels special. I dislike having a more characters that aren't distinct at a glance.
Although Alph and the koopalings could all easily have their own unique movesets too tbh. I'm fine with the koopas purely because the sheer number of them would be too much on the devs but Alph I feel was definitely done dirty lol.
I agree, even with the slightly differrent attributes of echo fighters, like Richter's holy water being Aura instead of fire, the echo fighters can be changed into skins. Olimar/alph, bowser jr, Hero, and Steve should be the standard, especially since smash 6 will have a smaller roster.
I have absolutely no idea why people consider Ness and Lucas Eco fighters. None of their move sets are the same at all. It’s like calling Kirby and King Dedede echo fighters because they can both suck people up and use hammers.
More like Kirby and Puff. Yeah, they have similitudes like size and weaknesses, but they differ in so many things is just not similar enough to be compared.
It breaks my heart that Daisy is just a glorified Peach skin. Especially since Peach was in Smash 4 and had custom moves. I'm not saying that any of them are perfect for Daisy, but that would have at least switched up how she plays.
Right? Like the video said, Daisy should've been more offense/combo oriented compared to peach. Her specials should also refer to the Mario sports, party, and kart games imo
@@ghifariasoka8272 Heck, I would have been fine if they had just given her her triple jump from Super Mario Run instead of float. Bam, changes her character completely.
@@kicksyo2171 I've seen people make Waluigi moveset revolving around the spinoff games and Daisy could've followed a similar route. Replace her Bob-Ombs with the ¿ Blocks (not as much damage but stuns, allowing for combo starters), and replace her Toad with a Crazee Dayzee (less knockback but deals more damage)
To answer your question at 10:50, the reason is that echo fighters can have different animations, whereas reskins cannot. For example, Samus' and Dark Samus' roll animation, or double jump animation. These animations shift their hurtboxes in different ways, which could not be done with a simple reskin. For the Koopalings, all their animations are exactly the same, therefore they would get hit under the exact same circumstances.
In my mind, Dark Pit is the ideal echo. The characters are 95% the same, but that 5% is a basically lateral question of matchup. Lucina and Dark Samus are the worst kinds. Lucina is just better Marth, while Dark Samus is literally identical. If more echoes had those mostly similar, but matchup polarizing differences, it would be much better. Not helping the Echo situation though is the entire Marth family tree kkinda coloring it. Another good option would have been to distribute some of the Smash 4 custom specials, but, those might end up as Lucina situations
Lucina was considered worse then Marth in her debut game, it’s more a case of how the specific game works then one being fundamentally better then the other.
@@-AirKat- But not so worse it was bad or even mediocre. Even in smash 4 she was an upper high tier, barely below Marth. Lucina is in roughly the same spot as before while Marth plummeted due to the faster nature of the game.
One thing you didn’t mention is that a lot of people complain that the Echoes label is inconsistent, mostly referencing how Lucina, Chrom, and Ken are Echoes while Dr. Mario is not. However, I think people are overlooking something in this categorization: release game. All the Echoes were introduced in Sm4sh or Ultimate, while Dr. Mario and most of his non-Echo friends were introduced in Brawl and Melee. I think release game and similar specials are the ONLY two categories that determine an Echo, the latter accounting for Isabelle not being an Echo as well. I don’t agree with it at all. But it’s consistent.
@@raizokite240 the thing is he WAS supposed to be a clone of Olimar in smash 4 that utilised rock Pikmin instead. And Doc, Lucina and Dark Pit were just skins. Then they went ahead and swapped them round
Yeah but like you, I don't agree. I really don't think a stat difference and mario tornado is enough at all to warrant Dr not just being made a costume in ultimate lol. Its literally the same guy, no one will care and mains can adjust and don the lab coat.
Dark Pit was made the opposite of Pit, became an anti-hero with his own character arc and having his own weapon then sakurai put him down by making him an echo fighter in smash
I think that's what happens when you promise everyone to be here. Also, while you can fix some stuff with fidelity (Like a float for Ganondorf to give him more options to use his power), as Minecraft Steve and Kazuya Mishima showed, too much fidelity can be actively detrimental for the character's health.
11:34 I usually agree with all your takes right out the gate but this one just ain't it. I secondary Lucas and I have gotta say he and ness are nothing alike, all their similarities are superficial, like their specials looking the same and being based on the same thing, but they all act completely differently. For example; Ness' PK thunder is a juggling tool while Lucas' is a gimping tool. Ness' PK fire is a combo starter while Lucas' is a zoning tool and combo ender. They don't even feel the same to play, like their mobility stats are out of wack with one another. All their specials, tilts, smash attacks (except f smash I'll give you that) and combos are different. Hope this didn't come off as aggressive, love your videos fam.
It’s annoying that Daisy is just a Peach reskin when it would’ve been so easy to give her unique properties that make sense. Just give her an extra jump and faster movement but take away the ability to float.
I think that a Chrom or Lucina style echo is the perfect sweet spot to aim for to add a character without using too many resources. There are many notable gameplay differences between the two that make someone want to play one rather than the other. While I also enjoy the differences between Ken and Ryu, I think they very too much from each other for the ease of addition that clones are made for.
@EternalIndifference Just not having source accurate movesets in general is a problem with Smash. Look at Ganondorf. I know he has multiple iterations with different powers and abilities, which is why I would love for them to reintroduce something similar to the custom moves from Smash 4 except they include those varying abilities and moves across his multiple iterations that you can pick and choose from without trying to cram them all in one character.
@@EternalIndifference Honestly echo fighters are just a way to claim to have more characters to choose from when in reality its not more choice its just x version or y version of x version. Fe is not very well represented in smash in general despite the abundance of music and stages. Its funny how sakurai really chooses who they get creative with and who they don't and people will defend these horrible design decisions regardless.
@Eternal Indifference of course, I’d be referring to characters that would make sense to be echos being treated this way. With a bit of work, I fully believe that Dark Pit and Daisy could work as echo fighters because they make sense to mirror their counterparts (not Dark Samus because original Samus needs a full rework before either side could work). But Lucina makes full sense to me to be a Marth echo fighter. In fact, I find it excessively weird that she wasn’t like that in the first place. I haven’t played the game myself yet (in the backlog) pretending to be Marth was a major part in her story, then playing like he did would lean into this more and, if it was the intent, could fool longtime fans better. The only good reason I could see Lucina needing to play differently than Marth is if the player is told that it is Lucina in disguise early on and they are deliberately trying to show the difference between the two.
@@lancehvu I would not say that smash overall represents characters badly but there are certainly a few notably bad outliers (Sonic, Gannondorf, Samus). Otherwise, I think they do a fantastic job.
I would love to see a redesing of dark pit/pitoo Kid Icarus Uprising had a long list of weapons and powers to take from, maybe keep most of their normals but use different weapons to justify using different specials in its kit.
I get why Echo Fighters are a thing (giving fans more characters with less development time) but they could've atleast done some minor tweaks to make some of the fighters different from the original. Heck, Ken has tons of noticeable changes compared to Ryu and he's still an Echo Fighter. They could've atleast adapted Dark Samus' attacks from her Assist Trophy iteration into regular moves, Simon should've had his low whip attack as a down tilt instead of Richter's slide (I'm aware Simon is not the Echo Fighter, but still), etc
I’m so glad someone is talking about echo fighters from a more objective standpoint. While I understand why so many people have a negative opinion about them, I like them. While the ones with differences might cater to more niche preferences, they’re still fun for me both to try out and play as and also to play against. And as for those with hardly any to absolutely no differences, it’s still fun for people to have that character put into the game as their own separate package, and from a development standpoint I imagine they must’ve been comparatively easier to get into the game, so it’s a win-win for the devs and players in that sense
I think what you need to realise is echoes/clones are added because the devs want extra characters that don't take much time and resources to develop so they can pad out the roster a bit more. Dark Samus isn't a high priority character enough for the team to make a full moveset for so it was either her becoming an echo or an assist trophy again
I'd rather have Damus as an Assist trophy high key. We got Ridley, he's enough for a villain of metroid. I'd rather Daisy and Richter have also been assists, in fact EVERY ECHO THAT IS NOT KEN I'D RATHER HAVE HAD AS AN ASSIST TROPHY!
Honestly I don’t mind if some echo fighters have a few differences while others don’t. If sakurai never mentioned that ALL echoes would have some differences I don’t think people would be complaining as much. Sure some echoes are glorified skins, but that’s awesome that we get those characters with their own voice lines, taunts, animations, final smash(sometimes), and win screens. I see no problems in having echoes that are exactly the same. They’re simply there to make fans happy and it works
Well then you have to consider the fact that it makes those characters less likely to get their own unique move set in the future. Now that Daisy’s her own character and not just a skin, it’s less likely that they’ll make her more distinct from Peach in the future. It’s not impossible, but far less likely. Plus if you’re going to have a completely different character in a completely separate slot, then I don’t think it’s asking too much of the developers to just change _something_ like frame data or runspeed or just anything to make them feel like more than just a skin of the original.
Characters have alternate skins with their unique voices (mainly the koopalings). Isn’t there an inconsistency on why some are alternate skins and others their own character if they are basically the same thing?
@@UniversalName -The koopalings are 7 characters, if you throw them into a single slot, you need 1 more; you either mash them with Bowser Jr or you don't have them. -Ike is literally the same character. We are not giving him two character slots. -Alph has no unique soun effects. -Leaf either goes as a Pokemon Trainer skin or is not there. Giving her a character slot is making three new playable characters. Am I missing someone?
@@thunderd7904 I agree with you. Yes it does lessen the chance of getting unique attacks. However, some of these characters probably would have never made it in unless they were echoes, so o think that it kinda evens out that way. I don’t think they’d ever add daisy as a fully fledged fighter but she has the chance to shine as an echo
@@coqui9879 Again, such a specific, almost negligible difference that it might as well not even be there. Not only is that a difference that literally affects one matchup, but it doesn't even change how the matchup works. Olimar has six possible pikmin, and this difference makes it so a single attack can or can't hurt a single one of his 6 possible pikmin. Whoop di doo. It's asinine.
@@randomcatname7792 which isn’t relevant in 95% of matchups and even in the ones where it is usually don’t determine the outcome of the game. It’s like a 1 in 10,000 chance that picking one or the other actually makes a difference
You hit the nail on the head. Clones should be dialed back into reskins for the character. When Nintendo is ready to give them their own playstyle, then they can become look-alikes.
The thing with the echo characters that people forget is that they are easy inclusions to the game because they re-use assets, being easy inclusions to a crossover game, and if they didn't exist we wouldn't have other unique characters, so it is better they exist than don't
True, a lot of these echos are in the game BECAUSE they're similar enough or have connections to already existing characters, Dark Samus, Daisy, Chrom and other characters like them would absolutely not be in Smash if they had to make them unique.
Exactly. If anyone has problem with them existing the only other option is that we have less characters in the cast, with no one new taking their place.
@@lucasferro6050 But at that point for Daisy or Dark Samus, they may as well be like *Alph*, a different skin. I'd rather them be a skin than a character with little to no significant difference.
@@amistake5110 But those two characters have unique effects attached to their moves, with Daisy's flowers replacing Peach's hearts and Dark Samus releasing phazon energy in a lot of its attacks AND both have unique taunts, idle animations and win screens, they're not JUST a costume swap, unlike Alph who is just a costume and nothing more. Imo these differences are enough to separate them
I personally feel Doc should be considered an Echo Fighter, since he's literally Mario and shares the same model size and animations (I'm a Doc main btw). Every Echo should have some unique thing that makes them play differently from their origin fighter, in one way or another, because if they have nearly identical everything then what's the point? Might as well just make palette swap specific graphic effects (they can already have separate animations and sound effects...). Better yet, just _make them different!_ Its not even that hard (I know from experience modding Brawl).
In general, fighting game clone characters can be cool because they can offer a new way to play an established character. Its just a couple of the Smash clones dont and it feels like a glorified costume rather than a new fighter. Btw, I want to learn how to mod ultimate. I want to give Kazuya the ability to KBD (among other things)!
@@robertgeorge4602 The best you could do is give him a reverse Mist Step, which would cause issues outside of 1v1 where he's forced to face his opponent.
@@espurrseyes42 Ive heard its possible because HewDraw Remix had in the patch notes that you can crouch cancel Kazuya's backdash. I just have no idea how to mod.
There actually is a difference between peach and Daisy but it's super subtle. Daisy is slightly shorter than peach which means our hurt box is slightly smaller and Daisy's base knock back and knock-back scaling values are actually swapped. So if peaches bkb is 7 and kbs is 8 Daisy's bkb is 8 and kbs is 7 Samus and dark Samus differences are all animation based which means their hit and hurt boxes are different depending on the animation it uses but if there are any clones that make perfect sense to basically be the exact same thing it's them two.
Definitely disagree with the Samus Dark Samus part. If it was Samus and the SA-X, then ya, they could be nigh identical and even though it’d still be stupid, it’d also make sense. Dark Samus, on the other hand, is not a clone of Samus in canon. Dark Samus is the Metroid Prime that absorbed Samus’s Phazon suit and essentially uses it as a foundation for its abilities. In game, it uses completely different attacks to Samus; usually centering around Phazon. I see 0 justification for why they couldn’t at least make charge shot move slower or increase its air speed while decreasing its ground speed. Simple easy changes that give you a reason to prefer one over the other even if Dark Samus definitely deserves a complete move set overhaul akin to Project M EX Remix.
Peach used to have different moves in Melee such as a different up air and the Peach Bomber which made an opponent catch on fire, she even had Smash 4 Custom Moves which they could’ve pulled from to make Daisy Unique.
@@thunderd7904 your right SA-X would definitely be a better fit for a clone but dark Samus fit the theme of 1 hero 1 villain better. The "justification" for clones is basically filler for time constraints. It's been like that since melee really. The smash games that have no clones are the ones that had a decent amount of development time. Melee and ult were made in 2-3 years an ult released with over 60 characters. So I feel like the thought process behind the clones was to fill up a roster space with a fan service character that they basically don't need to tweak beyond a few attributes. Dark Samus looks like samus so just let them play like samus. I'm sure if dark Samus comes back in another game that they'll have a completely different move set that's usually what happens with clones.
@@brandonwilliams6119 I think the reason they didn't go for it the custom moves because they didn't want the clones to be vastly different balance-wise. Which is why they opted for more subtle changes. I don't exactly remember what peaches custom moves are but I do remember a lot of those custom moves being stupid when it came to balance. If they gave Daisy a custom move and then had to spend time balancing it that would have defeated the purpose of her being a clone in the first place which is to save time and effort. Now I'm not saying they couldn't have tried harder but that clearly wasn't their prerogative.
@@crasyman101 yes, but if you’re not going to truly distinguish the clone from the source, I feel like there’s no point. And it’s not like it’s that hard to either, like I said, literally just a few number tweaks to their attributes would’ve been enough. The most ironic thing about Dark Samus is that they distinguished her through a few animation differences, which is much more time consuming, rather than a few number differences which is much easier. IMO, a good, justified clone is someone like Melee Falco. Almost the exact same animations for each move, but just differences between the angles the moves send at + a couple other things. And again, making new animations is way harder than just changing some numbers so I don’t see why they’d go through the effort of giving Dark Samus new animations without also changing some numbers.
If anything, they should've used the patches to experiment with the echoes' attributes. Instead they went and did the opposite when they saw that Daisy had an "unintentional" deviation from Peach. They dropped the ball hard with echoes in Smash Utlimate.
I'm almost certain that Chrom had Roy's upB but was play tested and the devs were like "wait a minute Wait A Minute! This is Not okay." They gave him the upB he has for a reason lol.
Wait! The whole Lucina having the same moveset as Marth doesn't make much sense because she was taught by Chrom. There's even a cutscene in-game that shows they fight exactly the same.
You're right, but chrom wasn't in smash 4 and roy was dlc. I guess they thought Lucina was more important than chrom so she was added in smash 4 and given marth's moveset. Plus in awakening she pretends to be marth. Then in Ultimate having 2 marth clones would be too much so chrom was based on roy, who was originally a marth clone anyway
I guess given the time travel in Awakening you could say that Future Chrom refined his sword style over time so by the time he was teaching Lucina how to fight, it was more similar to Marth's, whereas the Chrom that ended up in Smash Bros is the one from Awakening's main timeline, who was younger and rougher around the edges, leading to his fighting style resembling Roy's more chaotic, aggressive style. This is very much working backwards to justify it though, and the only real evidence that the game has to Chrom and Lucina fighting differently is their animations (Chrom pulling his sword out of the ground at the beginning of fights and stuff)
@@raizokite240 I mean yeah, that's the reason she is the way she is in Smash, and that makes total sense. Narratively speaking though, with what Awakening shows and explains, it doesn't make sense
I guess Sakurai based Lucina solely off the fact that she masqueraded as "Marth" for the first small part of Awakening, which is incredibly short-sighted from a design perspective.
This doesn't even account for many of the other characters that also have extreme overlap, not necessarily in exact moves, but in gameplan and the tools to accomplish it. Joker with Sheik and Greninja. Fox and Mii Brawler. Diddy Kong and Inkling. Byleth and Corrin. Many of the hardcore zoners have extreme overlap. It ends up being that many of the characters on the roster aren't worth picking besides for aesthetics because there is another character with similar but better tools and stats that executes that gameplan more effectively.
Ugh, the vendetta some people have against echo fighters is really dumb. Echos mean more playable characters while draining little to no resources. A character having its own moveset and playstyle obviously way more exciting, but bear in mind that such character takes at least 500 times more development time. And Ultimate is already a milestone achievement. And for those complaining that some echos are too samey, bear in mind that even the smallest changes can completely overhaul a character's balance. And that it's better to have two interchangeable characters than one character being a pathetic version of the other. The only gripe is that there could've been more echos. Like Shadow, Funky Kong and Dry Bowser. But oh well.
But then if they’re basically identical in terms of gameplay, why not just have them be a costume instead of ending up giving them different records for stuff like GSP and home run contest?
I think one way to differentiate clones would've been to give them some of the alt moves from smash 4. Of course, choosing the sensible ones with additional touches to make them balanced. One move per character would be enough, and maybe 2 for characters that are really different or from separate franchises.
I think you're significantly misjudging the primary purpose of clones / echo fighters. Their entire purpose is that they're a way to add additional content _without_ having to go through the effort of significantly differentiating their moveset. If every clone had to be as unique as Wolf, that'd defeat the entire purpose.
Then make skins like the Koopalings. No reason to waste the extra effort of implementing a few alternate moves and animations and having a 2nd or 3rd or 4th version of a character to balance instead of just condensing them to 1.
My issue with echoes is that you know good and well they are doing it out of laziness and padding. If a character is really so similar to another that they would have an identical move set, then make the echo a costume like they did with Bowser Jr. or Olimar. When they just take a character and copy and paste, it’s just a way to artificially boost the number of characters.
One major issue I see (sorry if this was mentioned and I missed it) is that it becomes really difficult to balance characters when they have clones. Because Marth and Lucina must mostly remain the same, the only buffs Marth can receive are to his damage, knockback, and tipper size; a buff to his airspeed, for instance, would have to apply to Lucina as well. In another vein, it feels like Link should have better mobility and frame data, but buffs in those areas would remove the weaknesses that differentiate him from Young Link and Toon Link.
If u really wanna reach… technically every echo fighter has differences Peach and daisy have very slightly different hurtboxes Dark samus actually has a lot of differences from samus including different animations (hurtboxes) faster rolls, lower hitting charge shot etc And richters and Simon’s down b has different properties which interact with some moves differently Also if u really wanna be even more granular technically if u were playing against a blue character it’s better to pick Simon because u can more easily see the character in his flame and see how they DI Also if u chose richter u can use his blue alt to obscure ur move that ur doing while standing next to the blue flame. But yeah, essentially these characters are the exact same. Unless u really wanna stretch the definition….. just thought I’d share this info lol
While I agree with all your points, I think I can understand why they did it this way. With all the content in Ultimate they probably felt that with some of the Echo characters they could just do good enough. While it’d be nice if they updated them in any future entries, if there are any. Although personally I think they should just port Ultimate to every future console and add to what’s there already. Don’t fix what ain’t broken.
I'll never not be slightly salty about what they did to Ganondorf. He's the big bad of the Zelda series, one of Nintendo's most iconic villains... And his moves are taken wholesale from the non-visible pilot of a racing game. Like seriously, as much as people enjoy the DORIYAH, none of Ganons moves come from his games and even his SWORD was memed into existence based on a tech demo that no one ever played. Ganon flies, shoots lightning balls, teleports, makes shadow clones of himself, attacks with a trident, turns into a demon pig, dual wields scimitars, has access to powerful magic... He's the Gerudo Warlock King, and all of that awesome was replaced with 'purple hand punch/kicks'. As a big Zelda fan, that's just heartbreaking.
That's kind of the problem with a lot of legacy characters. Their original smash iteration doesn't really represent how they are in their original games yet they gain a following in smash and become difficult to change. I would really like to see ganon be more like zelda ganon but i also really like stomping on people with dair
@@gameboyn64 There's a very easy way to satisfy both audiences that the Smash team just doesn't do. Ganondorf could be given his own unique moveset while his old moveset could be passed down to a new F-Zero character (like Black Shadow for example). That would satisfy the people who want Ganon to have a moveset that represents his appearances in his home series, people who like Ganondorf's current moveset, and people who just want a new F-Zero character added to the roster.
@@SonicTheCutehog that would probably piss off more people. Fans of smash ganon will get mad that their character was made to play in a way that's unrecognizable. Meanwhile f zero fans will get mad that their new character is both extremely lazy in design and bad.
@@gameboyn64 The moveset would still be in the game and Ganondorf would be given a moveset that represents how he is in his games. Besides, we all know that's the only way another F-Zero character will get in the game.
Honestly it annoys me how people complain about there being 8 FE reps in the game. They’re forgetting that technically Lucina and Chrom respectively are supposed to be for people who want to play with Marth or Roy’s moveset inna way that suits them more. I’d say they’re pretty good inclusions. The rest of them are unique and interesting in their own way to me
I think Chrom's placement is pretty fair. For someone whose recovery is on par (or sometimes worse than) Ganon, Dr. Mario, and Little Mac, but with excellent strengths everywhere else, B tier sounds about right.
Yeah, chrom's bad recovery has several negative side effects that limit what he can do compared to roy or much of the cast. He cant double jump in neutral or disadvantage as much because getting knocked off stage without a double jump is instant death.
@@gameboyn64 at a decent percent, and I mean like over 50, it takes the opponent first, (unless you're way high) The 0-death may not work, but for a majority of a match, it's available to chrom
Ultimately, I believe Echo Fighters is just a character who shares numerous animation data to another, BUT there's at least some unique animations. It would explain why characters like Ken & Ryu are deemed Echoes, while the Links are not and why the Koopalings are all one set. Don't me wrong, I too would've preferred a much more unique Dark Pit and such, but I think this is the prerequisite for one to be an Echo Fighter.
Always hated how Dark Pit holds his Staff in his renders but it’s only a Final Smash, you’re really telling me Sakurai couldn’t make it a neutral special?
Still of the mind that the Belmonts could have been condensed into a single character with multiple skins, just like the Koopalings. Simon, Richter, Trevor, Leon, Juste, Julius, Christopher, and maybe Soleiyu? Or whip skeleton? John Morris or Johnathan Morris?
as a melee player i think that while the only main differences btw fox and falco are based in attributes , their play styles are incredibly distinct. not to mention the amount of available play styles in melee is huge for each given character whereas in ultimate you don’t really have a play style you just play the character. leffen and moly play super differently but are both top players but when you play sonic you just play sonic. playing an offensive sonic just doesn’t work whereas a defensive falco in melee is absolutely viable seen with someone like fiction (the opposite is probably like mang0, and his success doesn’t need to be stated) i think on a superficial level the fighters are more different but their play styles have always been diverse, even though the amount of styles to play each character has been constricted to fill a role rather than a set of tools that can be used however the wielded chooses. when given the tools that steve has, you play steve. when you’re given the tools that for instance melee falcon has, the players vary from wizzrobe to n0ne
Steve players play completely differently from each other. Steve is one of the characters with the most varieties of play styles out of all characters in Smash
I'm sure that has to do more with how developed the meta of melee had become. People has different playstyles but you need the same fundamental basis. Even on the most limited characters you can notice differences in between players, as we see between Peanut and Alternis. The reason we don't see that many discrepancies is because the roster is bigger, and there's plenty of options to choose (64 tournament viable options from 19) but not much more players, meaning is more difficult to see repeats of characters.
Ken and Homura are great examples of clone characters that dont take a ton of resources to develop (relatively) but still have a distinct identity. That being said, for Ken, there was more that could be done. Cl MP HP TC, remove the back hit of Fair, make Far MP special cancel, replace up throw with his infamous Super Turbo Knee Bash Throw, QCF Crazy Kick (forget official name), give his focus attack more range. But I still really like Kens design in Ultimate. Giving the clones or base fighter some of Smash 4 custom moves would have been kind of easy and really appreciated. I feel like echo fighters are less of a problem and more of a missed opportunity.
@@Lira_orpheus Yeah, a shame because a lot of those moves are really interesting and added new life to a ton of characters. Giving some custom moves to base fighters (like Marth gets Iai counter) would have been another way to create differences.
As a devout Marth main, the echo fighter of Lucina really hurts, Marth has a sweet spot, Lucina doesn't, that's good because some people don't like the spacing for Marth, but the distance between the rankings of Marth and Lucina is absurd, I think of Marth and Lucina as one base character with different ways of achieving their goals, Marth and Lucina should placed right next to each other as they are more of (at least to me), oh, having trouble with a super fast character like Pikachu or Fox go switch to Lucina, really need that sweet spot Marth has to get past heavy characters easier, switch to Marth. Anyways good video, totally agree.
Both marth and lucina honestly need reworks imo. marth should be far more aggressive based and fast with his swordplay basically sword sheik because his swordplay is like that in fe and lucina should be a stronger more agile and tactful playstyle. Chrom idk enough about but i feel like fe is poorly represented in smash when the only multiple weapon character is byleth and still there is no actual lance character. Can't wait for alear next game regardless though as long as they make him fight with his fists like he does in his game and the engage mechanic in a game like smash could be so cool.
I'd luv to see a "The problem with X mechanic" kind of Videos, i feel like your videos are very well done and high effort, but their made ok subjects that everyone knows of, it'd be nice to see videos on subjects peoples don't talk about
I don't know if I'm crazy or not but I think there was a Super Smash Bros. game on the N64, and in it there was a clone character: Luigi, as well as two "similar to another" characters: Jigglypuff (Kirby) and Captain Falcon (Samus, although this one is a stretch). Luigi in particular started off as a clone of Mario and diverged into his own unique character, so dissimilar to Mario that he's barely considered a semi-clone of him in the current iteration of Smash (or not at all if I'm not mistaken). The term "Luigification" describes characters across all fighting games who start off as clones or reskins (like the ninjas in the original Mortal Kombat games, Ken and Ryu, etc.) and gradually develop their own unique traits and moves. Luigi as a character outside of Smash went through this process too; in 1981, he was a simple recolor of Mario, and now he's recognized across the globe as a totally distinct character who just happens to wear similar clothes to Mario. In short, the lack of mentioning of Luigi in this video was a little vexing. He started this cloning shit, and this is the thanks he gets? Lol.
I completely disagree. I think Echo fighters are handled really well and generally they have their pros or cons that could lead a player to liking one of them more than the other while not being strictly better than the other then again, I main Lucina, so I’m biased.
Dark Samus had it’s own flushed out moveset as an assist trophy character and the first echo character in smash history was Mario and his brother Luigi in Smash Brothers 64, most echo fighters were just a means of adding said character with the least amount of effort since they seemed pressed for time, which instead of just adding them release them afterwards as free characters via updates but I’m just crazy.
All these characters have their own unique moveset potential and I think the next game should just make these characters unique from their source character (or at least the ones they bring back) Honestly Smash is that one FG that SHOULDN'T have clones since it's a crossover fighter that has a job of properly representing characters, and with how the characters are all kinda shoddily represented prior to the Ultimate newcomers, they should work to make these characters more unique, alongside revamping older characters in general. Also for some of your arguments, idk why you used Steve as an argument against the "lack of enough source material" when Wii Fit Trainer would be a much better example. As for Dark Samus and Lucina, Dark Samus is extremely distinct from Samus, and Lucina playing like Marth ironically does not represent her properly at all since even if she disguised as Marth, she in no way fights like Marth. She isn't as regal as him and as you've said, is taught by Chrom, who arguably are moreso rugged in battle and more aggressive than regal and poised.
Castlevania is my favorite series so I was pumped when they revealed all the content. However Simon and Richter could’ve been different. I get they both provide elements that make up a full move set but I still believe they could have their own specials or at least have Simon be slow heavy and strong and Richter be fast light and weaker
Especially when half of the moveset comes from Richter anyhow. They could have had Simon focus more on traditional zoning by giving him more angleable whip attacks and a different up b, while Richter plays more like Young Link where he focuses on using his projectiles to rush down opponents. I think they were going for a more "generalized" moveset for the Belmonts, but that makes it even more bizarre that Simon is the primary when nearly everything down to the idle animations is from Richter. Not everything ofc, but up b, dash attack, the idles, the down tilt, etc. Most of the important moves. They could give Simon a better whip dangle, have him swing around with the whip more, maybe give him the leather whip even? There's still potential to make Simon different. You could make Simon have worse mobility and air stats to have him represent the more rough movement of the old games, and keep Richter with the same mobility they have now to have him represent the newer,, more athletic Belmonts. They could have even given Simon Grand Cross for his Final Smash and given Richter Hydro Storm!
@Saben .C [Spoon] I completely agree. Simon could've had some moves from Simon's Quest like his up special could've been using a red crystal which causes a tornado like Hero. Heck, Simon could've kept the normal specials and Richter could've different specials like a rebound stone or daggers or even athletic attacks like he has in some games. I get they are a generalize moveset but still think they could've done difference. Heck Richter's holy water shouldbe traveled across the floor. O could go on but you get the point.
@@thomashuff7976 Again that would be busted. Which is why Symphony of the night references are kept to a minimum. Fun Fact: Indiana Jones was the inspiration for the Belmont Whip.
This opinion began to form way before I played Smash competitively because I was only a child, but I'm personally very fond of clone characters such as Roy, Young Link, and Falco in Melee. When I grew up playing with my older cousin he'd for example play someone like Fox and I'd see Fox and say "oh Fox looks like fun, but I don't want to play the same character he's playing" so I'd pick Falco. That type of mindset made me fall in love with a lot of "clone" characters across multiple fighting game franchises. Even though some clone characters end up much worse than others, I like Melee Marth versus Melee Roy more than Marth vs Lucina because despite Roy being bad in Melee, Roy and Marth each had their own form of skill expression based on how their sweet spots worked, whereas Lucina essentially functions as removing the complexity of an existing character, which I haven't liked since her inclusion into Smash 4. Clone characters can appear similar and still possess their own unique complexity when created well (such as Link, Toon Link, and Young Link all playing differently despite sharing so many similar tools), so I hope to see them in the future but even better than before.
It sucks so much because not only are they just not well done in terms of giving them even slightly unique attributes that make them feel different enough to use them from their original source, but even if they do just go for the copy and paste idea, they don't give us a lot of characters for this to be a meaningful category. And both of these issue are so easy to fix. The former is all just numbers and coding (maybe make Dark Pit more powerful with less combo potential, let Richter's moves from his games be better while the ones from Simon's games are worse, and vice versa for Simon), and the later, while a bit more difficult, is only changing the animations of extra factors, like idle animations, taunts, and victory poses.
The problem with echo fighters: There is no problem outside of the competitive scene. Ganon is a blast to play casually, and Daisy is a nice reskin with cool new animations and voicelines.
I don’t know the specifics, but if I’m not mistaken Dark Samus is different from the original. I believe her posture, her floatiness, and her beam and rockets differ. Also some of her attacks and smash attacks hit slightly different areas. The differences are all fairly minute property changes, but they matter enough for pro samus players to have preferences and switch off sometimes
I think dark samus's charge shot is slightly lower and maybe her up smash or something. Dark samus has slightly different animations so hurtbox shifting is a thing
Nope, there’s literally no difference other than her movement animations like rolling, jumping, running, etc. actually I take that back: some of Samus’s attacks like fair are fire while some of Dark Samus’s aren’t. Definitely doesn’t justify an entire character slot.
@@thunderd7904 From the wiki Dark Samus' shield is slightly smaller Both of Dark Samus' rolls have less ending lag than Samus's Dark Samus does not use her Morph Ball when rolling, and she does not somersault while double jumping or jumping backward. This makes her hurtbox larger during those animations. All of Dark Samus' smash attacks have altered animations. This slightly influences the horizontal range of all versions of forward smash, with the unangled version having marginally less horizontal range, while the up and down angled versions have marginally increased horizontal range. However, Dark Samus does not move back as quickly during forward smash's ending lag. This makes it slightly less safe than Samus' version. This allows up smash to hit shorter opponents more reliably than Samus' version at the cost of KOing grounded opponents slightly later. Charge Shot has an altered animation, in which Dark Samus performs the move one-handed. This results in the projectile being fired at a slightly lower elevation, but her hurtbox is taller during the animation compared to Samus' version, making her easier to hit. This allows Charge Shot to hit low-profiling opponents more easily. However, this makes it slightly easier for opponents to jump over the projectile Dark Samus' animations for firing a Homing and Super Missile are different. She does not hunch over as much as Samus does when firing a Homing Missile, making her hurtbox taller and easier to hit. Her animation for firing a Super Missile in the air is much longer than Samus' version.
@@gameboyn64 ok but these differences still aren’t enough to strongly prefer one over the other and again, will rarely ever affect the final outcome of a battle
Chrom and Roy. Lucina and Marth. All have great justification for being so far apart from each other in tier lists. If Roy didn’t exist Chrom wouldn’t be higher in peoples tier lists just like if Lucina didn’t exist Marth wouldn’t be higher in peoples tier lists
The main point of Echo fighters, pretty sure was to add a higher quantity of fighters with lower effort required. Not including DLC or any instances of echos/clone-types, Smash Ultimate has the fewest new characters. Only Inkling, Ridley, Incineroar, and K Rool were new fighters with no relevance to any clone-type character (Simon is also a new fighter, but accompanied by Richter who Sakurai poses the question "who's the real echo?", and Isabelle taking pride in having about 70% of Villager's moveset). Debatably Ken isn't an echo, but still falls in the same category as Link or Fox/Falco does (virtually the same moveset but with different attributes).
I think most of the effort on ultimate was to update the engine to be a medium point between melee and smash 4 instead of just brawl without tripping, because no, replicating Melee is not that good of an idea due to accesibility issues.
I generally like echo fighters, but if they modified Dark Samus to be more of a grappler and combo heavy and less of a zoner I’d be pretty happy and it would really fit the character.
In the case of the Links, Young Link has more in common with Link than they both have in common with Toon Link. It's the normals that make that difference so pronounced.
I’m not a chrom believer, I think people overblow the benefits of consistent sword (I’m not convinced it’s even better than Roy) and then he literally should never recover against over half the cast
Chrom's viability compared to Roy is more than just his up b. Roy's sweet spots are much more powerful than any of Chrom's hits are, and contrary to Marth's tippers, aren't too difficult to hit and are very consistent in Ultimate. But his sour spots aren't even bad, as they actually give him some unique combos and kill confirms that Chrom doesn't have.
Most of them feel like "what was even the point of making them separate characters when they're almost exactly the same as their original character?". If all of the Echo Fighters were like Lucina, Chrom, and Ken or even like Melee's clones, then it wouldn't be a problem.
If Roy's neutral or side special was a fiery projectile, that would've both made him more different from Marth and also been a better reference to how he works in his native game. Time constraints and all that. Roy is my main in Melee, Smash 4, and Ultimate. I missed him in Brawl, but gained a lot of appreciation for Lucario and Toon Link pretty quick.
Before watching, I think a big problem is inconsistency. Mario and Dr Mario are unique fighter slots even though their movesets are almost identical, while Ryu and Ken are echo fighters despite having toally different A moves. Then multiple of them (Daisy dSamus, Richter) have minimal/nonexistant functional changes from the base fighter. Then there's Alph, Zombie, Enderman, and the Koopalings, who also have only cosmetic differences, but are skins instead of echoes... I think every pair of echo fighters should've had some meaningful difference from each other, even if it was just a small change in mechanics like Marth and Lucina, and more should have been classified as such, like the Marios, Links, Pikachu/Pichu, or Villager/Isabelle. That way echoes would've been seen less as "clones" and more as alternate versions of an existing fighter, like they were meant to be. Would also greatly resuce clutter on the select screen. Would've been cool to see more of them added with the above in mind, here's some ideas: -Octoling, uses different weapons. Carbon Roller, Range Blaster, Burst Bomb, maybe even Splat Charger nspecial, etc -Proto Man, a bit more damage than Mega Man but also lighter to reference his frailty in mm9 and 10 -Birdo: replaces tongue with slow, straight flying egg projectile -Dixie Kong: uspecial uses her hair propellor, nspecial fires her bubblegum gun from Tropical Freeze, which acts differently than Diddy's peanuts (not exactly sure what would change) -Shadow: replace homing attack with chaos spear projectile Scream Tail: Sing replaced with Hyper Voice, does damage and stuns. Rest Replaced with Sunny Day, temporarily buffing its speed and damage (referencing the protosynthesis ability) I came up with all these ideas in like 10 minutes, surely the Smash team couldve done the same
I made a Dark Samus character in Brawl when the game supported swappable B moves. Slow blast, different missile behavior, diagonal movement in the up-B... they could have done more there with pretty minimal effort.
The reason echo fighters have a lack of variety in their moves compared to their counterparts is not because of a lack of source material it’s to save on development time. Sakurai could have absolutely came up with unique moves for all of them like he did with Piranha Plant and ROB but in order to finish the game in a realistic about of time some of the echoes don’t feel different enough. I do agree there.
They're lazy means of roster padding not needed or wanted in a game series with over 40 characters since Brawl that wastes the potential of the character being implemented or gives them way more than they really deserve (like turning Mario in a different outfit into his own character when he could just be a skin). They're glorified skins that should've either just been skins like the Koopalings or had a bit more time put into them so as to at least make the semiclones like Lucas, Wolf, and Toon Link, the only "clones" Brawl had not counting the altered Falco and Ganondorf, who were also now semiclones.
Sakurai I’m Brawl: I’ve made differences to Falco/ Roy from Fox/ Marth to show more personality between the two. Sakurai in Ultimate: Assist trophy? Nah, Blue Samus.
I personally don’t mind echo fighters as a concept, but I do think they were pretty underutilized for what they set out to be. We got fewer echoes than I thought we would, several echoes are just carbon copies of their base fighters, and the DLC not having anything to do with echoes was also kinda disappointing. My biggest gripe is that Lucina is seen as both the easier to use and more rewarding version of Marth, which should not be a thing. Ideally, Marth should be harder to use than Lucina, but also more rewarding when optimized. That’s how it was in Smash 4. This time though, there’s basically no reason to use Marth over Lucina in any context, really. Been watching you for a while now, great video as always 👍🏻
I'm still baffled as to why the custom moves from Sm4sh weren't incorporated into some echoes. The Miis are capable of using them online and offline, so it's clearly not a software issue. Just seems like a waste of creative effort.
Play hdr mod, pretty much all clones got unique moves and attributes to distinguish themselves from each other and sometimes end up with completely different playstyles
I still swear Lucina should've had a moveset similar to Ike given her actual fighting style in the original game, her only ties to Marth are the fact that he's her ancestor and she used his name briefly.
@@gameboyn64 Chrom and Lucina literally share the same sword fighting style in every game aside from Smash. The only difference in their sword play is their stance
@@AsianMoriarty lucina as a lord/great lord stabs a lot. Chrom as a lord/great lord only ever swings and they are all wide swings. The only time they are remotely similar is in the cinematic.
@@gameboyn64 Revisited Awakening to reconfirm things, while she still doesn't feel like a fencer to me, I do concede that she uses thrusts more than Chrom. I still feel that their fighting styles feel more in line with the Merc/Hero classes which Ike's fighting style is more closely reminiscent.
To my knowledge, samus and dark samus aren’t entirely mechanically similar in the Metroid series, with dark samus being capable of floating and creating clones among others
Echo fighters mess up the in-game player stats screens too. Not a big deal for most people I imagine, but I used to *love* looking at them and going, "whoa, *that's* my 4th most-played character? I never would have guessed!" or "wow, I'm doing pretty well with Marth!" and then Lucina joined, ate half his gameplay, and now they barely crack my top ten. RIP Marth. One of my mains from 2001-Ultimate. Wish Lucina had just been a skin.
I never understood why people seemed to just accept echo fighters as perfectly fine characters. Even though Dark Samus, Daisy, and Richter are literally just carbon copies of their counterparts, Nintendo gets to advertise them as separate to bump up the amount of fighters in ultimate by a little and I haven't heard anyone talk about that until now.
I don't think that's entirely fair. To me, the "echo fighter" designation seems to indicate that they're _not_ just trying to artificially inflate the number of fighters. Nintendo is clearly acknowledging that they're not actually distinct enough to get their own fighter numbers. Do I think they should've done a little more with these characters? Absolutely. But I think this viewpoint is a little too cynical.
They’re just bonus content, mostly for people that dont care that much about gameplay differences, I wouldnt bothered to play peach if it wasnt for daisy as an echo. Same for samus/darksamus and simon/richter, I play them all because I like metroid and castlevania.
@@krys3001 Ice Climbers is very accurate to their source. Ice Climber is meant to be played in multiplayer, it's not fun without it. Ice Climber truly represents the frustration of co-op, if you don't take care of your partner, both climbers fail.
Peach and Daisy used to be slightly different. The turnip would send opponents in different angles. Sadly, this was later changed in one of the patches
leftover code from smash 4 😭
Yeah, I do think it would've been cooler if the picked up some Sarassaland themed objects with her B down move as a difference maker.
Yeah they went from bad echo fighters where one was strictly better, to just identical clones... It would have been better to make them more different
If anything they could give daisy peach moveset she had in melee
@@Masaru_kun Even something as simple as having Daisy deal slightly more damage on physical attacks, a higher ground speed/jump height, and no float to reflect how most of her appearances are from the sports games, while Peach would have more damage with "magic‐element" attacks/turnips, higher air speed and retain float to keep more in line with the magical theming Peach and Zelda have had since Brawl.
What kills me about the Dark Samus echo Fighter is that she had different moves as an assist trophy in Smash 4 but instead of developing that and adding a few Samus moves, the just made her almost an exact clone 😢
Got lazy/burnt out
Even worse was Peach/Daisy, because on release they had distinct mechanical differences between the characters, but like halfway through the first fighter's pack they removed the differences between them, and never did anything to make them different after. At least Dark Samus has some moves with different element properties and animation differences that can make interactions unique between the two.
Duuddee ikr i was soooo upset when i first player her when ultimate launced and she didnt have her assist trophy moves
@@GrimYaeger That's because canonical Samus is so over powered that differencing Samus and Dark Samus would cause some balance problems.
@@orangeslash1667 This game has Kirby, actual Goddes Palutena, reincarnated Goddeses Zelda, people who have killed gods and/or received blessings from gods, evil incarnate Ganondorf, etc. fighting a dog&duck, the AC Villager, fitness trainers, a boxer whose first apparition in Smash was as an assist trophy, etc. as equals.
Balance goes out the window in Smash.
Dark Samus' moveset could have been different and be as balanced as everyone else. It was a shame she ended up a clone.
I'm with you on the whole "echo fighters should get more unique moves or attributes to justify them more." Shoot, I would take a Smash bros game with a reduced roster size if every character was unique or given the "DLC treatment"
I think the only way they can top ultimate is if you go like 35-50 characters but they’re FULLY fleshed out. We need a Mario move set that features something that’s not based just on 64 and Sunshine for example (ik cappy and p coins but that’s visual) Or a legitimate move set for Ganondorf.
@@callumloader8713 dude I agree. I wouldn't mind a Super Smash Bros Ultimate "Deluxe" for the Switch 2, kinda how like they ported Mario Kart, but honestly, I would loooove a reduced roster with fully fleshed out and updated moves. I also want SKINS man!
I’m also on Team Reboot, I really care about keeping every single character I mean they already had their chance at being playable, let other characters who’ve never been playable before get their chance.
@@callumloader8713 For the next Smash I want a fresh, new, made from the ground up game; not the same assets and stuff ported for who knows how many times now.
Every other fighting game franchise has cuts between games. Smash fans have been spoiled by Sakurai's unhealthy hoarding habit. Smash 6 doesn't have to be Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, it can be MVC3.
@@callumloader8713 Ganondorf is that he has the Triforce of Power, so his moveset needs to reflect that. The problem is how to due you properly balance power in a fighting game???????? It really shows that some characters are a lot easier to design than others based on concept.
Bringing a character in as a clone or echo can lock them into an unrepresentative representation. Ganondorf is the poster child for this. Instead of being brought into a later game with a design that was actually based on his source material, he was introduced as a Captain Falcon clone just because his 3D model was a good match for Falcon's. And once he was brought in as a Captain Falcon clone, that cemented his Smash identity. Characters tend to see only minor design tweaks between games, and Smash Ultimate Ganondorf (even with his newer sword moves) is still arguably more of a Captain Falcon clone than a source material Ganondorf. And we'll likely never see an true source accurate Ganondorf, unless the devs go the route of multiple Ganondorfs similar to how they have multiple Links and Zeldas.
Ganondorf is that he has the Triforce of Power, so his moveset needs to reflect that. The problem is how to due you properly balance power in a fighting game???????? It really shows that some characters are a lot easier to design than others based on concept.
@@orangeslash1667 Various Zelda games have given plenty of abilities for Ganondorf, which Smash Bros completely ignored.
Ocarina of Time: Ganondorf freely flies, or at least freely hovers. Phantom Ganon is armed with a trident, fires an electric orb, effectively teleports through paintings, and can create decoy images. Ganondorf has a strong diving punch with a wide area of effect, lobs a electric orb projectile and also charges up for a homing multi-shot projectile. Ganondorf has some form of "darkness" energy attack. You could argue that Ganondorf can naturally reflect projectiles by hitting them, or you could argue that is instead a property of his basic projectile (as Link can also reflect them.)
Wind Waker: Ganondorf can fight unarmed, but dual wields two long swords for the real fight. Instead of flight, he has a floaty jump that can deliver fast horizontal movement. Unarmed, he punches Link (and seems to have a martial arts stance at one point) and backhands Zelda hard enough to knock her out of the battle. Armed, he has a few wide sword swings, a spinning attack, and a flippy jump. He blocks front attacks with his swords.
Twilight Princess: As Zelda Puppet Ganondorf (Ganondorf possesses Zelda's body), he flies freely, uses her sword to launch/reflect his OoT electric projectile, and summons a triangular area of effect attack. As Dark Beast Ganon, he teleports while dashing forward with attempted goring attacks. As Ganondorf riding his horse, he uses a rather long sword one-handed and fires a circling orb that breaks into multiple projectiles. As Ganondorf on foot, he still has that long sword which he uses for a variety of attacks. He has a running slash, a thrust, a wide swing, a spin, and also does a rushing elbow into sword swing combo. He has both a quick evasive jump and a high vertical leap that he follows with a sword attack. He also tends to block front attacks with his sword.
Link to the Past: This is pig-monster Ganon instead of Ganondorf, but he has enough moves to warrant using him as an example. He fights with a trident that he can spin and throw like a boomerang. He can summon a ring of fireballs that circle around him. He can temporarily expand that fireball ring, and he can transform the fireballs into firebats that fly away. He can summon a firebat that flies in a spiral while setting fires on the ground. He can summon a firebat that flies in a straight line while leaving a fire trail. He has a jumping stomp that temporarily stuns. He has an afterimage dash/teleport. He can turn invisible.
Smash identity is a serious problem for a lot of characters. Ike for example is not remotely similar how he is in his own game but at the same time more people have played smash ike than fire emblem ike. It's gotten so bad that ike in recent fire emblem games is smash ike and not fire emblem ike.
@@BainesMkII The problem is giving Ganondorf all that stuff would make him broken. Characters like R.O.B, Game and Watch don't have this problem because their not very strong in their games, so Sakurai made them more powerful.
It's a sad fact that overpowered characters have to be extremely nerfed for Smash.
@@gameboyn64 The problem is that Radiant Dawn doesn't look great for Wii standers, and two the game has very annoying map design.
Dark Samus in the prime games has a lot of moves unique from Samus, and even had a lot of this as an Assist Trophy. Of all the Echos , Dark Samus got robbed of its potential.
Yeah, I was gonna say this. In the Prime games Dark Samus only bears a resemblance to Samus physically. Her actual moveset is completely different, so while I'm happy Dark Samus is in the game, it's very much a wasted opportunity, especially given her Smash 4 assist trophy actually had some of her unique moves already.
@@WhitePointerGaming Yeah, a lot of echoes are just the epitome of wasted potential, outside of Ken since that's the whole point of his existence in general and they did a great job pulling from his more varied fighting styles from street fighter 3 onwards. But for the others I'd rather they not be in the game at all or just be alt costumes if all that was gonna be done were some stat changes or just visual flair. And even if changes get made if there's a new smash, it'll just be like the Ganondorf situation given history. Though I'd like if they proved me wrong.
@@MagillanicaLouM Some echoes have been de-cloned and redesigned over time though, like Luigi, Falco and Roy, so it can happen. But you're right, the chances of any of them receiving significant changes at this point, especially the new ones they introduced in Ultimate, are probably pretty slim. They are more likely to be removed in the next game than redesigned.
@@WhitePointerGaming tbh she was more scary as an assist trophy all the tentacles n shi
I remember Sakurai using the term "Variations" in one of his videos to describe Fighters like Isabelle. It would make sense to have a Fox or Villager variant since characters in their respective series function near identically. But a variation of a Fighter doesn't constitute as an "Echo Fighter" because they would have to essentially re-create that existing Fighter to implement. So if creating a character like Wolf takes 70% of effort of a new character, it'd still be quicker to implement while offering actual gameplay differences.
The Echo Fighters in Ultimate are solely just to boost series representation for casual audiences as well as to address people who complained about clones in every prior Smash game, but they still have to justify the inclusion with some gameplay attribute (competitive or not). I still think Melee had a better approach to clones because they addressed either player criticism (i.e. make a faster Link) or the differences were gameplay-focused rather than boost the # of characters.
Now that Ultimate got casuals to like clone characters, I can see it being reasonable for clones to use existing movesets with tweaked properties that fit their canonical personalities in future games. Daisy being a faster, more aggressive Peach is a great example.
I also wish Sakurai clearly identified variations, since it does seem baffling that Dr. Mario isn't an Echo Fighter while Ken is.
Hope that adds to your points early in the video.
I almost feel like Ken is an Echo instead of a regular fighter simply because of his history in Street Fighter, where he was also a direct clone of Ryu's moveset. Otherwise it'd be more like Isabelle compared to Villager, where they just happen to have similar moves because of the franchise.
@@lasercraft32 pretty much yeah. Even in Street fighter past early versions of 2, him and Ryu have so much different stuff going on in moveset and playstyle
I like how Lucas is called a “clone” of Ness but they have completely different play styles
Lol
yeah they are literally completely different
If Ninten got in how would you envision him?
Personally I’d see him as a Ness/Shulk Hybrid with Buffing and Debuffing PSI Abilities with a Mewtwo Recovery and him using his Bat more than Ness and maybe his Boomerang, yes you can equip him with a Boomerang in Earthbound Beginnings.
search brawlfan1 ninten
Yeah, they're basically as different as Fox/Wolf and Mario/Luigi lol
As a Chrom main, I find it very refreshing to hear some Chrom positivity. I think the character is broken as well and I just don't find playing around Roy's sour spots very fun. While I wouldn't mind Chrom being a bit more of a clone to Roy *cough* up b *cough* I still think he is amazing.
I’m the opposite the only confirm I consistently hit with Chrom is Nair-Fsmash… His knockback is worse for kill setups compared too Roy for me. Granted I do enjoy them both but they each definitely have their own flaws
While he does have a bit less kill power than Roy, it's not by a crazy amount and he doesn't lack for kill setups. Jab bair is an execution barrier, but you still have jab fsmash, dtilt tech chase kills, fthrow tech chase kills, fthrow to pivot cancel ftilt being a good chaser. Stray bairs and ftilts. Side b kills decently too, it just looks weak compared to Roy's ridiculous side b.
Profile pic checks out
Honestly I love chroms up B. When there was speculation for him being a character in smash 4 I always thought it would be cool for him to have an aether style up B and years later when he had it in ultimate I was so happy. Sure it might be a terrible recovery but the fact that they did it warms my heart😂
@@branman968 fthrow tech chases dont work with di up
Lucina and Chrom should've been parallel to each other. It's quite baffling that the devs insist they take after Marth and Roy considering they're father and daughter literally holding the same sword.
This was going to be the case in smash 4 I’m assuming when chrom was the original rep instead of Robin
@Eternal Indifference That POOR EXCUSE is why people thought she was boring! Attack animations from Awakening could still have been added!
@Eternal Indifference Not a cutscene bro, it's the entire first half of the game she pretends to be "Marth". It actually makes some sense that she's a Marth echo fighter because Chrom never taught her how to fight in his style of combat because he literally dies in her timeline.
What's baffling is the option to make Chrom a Roy echo, though I guess with his style of combat, it makes more sense to be a Roy echo fighter than Marth.
I'm still pissed off that Ike can't shoot out projectiles though or the fact he's so damn slow when he was decently fast in his game.
@@kimoota-kun Chrom never told her how to fight? Dude, Chrom and Lucina’s literal conversion when they were fighting was Chrom: “who taught you how to fight”, Lucina: “My Father” with the literal cutscene this dialogue is taken from SHOWING that they fight the same. Lucina also performs the same upward aether attack that Chrom does.
Go one step further and outside of cinematics and instead gameplay and it makes less sense for why Lucina should echo Marth. While Marth is technically also of the “lord” class in Fire Emblem, more recent entries have made his class lodestar, a type of lord, but clearly meant to differ from the lord class that Chrom and Lucina are tied to, almost to say that they aren’t the same.
@@kimoota-kun Lucina literally says in Awakening that Chrom taught her how to fight. In the arena Ferox cutscene they are evenly matched 1 to 1. Take this further into Fire Emblem Warriors, Lucina and Chrom have almost the exact same moveset.
The choice between Echo Fighters isn't "Echo Fighter or better moveset" it's "Echo Fighter or nothing."
Not really.
@@nydeity9100 Yes, really. Teams have deadlines, and resources, and they're only going to put in so much. Echo Fighters take fewer resources, so they can make it in. And unless you're making the argument "there are not enough unique characters in Smash Ultimate" it doesn't really make sense to demand that they make more unique characters.
@@nydeity9100 Yes, really. It has been stated that echoes were created because all that was needed was a new model and a couple of move tweaks.
You know what? For cases like daisy/peach and Simon/richter, I’d prefer nothing or the echo being an alternate costume over having two functionally identical characters who add nothing in terms of gameplay. Even the alternate costume method would likely have been (marginally) less time consuming than implementing them as echo fighters
@@dakoriolf Sakurai really likes his references.
10:41 I really like the handling of Bowser Jr. and Olimar/Alph. I think it makes sense to represent characters that would have the same or extremely similar movesets as reskins (with their own names representing how they have different animations), so that different characters can be obviously different and each character feels special. I dislike having a more characters that aren't distinct at a glance.
Although Alph and the koopalings could all easily have their own unique movesets too tbh. I'm fine with the koopas purely because the sheer number of them would be too much on the devs but Alph I feel was definitely done dirty lol.
I agree, even with the slightly differrent attributes of echo fighters, like Richter's holy water being Aura instead of fire, the echo fighters can be changed into skins. Olimar/alph, bowser jr, Hero, and Steve should be the standard, especially since smash 6 will have a smaller roster.
@@MagillanicaLouMI heard Alph was originally going to have his own moveset,but was changed to a skin
I have absolutely no idea why people consider Ness and Lucas Eco fighters. None of their move sets are the same at all. It’s like calling Kirby and King Dedede echo fighters because they can both suck people up and use hammers.
More like Kirby and Puff. Yeah, they have similitudes like size and weaknesses, but they differ in so many things is just not similar enough to be compared.
They're semi-clones, dude. So what if they play differnetly. I'm a long time Ness main and I can't just pick up Lucas and be effective.
It breaks my heart that Daisy is just a glorified Peach skin. Especially since Peach was in Smash 4 and had custom moves. I'm not saying that any of them are perfect for Daisy, but that would have at least switched up how she plays.
@Eternal Indifference it's a shame too. I've never played Awakening, but I really like them as characters. They deserve better.
Right? Like the video said, Daisy should've been more offense/combo oriented compared to peach. Her specials should also refer to the Mario sports, party, and kart games imo
@@ghifariasoka8272 Heck, I would have been fine if they had just given her her triple jump from Super Mario Run instead of float. Bam, changes her character completely.
@@kicksyo2171 I've seen people make Waluigi moveset revolving around the spinoff games and Daisy could've followed a similar route. Replace her Bob-Ombs with the ¿ Blocks (not as much damage but stuns, allowing for combo starters), and replace her Toad with a Crazee Dayzee (less knockback but deals more damage)
Heck even just giving Daisy a Baseball Bat in one of her angled forward smashes would’ve been cool. Personally I’d sacrifice the Golf Club for it.
To answer your question at 10:50, the reason is that echo fighters can have different animations, whereas reskins cannot. For example, Samus' and Dark Samus' roll animation, or double jump animation. These animations shift their hurtboxes in different ways, which could not be done with a simple reskin. For the Koopalings, all their animations are exactly the same, therefore they would get hit under the exact same circumstances.
In my mind, Dark Pit is the ideal echo.
The characters are 95% the same, but that 5% is a basically lateral question of matchup.
Lucina and Dark Samus are the worst kinds.
Lucina is just better Marth, while Dark Samus is literally identical.
If more echoes had those mostly similar, but matchup polarizing differences, it would be much better.
Not helping the Echo situation though is the entire Marth family tree kkinda coloring it.
Another good option would have been to distribute some of the Smash 4 custom specials, but, those might end up as Lucina situations
Lucina was considered worse then Marth in her debut game, it’s more a case of how the specific game works then one being fundamentally better then the other.
@@-AirKat- But not so worse it was bad or even mediocre. Even in smash 4 she was an upper high tier, barely below Marth. Lucina is in roughly the same spot as before while Marth plummeted due to the faster nature of the game.
I also want to brin attention to Richter. The whole "Simon and Richter are echoes of each other" is a BS excuse.
One thing you didn’t mention is that a lot of people complain that the Echoes label is inconsistent, mostly referencing how Lucina, Chrom, and Ken are Echoes while Dr. Mario is not. However, I think people are overlooking something in this categorization: release game. All the Echoes were introduced in Sm4sh or Ultimate, while Dr. Mario and most of his non-Echo friends were introduced in Brawl and Melee. I think release game and similar specials are the ONLY two categories that determine an Echo, the latter accounting for Isabelle not being an Echo as well.
I don’t agree with it at all. But it’s consistent.
Why isn't Alph an echo
@@raizokite240 the thing is he WAS supposed to be a clone of Olimar in smash 4 that utilised rock Pikmin instead. And Doc, Lucina and Dark Pit were just skins. Then they went ahead and swapped them round
@@thegiraffegang8315 Didn't know that and I'm going to blindly believe you without looking it up
Yeah but like you, I don't agree. I really don't think a stat difference and mario tornado is enough at all to warrant Dr not just being made a costume in ultimate lol. Its literally the same guy, no one will care and mains can adjust and don the lab coat.
Isn’t Isabelle a semi-clone?
Dark Pit was made the opposite of Pit, became an anti-hero with his own character arc and having his own weapon then sakurai put him down by making him an echo fighter in smash
I think that's what happens when you promise everyone to be here. Also, while you can fix some stuff with fidelity (Like a float for Ganondorf to give him more options to use his power), as Minecraft Steve and Kazuya Mishima showed, too much fidelity can be actively detrimental for the character's health.
health?
11:34 I usually agree with all your takes right out the gate but this one just ain't it. I secondary Lucas and I have gotta say he and ness are nothing alike, all their similarities are superficial, like their specials looking the same and being based on the same thing, but they all act completely differently. For example; Ness' PK thunder is a juggling tool while Lucas' is a gimping tool. Ness' PK fire is a combo starter while Lucas' is a zoning tool and combo ender. They don't even feel the same to play, like their mobility stats are out of wack with one another. All their specials, tilts, smash attacks (except f smash I'll give you that) and combos are different. Hope this didn't come off as aggressive, love your videos fam.
It’s annoying that Daisy is just a Peach reskin when it would’ve been so easy to give her unique properties that make sense. Just give her an extra jump and faster movement but take away the ability to float.
can we talk about the amazing sportsmanship between the ryu and ken in the beginning of the video truly a sight to behold we love it
I think that a Chrom or Lucina style echo is the perfect sweet spot to aim for to add a character without using too many resources. There are many notable gameplay differences between the two that make someone want to play one rather than the other. While I also enjoy the differences between Ken and Ryu, I think they very too much from each other for the ease of addition that clones are made for.
@EternalIndifference Just not having source accurate movesets in general is a problem with Smash. Look at Ganondorf. I know he has multiple iterations with different powers and abilities, which is why I would love for them to reintroduce something similar to the custom moves from Smash 4 except they include those varying abilities and moves across his multiple iterations that you can pick and choose from without trying to cram them all in one character.
@@EternalIndifference Honestly echo fighters are just a way to claim to have more characters to choose from when in reality its not more choice its just x version or y version of x version. Fe is not very well represented in smash in general despite the abundance of music and stages. Its funny how sakurai really chooses who they get creative with and who they don't and people will defend these horrible design decisions regardless.
@Eternal Indifference of course, I’d be referring to characters that would make sense to be echos being treated this way. With a bit of work, I fully believe that Dark Pit and Daisy could work as echo fighters because they make sense to mirror their counterparts (not Dark Samus because original Samus needs a full rework before either side could work).
But Lucina makes full sense to me to be a Marth echo fighter. In fact, I find it excessively weird that she wasn’t like that in the first place. I haven’t played the game myself yet (in the backlog) pretending to be Marth was a major part in her story, then playing like he did would lean into this more and, if it was the intent, could fool longtime fans better. The only good reason I could see Lucina needing to play differently than Marth is if the player is told that it is Lucina in disguise early on and they are deliberately trying to show the difference between the two.
@@lancehvu I would not say that smash overall represents characters badly but there are certainly a few notably bad outliers (Sonic, Gannondorf, Samus). Otherwise, I think they do a fantastic job.
@@dave9515 not well represented?? Don’t they have the most characters after the Mario franchise? How much more representation do you want?
I would love to see a redesing of dark pit/pitoo
Kid Icarus Uprising had a long list of weapons and powers to take from, maybe keep most of their normals but use different weapons to justify using different specials in its kit.
I'm fine with the Pits being the way they are.
@@kappadarwin9476 tbh but dark pit deserves better
I get why Echo Fighters are a thing (giving fans more characters with less development time) but they could've atleast done some minor tweaks to make some of the fighters different from the original. Heck, Ken has tons of noticeable changes compared to Ryu and he's still an Echo Fighter.
They could've atleast adapted Dark Samus' attacks from her Assist Trophy iteration into regular moves, Simon should've had his low whip attack as a down tilt instead of Richter's slide (I'm aware Simon is not the Echo Fighter, but still), etc
I’m so glad someone is talking about echo fighters from a more objective standpoint. While I understand why so many people have a negative opinion about them, I like them. While the ones with differences might cater to more niche preferences, they’re still fun for me both to try out and play as and also to play against. And as for those with hardly any to absolutely no differences, it’s still fun for people to have that character put into the game as their own separate package, and from a development standpoint I imagine they must’ve been comparatively easier to get into the game, so it’s a win-win for the devs and players in that sense
I think what you need to realise is echoes/clones are added because the devs want extra characters that don't take much time and resources to develop so they can pad out the roster a bit more. Dark Samus isn't a high priority character enough for the team to make a full moveset for so it was either her becoming an echo or an assist trophy again
I'd rather have Damus as an Assist trophy high key. We got Ridley, he's enough for a villain of metroid. I'd rather Daisy and Richter have also been assists, in fact EVERY ECHO THAT IS NOT KEN I'D RATHER HAVE HAD AS AN ASSIST TROPHY!
Honestly I don’t mind if some echo fighters have a few differences while others don’t. If sakurai never mentioned that ALL echoes would have some differences I don’t think people would be complaining as much. Sure some echoes are glorified skins, but that’s awesome that we get those characters with their own voice lines, taunts, animations, final smash(sometimes), and win screens. I see no problems in having echoes that are exactly the same. They’re simply there to make fans happy and it works
Well then you have to consider the fact that it makes those characters less likely to get their own unique move set in the future. Now that Daisy’s her own character and not just a skin, it’s less likely that they’ll make her more distinct from Peach in the future. It’s not impossible, but far less likely.
Plus if you’re going to have a completely different character in a completely separate slot, then I don’t think it’s asking too much of the developers to just change _something_ like frame data or runspeed or just anything to make them feel like more than just a skin of the original.
Characters have alternate skins with their unique voices (mainly the koopalings). Isn’t there an inconsistency on why some are alternate skins and others their own character if they are basically the same thing?
@@UniversalName
-The koopalings are 7 characters, if you throw them into a single slot, you need 1 more; you either mash them with Bowser Jr or you don't have them.
-Ike is literally the same character. We are not giving him two character slots.
-Alph has no unique soun effects.
-Leaf either goes as a Pokemon Trainer skin or is not there. Giving her a character slot is making three new playable characters.
Am I missing someone?
I agree. While yes, you could have done more with them, I find them to be enough and perfectly fine.
@@thunderd7904 I agree with you. Yes it does lessen the chance of getting unique attacks. However, some of these characters probably would have never made it in unless they were echoes, so o think that it kinda evens out that way. I don’t think they’d ever add daisy as a fully fledged fighter but she has the chance to shine as an echo
Im pretty sure the belmonts are just 1 character with 16 skins, and even then they could have put trevor and julius as skins
Nope they have one singular difference (holy water) so they're technically different characters
@@randomcatname7792 a diference that might as well not even be there
@@Buzterer not true! Richter has a slightly better matchup against Olimar because his fire can kill red pikmin!
@@coqui9879 Again, such a specific, almost negligible difference that it might as well not even be there. Not only is that a difference that literally affects one matchup, but it doesn't even change how the matchup works. Olimar has six possible pikmin, and this difference makes it so a single attack can or can't hurt a single one of his 6 possible pikmin. Whoop di doo. It's asinine.
@@randomcatname7792 which isn’t relevant in 95% of matchups and even in the ones where it is usually don’t determine the outcome of the game. It’s like a 1 in 10,000 chance that picking one or the other actually makes a difference
Luigi was basically an echo of Mario in Smash 64, but both were tweaked from that in different directions starting in Melee.
You hit the nail on the head. Clones should be dialed back into reskins for the character. When Nintendo is ready to give them their own playstyle, then they can become look-alikes.
The thing with the echo characters that people forget is that they are easy inclusions to the game because they re-use assets, being easy inclusions to a crossover game, and if they didn't exist we wouldn't have other unique characters, so it is better they exist than don't
True, a lot of these echos are in the game BECAUSE they're similar enough or have connections to already existing characters, Dark Samus, Daisy, Chrom and other characters like them would absolutely not be in Smash if they had to make them unique.
Exactly. If anyone has problem with them existing the only other option is that we have less characters in the cast, with no one new taking their place.
@@lucasferro6050 But at that point for Daisy or Dark Samus, they may as well be like *Alph*, a different skin.
I'd rather them be a skin than a character with little to no significant difference.
@@amistake5110 But those two characters have unique effects attached to their moves, with Daisy's flowers replacing Peach's hearts and Dark Samus releasing phazon energy in a lot of its attacks AND both have unique taunts, idle animations and win screens, they're not JUST a costume swap, unlike Alph who is just a costume and nothing more. Imo these differences are enough to separate them
@@lucasferro6050 That does make me think what Lucina would be like if Sakurai went with his first idea of making her a costume for Marth...
I personally feel Doc should be considered an Echo Fighter, since he's literally Mario and shares the same model size and animations (I'm a Doc main btw). Every Echo should have some unique thing that makes them play differently from their origin fighter, in one way or another, because if they have nearly identical everything then what's the point? Might as well just make palette swap specific graphic effects (they can already have separate animations and sound effects...). Better yet, just _make them different!_ Its not even that hard (I know from experience modding Brawl).
In general, fighting game clone characters can be cool because they can offer a new way to play an established character. Its just a couple of the Smash clones dont and it feels like a glorified costume rather than a new fighter.
Btw, I want to learn how to mod ultimate. I want to give Kazuya the ability to KBD (among other things)!
@@robertgeorge4602
The best you could do is give him a reverse Mist Step, which would cause issues outside of 1v1 where he's forced to face his opponent.
@@espurrseyes42 Ive heard its possible because HewDraw Remix had in the patch notes that you can crouch cancel Kazuya's backdash.
I just have no idea how to mod.
There's a mod for Doc that changes most of his moves...
*he has the people's elbow, and it spikes...why couldn't Doc have this in the actual game?*
Video Idea: Why Everyone Plays Captain Falcon
For the h y p e
Every nair1 into knee i land adds 1 year to my lifespan
1) he's hype
2) he's fun
You're welcome
What other Falcon players besides Fatality and Sean?
Captain Masher.
There actually is a difference between peach and Daisy but it's super subtle.
Daisy is slightly shorter than peach which means our hurt box is slightly smaller and Daisy's base knock back and knock-back scaling values are actually swapped.
So if peaches bkb is 7 and kbs is 8
Daisy's bkb is 8 and kbs is 7
Samus and dark Samus differences are all animation based which means their hit and hurt boxes are different depending on the animation it uses but if there are any clones that make perfect sense to basically be the exact same thing it's them two.
Definitely disagree with the Samus Dark Samus part. If it was Samus and the SA-X, then ya, they could be nigh identical and even though it’d still be stupid, it’d also make sense. Dark Samus, on the other hand, is not a clone of Samus in canon. Dark Samus is the Metroid Prime that absorbed Samus’s Phazon suit and essentially uses it as a foundation for its abilities. In game, it uses completely different attacks to Samus; usually centering around Phazon. I see 0 justification for why they couldn’t at least make charge shot move slower or increase its air speed while decreasing its ground speed. Simple easy changes that give you a reason to prefer one over the other even if Dark Samus definitely deserves a complete move set overhaul akin to Project M EX Remix.
Peach used to have different moves in Melee such as a different up air and the Peach Bomber which made an opponent catch on fire, she even had Smash 4 Custom Moves which they could’ve pulled from to make Daisy Unique.
@@thunderd7904 your right SA-X would definitely be a better fit for a clone but dark Samus fit the theme of 1 hero 1 villain better. The "justification" for clones is basically filler for time constraints. It's been like that since melee really. The smash games that have no clones are the ones that had a decent amount of development time. Melee and ult were made in 2-3 years an ult released with over 60 characters. So I feel like the thought process behind the clones was to fill up a roster space with a fan service character that they basically don't need to tweak beyond a few attributes. Dark Samus looks like samus so just let them play like samus. I'm sure if dark Samus comes back in another game that they'll have a completely different move set that's usually what happens with clones.
@@brandonwilliams6119 I think the reason they didn't go for it the custom moves because they didn't want the clones to be vastly different balance-wise. Which is why they opted for more subtle changes. I don't exactly remember what peaches custom moves are but I do remember a lot of those custom moves being stupid when it came to balance. If they gave Daisy a custom move and then had to spend time balancing it that would have defeated the purpose of her being a clone in the first place which is to save time and effort.
Now I'm not saying they couldn't have tried harder but that clearly wasn't their prerogative.
@@crasyman101 yes, but if you’re not going to truly distinguish the clone from the source, I feel like there’s no point. And it’s not like it’s that hard to either, like I said, literally just a few number tweaks to their attributes would’ve been enough. The most ironic thing about Dark Samus is that they distinguished her through a few animation differences, which is much more time consuming, rather than a few number differences which is much easier. IMO, a good, justified clone is someone like Melee Falco. Almost the exact same animations for each move, but just differences between the angles the moves send at + a couple other things. And again, making new animations is way harder than just changing some numbers so I don’t see why they’d go through the effort of giving Dark Samus new animations without also changing some numbers.
If anything, they should've used the patches to experiment with the echoes' attributes. Instead they went and did the opposite when they saw that Daisy had an "unintentional" deviation from Peach.
They dropped the ball hard with echoes in Smash Utlimate.
One thing I wouldn’t of expected in my league addiction turning into a smash addiction would be Vars videos still helping me out.
I'm almost certain that Chrom had Roy's upB but was play tested and the devs were like "wait a minute Wait A Minute! This is Not okay."
They gave him the upB he has for a reason lol.
But then they accidentally gave him chromikaze which was insane.
Wait! The whole Lucina having the same moveset as Marth doesn't make much sense because she was taught by Chrom. There's even a cutscene in-game that shows they fight exactly the same.
You're right, but chrom wasn't in smash 4 and roy was dlc. I guess they thought Lucina was more important than chrom so she was added in smash 4 and given marth's moveset. Plus in awakening she pretends to be marth. Then in Ultimate having 2 marth clones would be too much so chrom was based on roy, who was originally a marth clone anyway
I guess given the time travel in Awakening you could say that Future Chrom refined his sword style over time so by the time he was teaching Lucina how to fight, it was more similar to Marth's, whereas the Chrom that ended up in Smash Bros is the one from Awakening's main timeline, who was younger and rougher around the edges, leading to his fighting style resembling Roy's more chaotic, aggressive style. This is very much working backwards to justify it though, and the only real evidence that the game has to Chrom and Lucina fighting differently is their animations (Chrom pulling his sword out of the ground at the beginning of fights and stuff)
@@raizokite240 I mean yeah, that's the reason she is the way she is in Smash, and that makes total sense. Narratively speaking though, with what Awakening shows and explains, it doesn't make sense
I guess Sakurai based Lucina solely off the fact that she masqueraded as "Marth" for the first small part of Awakening, which is incredibly short-sighted from a design perspective.
@inplane 100% Hard agree but like I main her so meh
This doesn't even account for many of the other characters that also have extreme overlap, not necessarily in exact moves, but in gameplan and the tools to accomplish it. Joker with Sheik and Greninja. Fox and Mii Brawler. Diddy Kong and Inkling. Byleth and Corrin. Many of the hardcore zoners have extreme overlap. It ends up being that many of the characters on the roster aren't worth picking besides for aesthetics because there is another character with similar but better tools and stats that executes that gameplan more effectively.
Ugh, the vendetta some people have against echo fighters is really dumb. Echos mean more playable characters while draining little to no resources. A character having its own moveset and playstyle obviously way more exciting, but bear in mind that such character takes at least 500 times more development time. And Ultimate is already a milestone achievement.
And for those complaining that some echos are too samey, bear in mind that even the smallest changes can completely overhaul a character's balance. And that it's better to have two interchangeable characters than one character being a pathetic version of the other.
The only gripe is that there could've been more echos. Like Shadow, Funky Kong and Dry Bowser. But oh well.
But then if they’re basically identical in terms of gameplay, why not just have them be a costume instead of ending up giving them different records for stuff like GSP and home run contest?
I think one way to differentiate clones would've been to give them some of the alt moves from smash 4. Of course, choosing the sensible ones with additional touches to make them balanced. One move per character would be enough, and maybe 2 for characters that are really different or from separate franchises.
I think you're significantly misjudging the primary purpose of clones / echo fighters. Their entire purpose is that they're a way to add additional content _without_ having to go through the effort of significantly differentiating their moveset. If every clone had to be as unique as Wolf, that'd defeat the entire purpose.
Then make skins like the Koopalings. No reason to waste the extra effort of implementing a few alternate moves and animations and having a 2nd or 3rd or 4th version of a character to balance instead of just condensing them to 1.
My issue with echoes is that you know good and well they are doing it out of laziness and padding. If a character is really so similar to another that they would have an identical move set, then make the echo a costume like they did with Bowser Jr. or Olimar. When they just take a character and copy and paste, it’s just a way to artificially boost the number of characters.
One major issue I see (sorry if this was mentioned and I missed it) is that it becomes really difficult to balance characters when they have clones. Because Marth and Lucina must mostly remain the same, the only buffs Marth can receive are to his damage, knockback, and tipper size; a buff to his airspeed, for instance, would have to apply to Lucina as well. In another vein, it feels like Link should have better mobility and frame data, but buffs in those areas would remove the weaknesses that differentiate him from Young Link and Toon Link.
If u really wanna reach… technically every echo fighter has differences
Peach and daisy have very slightly different hurtboxes
Dark samus actually has a lot of differences from samus including different animations (hurtboxes) faster rolls, lower hitting charge shot etc
And richters and Simon’s down b has different properties which interact with some moves differently
Also if u really wanna be even more granular technically if u were playing against a blue character it’s better to pick Simon because u can more easily see the character in his flame and see how they DI
Also if u chose richter u can use his blue alt to obscure ur move that ur doing while standing next to the blue flame.
But yeah, essentially these characters are the exact same. Unless u really wanna stretch the definition….. just thought I’d share this info lol
While I agree with all your points, I think I can understand why they did it this way. With all the content in Ultimate they probably felt that with some of the Echo characters they could just do good enough. While it’d be nice if they updated them in any future entries, if there are any. Although personally I think they should just port Ultimate to every future console and add to what’s there already. Don’t fix what ain’t broken.
I'll never not be slightly salty about what they did to Ganondorf. He's the big bad of the Zelda series, one of Nintendo's most iconic villains... And his moves are taken wholesale from the non-visible pilot of a racing game.
Like seriously, as much as people enjoy the DORIYAH, none of Ganons moves come from his games and even his SWORD was memed into existence based on a tech demo that no one ever played.
Ganon flies, shoots lightning balls, teleports, makes shadow clones of himself, attacks with a trident, turns into a demon pig, dual wields scimitars, has access to powerful magic... He's the Gerudo Warlock King, and all of that awesome was replaced with 'purple hand punch/kicks'.
As a big Zelda fan, that's just heartbreaking.
That's kind of the problem with a lot of legacy characters. Their original smash iteration doesn't really represent how they are in their original games yet they gain a following in smash and become difficult to change. I would really like to see ganon be more like zelda ganon but i also really like stomping on people with dair
@@gameboyn64 There's a very easy way to satisfy both audiences that the Smash team just doesn't do. Ganondorf could be given his own unique moveset while his old moveset could be passed down to a new F-Zero character (like Black Shadow for example). That would satisfy the people who want Ganon to have a moveset that represents his appearances in his home series, people who like Ganondorf's current moveset, and people who just want a new F-Zero character added to the roster.
@@SonicTheCutehog that would probably piss off more people. Fans of smash ganon will get mad that their character was made to play in a way that's unrecognizable. Meanwhile f zero fans will get mad that their new character is both extremely lazy in design and bad.
@@gameboyn64 The moveset would still be in the game and Ganondorf would be given a moveset that represents how he is in his games. Besides, we all know that's the only way another F-Zero character will get in the game.
The VA-11 HALL-A music in the back is much appreciated
Honestly it annoys me how people complain about there being 8 FE reps in the game. They’re forgetting that technically Lucina and Chrom respectively are supposed to be for people who want to play with Marth or Roy’s moveset inna way that suits them more. I’d say they’re pretty good inclusions. The rest of them are unique and interesting in their own way to me
I think Chrom's placement is pretty fair. For someone whose recovery is on par (or sometimes worse than) Ganon, Dr. Mario, and Little Mac, but with excellent strengths everywhere else, B tier sounds about right.
Yeah, chrom's bad recovery has several negative side effects that limit what he can do compared to roy or much of the cast. He cant double jump in neutral or disadvantage as much because getting knocked off stage without a double jump is instant death.
At least chromicide kills the opponent first.
Ganon's side-b was done dirty in every way.
@@wickd6878 chromicide doesn't work like that any more. Unless chrom only hit his opponent on the way down chrom dies first
@@gameboyn64 at a decent percent, and I mean like over 50, it takes the opponent first, (unless you're way high)
The 0-death may not work, but for a majority of a match, it's available to chrom
@@wickd6878 I'm fairly sure chrom up b uses fixed knockback but i haven't verified that
Ultimately, I believe Echo Fighters is just a character who shares numerous animation data to another, BUT there's at least some unique animations. It would explain why characters like Ken & Ryu are deemed Echoes, while the Links are not and why the Koopalings are all one set.
Don't me wrong, I too would've preferred a much more unique Dark Pit and such, but I think this is the prerequisite for one to be an Echo Fighter.
Always hated how Dark Pit holds his Staff in his renders but it’s only a Final Smash, you’re really telling me Sakurai couldn’t make it a neutral special?
@@brandonwilliams6119 What would Dark Pit's Final Smash be then????
Always great videos from you Vars, good job!
Man these bots are really everywhere
Still of the mind that the Belmonts could have been condensed into a single character with multiple skins, just like the Koopalings. Simon, Richter, Trevor, Leon, Juste, Julius, Christopher, and maybe Soleiyu? Or whip skeleton? John Morris or Johnathan Morris?
as a melee player i think that while the only main differences btw fox and falco are based in attributes , their play styles are incredibly distinct. not to mention the amount of available play styles in melee is huge for each given character whereas in ultimate you don’t really have a play style you just play the character. leffen and moly play super differently but are both top players but when you play sonic you just play sonic. playing an offensive sonic just doesn’t work whereas a defensive falco in melee is absolutely viable seen with someone like fiction (the opposite is probably like mang0, and his success doesn’t need to be stated) i think on a superficial level the fighters are more different but their play styles have always been diverse, even though the amount of styles to play each character has been constricted to fill a role rather than a set of tools that can be used however the wielded chooses. when given the tools that steve has, you play steve. when you’re given the tools that for instance melee falcon has, the players vary from wizzrobe to n0ne
Steve players play completely differently from each other. Steve is one of the characters with the most varieties of play styles out of all characters in Smash
I'm sure that has to do more with how developed the meta of melee had become. People has different playstyles but you need the same fundamental basis. Even on the most limited characters you can notice differences in between players, as we see between Peanut and Alternis. The reason we don't see that many discrepancies is because the roster is bigger, and there's plenty of options to choose (64 tournament viable options from 19) but not much more players, meaning is more difficult to see repeats of characters.
Ken and Homura are great examples of clone characters that dont take a ton of resources to develop (relatively) but still have a distinct identity.
That being said, for Ken, there was more that could be done. Cl MP HP TC, remove the back hit of Fair, make Far MP special cancel, replace up throw with his infamous Super Turbo Knee Bash Throw, QCF Crazy Kick (forget official name), give his focus attack more range. But I still really like Kens design in Ultimate.
Giving the clones or base fighter some of Smash 4 custom moves would have been kind of easy and really appreciated.
I feel like echo fighters are less of a problem and more of a missed opportunity.
Yes, recycling custom moves with some tweeks would have been such a great use of them.
@@Lira_orpheus Yeah, a shame because a lot of those moves are really interesting and added new life to a ton of characters. Giving some custom moves to base fighters (like Marth gets Iai counter) would have been another way to create differences.
As a devout Marth main, the echo fighter of Lucina really hurts, Marth has a sweet spot, Lucina doesn't, that's good because some people don't like the spacing for Marth, but the distance between the rankings of Marth and Lucina is absurd, I think of Marth and Lucina as one base character with different ways of achieving their goals, Marth and Lucina should placed right next to each other as they are more of (at least to me), oh, having trouble with a super fast character like Pikachu or Fox go switch to Lucina, really need that sweet spot Marth has to get past heavy characters easier, switch to Marth. Anyways good video, totally agree.
Both marth and lucina honestly need reworks imo. marth should be far more aggressive based and fast with his swordplay basically sword sheik because his swordplay is like that in fe and lucina should be a stronger more agile and tactful playstyle. Chrom idk enough about but i feel like fe is poorly represented in smash when the only multiple weapon character is byleth and still there is no actual lance character. Can't wait for alear next game regardless though as long as they make him fight with his fists like he does in his game and the engage mechanic in a game like smash could be so cool.
But would it be possible, If Sakurai didn't do it then it must be impossible?????
I'd luv to see a "The problem with X mechanic" kind of Videos, i feel like your videos are very well done and high effort, but their made ok subjects that everyone knows of, it'd be nice to see videos on subjects peoples don't talk about
True!
I don't know if I'm crazy or not but I think there was a Super Smash Bros. game on the N64, and in it there was a clone character: Luigi, as well as two "similar to another" characters: Jigglypuff (Kirby) and Captain Falcon (Samus, although this one is a stretch). Luigi in particular started off as a clone of Mario and diverged into his own unique character, so dissimilar to Mario that he's barely considered a semi-clone of him in the current iteration of Smash (or not at all if I'm not mistaken). The term "Luigification" describes characters across all fighting games who start off as clones or reskins (like the ninjas in the original Mortal Kombat games, Ken and Ryu, etc.) and gradually develop their own unique traits and moves. Luigi as a character outside of Smash went through this process too; in 1981, he was a simple recolor of Mario, and now he's recognized across the globe as a totally distinct character who just happens to wear similar clothes to Mario.
In short, the lack of mentioning of Luigi in this video was a little vexing. He started this cloning shit, and this is the thanks he gets? Lol.
I completely disagree. I think Echo fighters are handled really well and generally they have their pros or cons that could lead a player to liking one of them more than the other while not being strictly better than the other then again, I main Lucina, so I’m biased.
I like how Isabelle almost never uses her items in her actually game
Dark Samus had it’s own flushed out moveset as an assist trophy character and the first echo character in smash history was Mario and his brother Luigi in Smash Brothers 64, most echo fighters were just a means of adding said character with the least amount of effort since they seemed pressed for time, which instead of just adding them release them afterwards as free characters via updates but I’m just crazy.
All these characters have their own unique moveset potential and I think the next game should just make these characters unique from their source character (or at least the ones they bring back)
Honestly Smash is that one FG that SHOULDN'T have clones since it's a crossover fighter that has a job of properly representing characters, and with how the characters are all kinda shoddily represented prior to the Ultimate newcomers, they should work to make these characters more unique, alongside revamping older characters in general.
Also for some of your arguments, idk why you used Steve as an argument against the "lack of enough source material" when Wii Fit Trainer would be a much better example. As for Dark Samus and Lucina, Dark Samus is extremely distinct from Samus, and Lucina playing like Marth ironically does not represent her properly at all since even if she disguised as Marth, she in no way fights like Marth. She isn't as regal as him and as you've said, is taught by Chrom, who arguably are moreso rugged in battle and more aggressive than regal and poised.
Castlevania is my favorite series so I was pumped when they revealed all the content. However Simon and Richter could’ve been different. I get they both provide elements that make up a full move set but I still believe they could have their own specials or at least have Simon be slow heavy and strong and Richter be fast light and weaker
Especially when half of the moveset comes from Richter anyhow. They could have had Simon focus more on traditional zoning by giving him more angleable whip attacks and a different up b, while Richter plays more like Young Link where he focuses on using his projectiles to rush down opponents. I think they were going for a more "generalized" moveset for the Belmonts, but that makes it even more bizarre that Simon is the primary when nearly everything down to the idle animations is from Richter. Not everything ofc, but up b, dash attack, the idles, the down tilt, etc. Most of the important moves. They could give Simon a better whip dangle, have him swing around with the whip more, maybe give him the leather whip even? There's still potential to make Simon different. You could make Simon have worse mobility and air stats to have him represent the more rough movement of the old games, and keep Richter with the same mobility they have now to have him represent the newer,, more athletic Belmonts. They could have even given Simon Grand Cross for his Final Smash and given Richter Hydro Storm!
@Saben .C [Spoon] I completely agree. Simon could've had some moves from Simon's Quest like his up special could've been using a red crystal which causes a tornado like Hero. Heck, Simon could've kept the normal specials and Richter could've different specials like a rebound stone or daggers or even athletic attacks like he has in some games. I get they are a generalize moveset but still think they could've done difference. Heck Richter's holy water shouldbe traveled across the floor. O could go on but you get the point.
@@thomashuff7976 If Richter was as fast as Symphony of the Night he would be broken. At least the costumes are cool.
@@orangeslash1667 especially if he could use his dash attack in the air like he does and his uppercut was as good.
@@thomashuff7976 Again that would be busted. Which is why Symphony of the night references are kept to a minimum.
Fun Fact: Indiana Jones was the inspiration for the Belmont Whip.
This opinion began to form way before I played Smash competitively because I was only a child, but I'm personally very fond of clone characters such as Roy, Young Link, and Falco in Melee. When I grew up playing with my older cousin he'd for example play someone like Fox and I'd see Fox and say "oh Fox looks like fun, but I don't want to play the same character he's playing" so I'd pick Falco. That type of mindset made me fall in love with a lot of "clone" characters across multiple fighting game franchises. Even though some clone characters end up much worse than others, I like Melee Marth versus Melee Roy more than Marth vs Lucina because despite Roy being bad in Melee, Roy and Marth each had their own form of skill expression based on how their sweet spots worked, whereas Lucina essentially functions as removing the complexity of an existing character, which I haven't liked since her inclusion into Smash 4. Clone characters can appear similar and still possess their own unique complexity when created well (such as Link, Toon Link, and Young Link all playing differently despite sharing so many similar tools), so I hope to see them in the future but even better than before.
It sucks so much because not only are they just not well done in terms of giving them even slightly unique attributes that make them feel different enough to use them from their original source, but even if they do just go for the copy and paste idea, they don't give us a lot of characters for this to be a meaningful category.
And both of these issue are so easy to fix. The former is all just numbers and coding (maybe make Dark Pit more powerful with less combo potential, let Richter's moves from his games be better while the ones from Simon's games are worse, and vice versa for Simon), and the later, while a bit more difficult, is only changing the animations of extra factors, like idle animations, taunts, and victory poses.
The problem with echo fighters:
There is no problem outside of the competitive scene.
Ganon is a blast to play casually, and Daisy is a nice reskin with cool new animations and voicelines.
I don’t know the specifics, but if I’m not mistaken Dark Samus is different from the original. I believe her posture, her floatiness, and her beam and rockets differ. Also some of her attacks and smash attacks hit slightly different areas. The differences are all fairly minute property changes, but they matter enough for pro samus players to have preferences and switch off sometimes
I think dark samus's charge shot is slightly lower and maybe her up smash or something. Dark samus has slightly different animations so hurtbox shifting is a thing
Nope, there’s literally no difference other than her movement animations like rolling, jumping, running, etc. actually I take that back: some of Samus’s attacks like fair are fire while some of Dark Samus’s aren’t. Definitely doesn’t justify an entire character slot.
@@thunderd7904
From the wiki
Dark Samus' shield is slightly smaller
Both of Dark Samus' rolls have less ending lag than Samus's
Dark Samus does not use her Morph Ball when rolling, and she does not somersault while double jumping or jumping backward. This makes her hurtbox larger during those animations.
All of Dark Samus' smash attacks have altered animations. This slightly influences the horizontal range of all versions of forward smash, with the unangled version having marginally less horizontal range, while the up and down angled versions have marginally increased horizontal range. However, Dark Samus does not move back as quickly during forward smash's ending lag. This makes it slightly less safe than Samus' version. This allows up smash to hit shorter opponents more reliably than Samus' version at the cost of KOing grounded opponents slightly later.
Charge Shot has an altered animation, in which Dark Samus performs the move one-handed. This results in the projectile being fired at a slightly lower elevation, but her hurtbox is taller during the animation compared to Samus' version, making her easier to hit. This allows Charge Shot to hit low-profiling opponents more easily. However, this makes it slightly easier for opponents to jump over the projectile
Dark Samus' animations for firing a Homing and Super Missile are different. She does not hunch over as much as Samus does when firing a Homing Missile, making her hurtbox taller and easier to hit. Her animation for firing a Super Missile in the air is much longer than Samus' version.
@@gameboyn64 ok but these differences still aren’t enough to strongly prefer one over the other and again, will rarely ever affect the final outcome of a battle
Chrom and Roy. Lucina and Marth. All have great justification for being so far apart from each other in tier lists. If Roy didn’t exist Chrom wouldn’t be higher in peoples tier lists just like if Lucina didn’t exist Marth wouldn’t be higher in peoples tier lists
The main point of Echo fighters, pretty sure was to add a higher quantity of fighters with lower effort required. Not including DLC or any instances of echos/clone-types, Smash Ultimate has the fewest new characters. Only Inkling, Ridley, Incineroar, and K Rool were new fighters with no relevance to any clone-type character (Simon is also a new fighter, but accompanied by Richter who Sakurai poses the question "who's the real echo?", and Isabelle taking pride in having about 70% of Villager's moveset). Debatably Ken isn't an echo, but still falls in the same category as Link or Fox/Falco does (virtually the same moveset but with different attributes).
I think most of the effort on ultimate was to update the engine to be a medium point between melee and smash 4 instead of just brawl without tripping, because no, replicating Melee is not that good of an idea due to accesibility issues.
I generally like echo fighters, but if they modified Dark Samus to be more of a grappler and combo heavy and less of a zoner I’d be pretty happy and it would really fit the character.
In the case of the Links, Young Link has more in common with Link than they both have in common with Toon Link. It's the normals that make that difference so pronounced.
Ness and Lucas have very different movesets. Their special moves are similar, and even those are pretty different from each other.
I’m not a chrom believer, I think people overblow the benefits of consistent sword (I’m not convinced it’s even better than Roy) and then he literally should never recover against over half the cast
Chrom's viability compared to Roy is more than just his up b. Roy's sweet spots are much more powerful than any of Chrom's hits are, and contrary to Marth's tippers, aren't too difficult to hit and are very consistent in Ultimate. But his sour spots aren't even bad, as they actually give him some unique combos and kill confirms that Chrom doesn't have.
I wish they would've used Custom Moves from Smash 4 with the echoes
Most of them feel like "what was even the point of making them separate characters when they're almost exactly the same as their original character?". If all of the Echo Fighters were like Lucina, Chrom, and Ken or even like Melee's clones, then it wouldn't be a problem.
If Roy's neutral or side special was a fiery projectile, that would've both made him more different from Marth and also been a better reference to how he works in his native game. Time constraints and all that.
Roy is my main in Melee, Smash 4, and Ultimate. I missed him in Brawl, but gained a lot of appreciation for Lucario and Toon Link pretty quick.
Before watching, I think a big problem is inconsistency. Mario and Dr Mario are unique fighter slots even though their movesets are almost identical, while Ryu and Ken are echo fighters despite having toally different A moves. Then multiple of them (Daisy dSamus, Richter) have minimal/nonexistant functional changes from the base fighter. Then there's Alph, Zombie, Enderman, and the Koopalings, who also have only cosmetic differences, but are skins instead of echoes...
I think every pair of echo fighters should've had some meaningful difference from each other, even if it was just a small change in mechanics like Marth and Lucina, and more should have been classified as such, like the Marios, Links, Pikachu/Pichu, or Villager/Isabelle. That way echoes would've been seen less as "clones" and more as alternate versions of an existing fighter, like they were meant to be. Would also greatly resuce clutter on the select screen.
Would've been cool to see more of them added with the above in mind, here's some ideas:
-Octoling, uses different weapons. Carbon Roller, Range Blaster, Burst Bomb, maybe even Splat Charger nspecial, etc
-Proto Man, a bit more damage than Mega Man but also lighter to reference his frailty in mm9 and 10
-Birdo: replaces tongue with slow, straight flying egg projectile
-Dixie Kong: uspecial uses her hair propellor, nspecial fires her bubblegum gun from Tropical Freeze, which acts differently than Diddy's peanuts (not exactly sure what would change)
-Shadow: replace homing attack with chaos spear projectile
Scream Tail: Sing replaced with Hyper Voice, does damage and stuns. Rest Replaced with Sunny Day, temporarily buffing its speed and damage (referencing the protosynthesis ability)
I came up with all these ideas in like 10 minutes, surely the Smash team couldve done the same
Isabelle is a semiclone like Ken
I made a Dark Samus character in Brawl when the game supported swappable B moves. Slow blast, different missile behavior, diagonal movement in the up-B... they could have done more there with pretty minimal effort.
The problem with Echo Fighters is that THERE SHOULD BE MORE
and turn smash into a lazy MUGEN with 20 unique fighters? no thank you
If every echo was on the level of fox, falco, and wolf, we might achieve world peace.
At the end of the day, Echo fighters are bonus content. You can't really say no to that.
The reason echo fighters have a lack of variety in their moves compared to their counterparts is not because of a lack of source material it’s to save on development time. Sakurai could have absolutely came up with unique moves for all of them like he did with Piranha Plant and ROB but in order to finish the game in a realistic about of time some of the echoes don’t feel different enough. I do agree there.
They're lazy means of roster padding not needed or wanted in a game series with over 40 characters since Brawl that wastes the potential of the character being implemented or gives them way more than they really deserve (like turning Mario in a different outfit into his own character when he could just be a skin). They're glorified skins that should've either just been skins like the Koopalings or had a bit more time put into them so as to at least make the semiclones like Lucas, Wolf, and Toon Link, the only "clones" Brawl had not counting the altered Falco and Ganondorf, who were also now semiclones.
Sakurai I’m Brawl: I’ve made differences to Falco/ Roy from Fox/ Marth to show more personality between the two.
Sakurai in Ultimate: Assist trophy? Nah, Blue Samus.
I personally don’t mind echo fighters as a concept, but I do think they were pretty underutilized for what they set out to be. We got fewer echoes than I thought we would, several echoes are just carbon copies of their base fighters, and the DLC not having anything to do with echoes was also kinda disappointing.
My biggest gripe is that Lucina is seen as both the easier to use and more rewarding version of Marth, which should not be a thing. Ideally, Marth should be harder to use than Lucina, but also more rewarding when optimized. That’s how it was in Smash 4. This time though, there’s basically no reason to use Marth over Lucina in any context, really.
Been watching you for a while now, great video as always 👍🏻
I'm still baffled as to why the custom moves from Sm4sh weren't incorporated into some echoes. The Miis are capable of using them online and offline, so it's clearly not a software issue. Just seems like a waste of creative effort.
Great music choice, VA-11 HALL-A is great 🌃
Yoooo that’s an old mockrock vid isn’t it ? I watch both of you and really like your styles
Play hdr mod, pretty much all clones got unique moves and attributes to distinguish themselves from each other and sometimes end up with completely different playstyles
And this is the only reason why I was a little afraid if they decided to add any Sonic character to smash and just make them a Sonic clone.
Exquisite ost choice
I still swear Lucina should've had a moveset similar to Ike given her actual fighting style in the original game, her only ties to Marth are the fact that he's her ancestor and she used his name briefly.
Like ike? She's a fencer by nature. Chrom should have been more like ike as he makes big sweeping swings with his sword
@@gameboyn64 Chrom and Lucina literally share the same sword fighting style in every game aside from Smash. The only difference in their sword play is their stance
@@AsianMoriarty lucina as a lord/great lord stabs a lot. Chrom as a lord/great lord only ever swings and they are all wide swings. The only time they are remotely similar is in the cinematic.
@@gameboyn64 Revisited Awakening to reconfirm things, while she still doesn't feel like a fencer to me, I do concede that she uses thrusts more than Chrom.
I still feel that their fighting styles feel more in line with the Merc/Hero classes which Ike's fighting style is more closely reminiscent.
You can't convince me Dr. Mario isn't an echo fighter.
Richter being as slow as Simon still feels weird
To my knowledge, samus and dark samus aren’t entirely mechanically similar in the Metroid series, with dark samus being capable of floating and creating clones among others
Echo fighters mess up the in-game player stats screens too. Not a big deal for most people I imagine, but I used to *love* looking at them and going, "whoa, *that's* my 4th most-played character? I never would have guessed!" or "wow, I'm doing pretty well with Marth!" and then Lucina joined, ate half his gameplay, and now they barely crack my top ten.
RIP Marth. One of my mains from 2001-Ultimate. Wish Lucina had just been a skin.
I never understood why people seemed to just accept echo fighters as perfectly fine characters. Even though Dark Samus, Daisy, and Richter are literally just carbon copies of their counterparts, Nintendo gets to advertise them as separate to bump up the amount of fighters in ultimate by a little and I haven't heard anyone talk about that until now.
I don't think that's entirely fair. To me, the "echo fighter" designation seems to indicate that they're _not_ just trying to artificially inflate the number of fighters. Nintendo is clearly acknowledging that they're not actually distinct enough to get their own fighter numbers.
Do I think they should've done a little more with these characters? Absolutely. But I think this viewpoint is a little too cynical.
They’re just bonus content, mostly for people that dont care that much about gameplay differences, I wouldnt bothered to play peach if it wasnt for daisy as an echo. Same for samus/darksamus and simon/richter, I play them all because I like metroid and castlevania.
The Everyone Plays Snake coming soon???
Apollokage made a great Summit 6 run. Could be timing. Looking forward to you Everyone/No One plays.
Or a No One plays Ice Climbers for Big D.
@@krys3001 Ice Climbers is very accurate to their source. Ice Climber is meant to be played in multiplayer, it's not fun without it. Ice Climber truly represents the frustration of co-op, if you don't take care of your partner, both climbers fail.