Sheridan Comnene also the fact that the movement is unbelievably stupid, you’re limited in your vertical and horizontal movement, you fall like a rock and going off stage more than an inch your dead. Every thing is too fast and it’s more muscle memory than strategy. In Ultimate you have time to think about your actions
I can’t believe I’ve fallen into the trap of watching another entire AsumSaus video, knowing full well he’s clearly *EXPLOITING* the RUclips algorithm by providing incredibly well-made and entertaining content. You’ve extorted me and my eyeballs for the last time AsumSaus! Honestly though, this is great! Really love what you were able to do with a much longer video like this, and I can’t wait to see what you do next. Excellent work as always!
Heh! You’re joking right? you’re joking right? *oh god you’re not joking* Jk I know what that is. A wavedash with frame perfect inputs so that your traction value is replaced with your walk speed during it.
The biggest downside of Melee’s single player is the C stick moves the camera instead of controlling your character, making it nearly unplayable if you are used to using the stick for your aerials
If you played around that time, dual stick wasn't the norm. It's hard to explain, but you wouldn't immediately go for the second stick to do anything. A lot of us came from a single stick N64 controller
Isn't that what it means to enjoy something while understanding it's flaws? Nothing is perfect and I don't think I've ever played a game that i could without a doubt say was a masterpiece, even if I happen to sink a lot of time into it.
Nah, you only need one video each for 64, Brawl, and 4: 64: play Melee unless you're a Kirby main Brawl: play Ultimate unless you're a Meta Knight main 4: play Ultimate unless you're a Bayonetta main
@@SongbirdOfficial Okay I don't care about the other two, BUT BOI, YOU BETTER NOT BE DISSING BRAWL THE *BEST* GAME IN THE SERIES Put up your dukes, we're having it out.
@@Lechgang saying a game is the best in it's series is entirely subjective & false unless its qualities far surpass it's opponents. brawl isn't the "best game in the series" if you're playing competitively (tripping, slow speed, meta knight as a whole, etc.) while ultimate and melee excel in the competitive scene- the former being a game that appeals to both casual players and competitive players. people who watch videos like these are probably competitive players, so your opinion would be seen as wrong in the eyes of many other people. gotta admit subspace was fire tho tl;dr - your opinion is pretty eh
@@nesinabox You just basically said my opinion was false and I gotta say dude, I can't agree. You've got some audacity to say this by the way, I'm not usually one to be offended, but I just REALLY hate your response. I said brawl is best, so what? You said it wasn't? Don't act like your opinion holds more ground. I like Ultimate too, but I personally think Brawl is heavily underrated and melee is overhyped. Melee's core battle mechanics are because of errors and glitches in the games code. Technically speaking it's absurd to say that Melee is better because it's a buggy glitchy mess. Sure, brawl is slow, but Melee's jankiness makes it a technical inferior game. Sure you could mention competitive, but the competitive nature of a game is secondary to the casual parts, and Brawl is easily the best casual game of the bunch, maybe Ultimate rivals it, but Subspace Emissary puts so much of Ultimate to shame IMO. You basically tried to be nice in saying I was wrong and that other games were better, and I'm sorry but I ain't taking that.
i never said your opinion was wrong in any way. i dont think my opinion holds more ground, i just think that brawl isn't the best game competitively. that was the original statement of my comment as a man in a documentary once said, "brawl excelled as a casual game, but it suffered competitively." this is because of the updated mechanics/speed and the fact that one character alone dominated the competitive scene i don't see why you think subspace puts most of ultimate to shame just because it's a far more rememberable and fun singleplayer mode. sure, it outshines wol effortlessly, but i think that's one of the only things brawl does better than ultimate. melee's pretty wack and stupid but it did better *competitively*, with the most history behind it and a reputation as the most competitive game in the series sorry if it seemed like i was attempting to prove your opinion wrong, i just wanted to point out that brawl isn't the best game in a competitive sense
It's insane how well this game is even though it had 13 months of development and how the competitive scene was entirely unintentional as the game was never meant to be so fast
"Were they short on time or something?" For those who didn't get the joke, Melee's development cycle took 13 months from start to finish. This is incredibly short compared to the industry average, where games usually spend about 36 months in development instead. It's kinda amazing how good the game turned out, keeping this in perspective.
Yeah. It IS incredibly impressive what was accomplished in such a short window. The crunch faced by the end must've been unbearable for most. Unfortunately, the insane tenacity and work ethic of the developers can only compensate so much when your game rushed by TWO YEARS. That's why the game has some jank.
I honestly don’t think melee would be what it is and where it is today if the developers had more time. Most of the bugs would have been patched so we wouldn’t have such insane moves like foxes shine.
Pat, from Super Best Friends Play and Pat Stares At, threw out an incredible rant about this particular incident back in the day, on the old podcast, basically saying that this is why the FGC doesn’t take the Melee community as seriously as they want to be taken.
@@BareBandSubscription Nah, the FGC doesn't take smash seriously because it's actually fun. Smash has no problems appealing to a casual audience, and that's basically the defining feature of the fighting game genre at this point.
@@AllUpOns No, they don’t take Melee seriously because the Melee community is historically ridiculous, and because the metagame is so dubious. It’s basically a party-fighter that got bullshitted into a deep fighting game, utilizing what are essentially just exploits, and the tech is so precise and specific for performing such basic actions that the game overlaps more with the speed running community than with the actual FGC. Trust me, there are plenty of reasons Melee gets such a mixed reception in that community, and they’re mostly legitimate. Ultimate has actually received more legitimacy from the FGC at large because, unlike Melee, it was actually designed with the conceit of being a proper competitive fighting game in mind, even if only mildly so, and because the Ultimate crowd doesn’t have it’s head three feet up it’s ass.
@@BareBandSubscription idk Id rather have a meta thats somewhat of an enigma than a paper cut super simple game that is Ultimate. Its not trying to bullshit its way to being a deep competitive game when it by complete freak accident has all the pieces in place. Ultimate despite being made with that intent fails in so many aspects to be a proper competitive game, its not surprising most players have been burned out or not enjoying the game as much as lately although that could be wifi talking but people were pretty negative at the end of 2019. Doesnt help some FGC folk have tried it and never really stuck with it, game somehow manages to be more of a mess in its meta while trying to oversimplify the smash formula which only leaves both sides of players frustrated. And thats just the mechanics, it also manages to take control away from the player and feel stiff in platform movement and something as simple as dashing wont even let you reverse aerial rush something youd be able to do in the last 2 games, its sad that Smash 64 feels a lot more responsive for being a near 25 year old game (not that Id call it better than Ultimate). Even newer fighting games that have come out recently dont leave me feeling this hopeless cause theres still some aspects to enjoy about them even if theyre not as hard or complex as the old fighting games that made a name for themselves. The only part I agree with is that the community does feel more in line with speedrunning than fighters cause most fighters dont feel as demanding and have as much crazy tricks to pull of as Melee which is more free form, its a weird game thats managed to attract people as insane as me to give it shot in spite of its hurdles. Another thing that dissapoints me so much is I wish there was more crossplay into other fighters from Melee players, something only Leffen has tried to do.
Melee suffers from StarCraft syndrome. It looks incredible and is incredible but fucking BRUTAL to compare the average joe to top play and really not easy to get into.
Also keep in mind that for single player melee (AND practice mode), the c stick functions as a camera rather than as an extension of your aerials/smash moves.
30:55 "Hungrybox, who plays Jiggly Puff, a character with a losing matchup to F--" *Armada pauses the video for 5 minutes to talk about how broken Puff is*
It’s definitely ok to know that a game can be super awesome and well made, while still having some flaws. The very best of the best, legendary titles, have also been broken down into crazy speedruns or niche ways… people loved melee that had no idea about it’s competitive rise too! Love the long melee discussion!
I think there's a difference between ranking a game in terms of personal favorites and reviewing. If you are ranking your personal favorites, and you enjoyed a game the most, but only within very confined rulesets, I think that absolutely still counts as your favorite. However, if you are reviewing the game objectively or for others, you absolutely have to take various caveats into account. I don't see why you'd say melee isn't your favorite because aspects you don't interact with have problems, but I can see why you'd give it a lower "review score" because of them.
I kind of agree, but I'm tempted to say that if the aspect that makes a game your favorite doesn't really belong to the game proper, then it's not the game that you're enjoying, it's almost an entirely different, derivative product. I'm not sure if this is a good comparison (need more time to think about it tbh) but saying "I love competitive Melee, therefore Melee is my favorite game" is, to me, a little bit like saying "I love Red Letter Media's Plinkett Reviews, therefore the Phantom Menace is my favorite movie." The competitive aspect of Melee is like paratext, instead of text. Suppose I only enjoy playing zombie mode in Black Ops, but it's literally my favorite thing to do in the world. Would that make Black Ops my favorite game? I'd definitely say no. Anyway, sorry if I'm coming across as pretentious philosophy 101 dude, that's not my goal and I don't know anything about philosophy. I just think it's a really fascinating discussion.
@@mantistoboggan537 Except it does belong in the game. Smash has always been a multiplayer centric game. The entire experience revolves around the mechanics of the game to the point where the singleplayer modes are just battles in a different context. While yes, the singleplayer is underwhelming, it's never the focus of the games. Multiplayer will always be more important than singleplayer and that goes for most fighting games. While you could argue that competitive Smash isn't intended, I'd argue that it is. Smash has always been a very versatile game. You have complete control over what items show up, their frequency, and the stages. If Smash was intended to play one way then would this level of control be given to the player to fine tune the experience? There are several games that can be enjoyed in several ways. Take Pokemon for example. Some people shiny hunt, some people play competitive, some people enjoy the singleplayer, some people try to catch every Pokemon and some people enjoy doing challenge runs like Nuzlockes. People who enjoy the singleplayer but don't enjoy completing the Pokedex, are missing some of the experience. People who don't play competitive are also missing a huge part of the experience, or maybe some people like competitive but despise completing the story. Does enjoying only one of these aspects mean that people can't say a game in the franchise is their favorite? That's absurd, you can enjoy a game for whatever reason and I think Smash is the same way.
I'd argue that Melee shouldn't be in his list because not only does he need another person to play with (in the same room) to make it fun, it has to be another person who's put in hundreds of hours practicing.
If only a mod of Brawl existed so that it's as competitively deep as melee while fixing all of the controller issues and having a small buffer while keeping it's precision and fluidity. That would be a great Project.
I found your comparison of melee and ballet at 7:13 to be very apt! Many young dancers begin ballet thinking they can execute the elegant and exciting movement ballet is known for without understanding the serious time grind to get down the precise minute movements that make up just a part of the flashy moves. I have felt that dancing at a professional level has given me absolute freedom over control in my body, but it did take a lot of effort to get there. I enjoy working towards perfection, so you totally sold the game to me (on a competitive level haha 😅).
Honestly, in my opinion you can like a game for almost any reason. You can like Smash 64 for its simple style and charm even if there's not much content to the game. You can like Melee exclusively for its gameplay and mechanical exploits, all while ignoring its side content. You can like Brawl not for its raw gameplay, but for its game modes and side content. You can like Smash 4 for its style, but not like its lack of gamemodes. You can like Ultimate not for its single player modes, but love its gameplay mechanics and roster. Basically, if you like playing a game, *you like playing a game.* Period.
This is true. If the question is whether or not you like a game and can put it in your favorites list is entirely dependent on you enjoying playing that game and spending time on it. How you play it or the options you choose to customize your gameplay are irrelevant. But if the question is about whether it's a good or balanced game, you are lying to yourself if you ignore aspects of the game that you choose to ignore while playing. The whole game going by it's proper title is not "good" if you only play part of it.
Well it also works the other way around, Gothic, an RPG game would absolutely my favorite game ever if not the middle-early segment of the game, it's a moment where everything is too tanky, hit's too hard and the game basically makes you master the fighting system and after that the difficulty just takes a nosedive down until the end of the game. At the beggining the game's cruel, in the early-mid game it becomes literal hell, late-mid it is back to just cruel, late game is extremely easy compared to what the difficulty was before and the game becomes cruel again, just a difficulty wide ride, not speaking about the middle segment taking far too much time to complete. I both love and hate this game to be honest
You can call anything your favorite game and don't really have to defend it, but the video is about whether it's good as a whole. "I enjoy this, but would I actually recommend this to the average person?"
If Dark Souls II Pvp actually was as good as fucking Melee then yeah it would definitely be considered one of my favorite games despite not really loving the rest of the game
Feel like this thesis doesn't really make a lot of sense. Even if you enjoy just a small portion of what a game has to offer, it can still be your favorite game. You dont need to like EVERY aspect of the game. Maybe I'm just old and jaded because I had the same reaction I see Ultimate players have when they announce a new fighter. It was mind blowing to watch the melee opening compared to smash 64. But what kept you around was that depth. I can thank that small portion of the game for lifelong friends and experiences. That's what makes it one of my all time favorite games.
Personally, I think he framed his question and analysis wrongly in the video, and the correct question is in the title. This is talking of the objective components that make a game good, and that does mean its universal aspects. I felt the same way when he spoke of "favorites," considering some of my favorite games of all time include the clearly flawed Kirby and the Amazing Mirror and Sonic Adventure 2. This is probably a miscommunication. Is Melee a special game? Obviously. Nearly 20 years later it still has a dedicated community in the competitive field and still finds new players dripping into the scene. But being a landmark game and being good on all fronts are two very different things, and I think that especially in the first part of the video, he did a fair job explaining why the game might seem so archaic to the greater public, those who aren't interested in practicing for so long just to feel like they're in control of the game they're playing. Edit: I'm clarifying real quick that I do agree, this shouldn't keep him from saying it's one of his favorites, or any flaw within the game, for that matter. It being its own, special, intricate game is its own reason to be a favorite to many.
Competitive melee is one of his all-time favorites, but it's wrong to say Melee period is one of his favorites because he only enjoys such a small part of it.
@@starwarriorterra8373 I'd say if nothing else this video proves there is no such thing as an objective good game. What traits make a game "good?" How are the traits you consider important not subjectively chosen? You end up having to make distinctions like "my favorite game that I've played for 2 bazillion hours is technically not good" and that's just a bit silly now innit? Sure, you could say Street Fighter 2 is a "good" game because it's core versus gameplay has enough depth to hold up for all these years, and you could say it's a "bad" game because it has stiff animations and a non-existant story mode. Neither answer is "objectively" correct, the things people consider important vary.
Too Few Secrets but they are the same game none the less. Even if it’s an exclusive part. I guess the best comparison would be minecraft. With how much you can do in that game, you probably are only doing a small part of it. Even if you just only enjoy one or two mods of the game, you would still say you love minecraft, because it is the platform allows you to do it.
As someone who is a bit of a Melee naysayer I honestly really appreciated the perspective here as well as still acknowledging Melee's shortcomings overall, while also showing how something like Ultimate is better in some areas but also ends up being more limiting as well. Sounds like if nothing else Ultimate would feel much better at high level if it made some tweaks to make platforms back into a tool to play around like Melee instead of them being more like an obstacle that's puts you at a disadvantage that you try to avoid.
I really enjoy both, having 700 hours in ult and probably more in melee since picking it up in march 2020, and just sometimes wish for ultimate to have a little bit more similarities to melee. Better wavelanding (not wavedashing), so you can do grab techchases, waveland off platform, shield dropping, reducing the buffer a little, etc. i play both a lot, though ultimate more at school for like 30 min every 2 days with friends cause online players play like they have no father figures.
I would love ultimate, for example, if it had similar movement options to melee (I mean it already HAS wavedashing, it's just fucking useless in ultimate), had the platform options you mentioned, AND had the option to remove the buffer system entirely (as well as reducing input lag plz). That buffer system, despite being a standard in modern games, has a tendency to make something come out I didn't intend to come out because of how large it is (I believe in ultimate it's a 9 frame buffer, which is huge for a fighting game), and is the primary reason I don't even touch the game to this day. ah and maybe less end lag on moves in general for everyone, no l-cancel needed, just make everyone faster to compensate for the horrifically low hitstun.
@@RPGgrenade the amount of un-intended dashes i made in Ultimate would let you to believe the game is still in beta, how can a game be so close to perfection and at the same time so far away from it?
My main issue with Ultimate is just the way neutral plays and the slower speed. I'm mostly a P+ player rather than a Melee guy, and seeing as my main is infinitely Ganondorf everything after Melee excluding P+/PM throws him to the trash bit.
For whatever reason, I feel like Melee is way more fun to watch than play. I love melee to death but it feels strange to me. But I can (and have) watched Melee tourney vods, videos, and highlights for literally hours.
I can see this but I only think that you say that is maybe because us plebs can't be as good as the top players which are more sick and are really good and have entertaining gameplay.
I can totally agree. I've been watching melee since 2017 and ultimate since it's release and I would emulate it, but I don't have the money to buy a good computer to play, but I'm still happy watching these amazing videos. Someday I'll play for sure, but for now I'm gonna stick to RUclips and twitch.
Its like anything else in life. If you're willing to put the time in it's going to be a struggle, but the rewards are great. Been playing for a while and every time I reach a new plateau the game becomes even more fun. But I feel you, StarCraft is way too much stress for me I get it but just cant
I agree. I have never watched any videos of smash except for Melee… but then again, that’s where all the videos are made. No one is busting out Brawl videos. I think my issue with Melee being considered “the best ever” is because of the history of it’s development. Melee had the smallest development time of any Smash game. Now I get that games can be over developed but this idea that Melee is the best game because the developers literally overlooked some things? That is just kinda funny. People like Melee because it the developers made mistakes. Seriously, that’s what they like. If Nintendo released Melee in today’s timeline, they would have pushed a LOT of patches.
@Ultra Irrelevant Nobody 10/32 of the game's levels are Sonic's and they're at least twice as long as the other characters' so it's more like 50% sonic by play time at least
I understand Sakurai’s beliefs regarding the casualization of later smash games. As a very, very, casual player, the idea of playing Melee is almost intimidating. It almost feels like I’m not supposed to play it unless I learn it’s very complex mechanics and movement, which I personally don’t want to do. Ultimate feels a lot more welcoming and friendly, and even if melee’s more depth results in much more fun competitive gameplay, I prefer the comfort found in ultimate’s much more simple, yet still fun, gameplay.
Exactly if this were Melee players like you would have left early making the game community smaller, while games like Ultimate strike a balance letting you enjoy the game casually while also being competitive friendly.
I was briefly part of the competitive scene for Melee (locals mostly but I went to one single regional) and you're exactly right. I couldn't, and still can't, do a single advanced tech and so I lost nearly 100% of the games I played. It fucking sucked lmao, literally the only reason I was there was for my partner at the time. Could I have gotten better with months of sustained practice and failure? Sure, but that's just not fun for me. I don't enjoy doing the same thing day in day out with zero reward. Ultimate is more fun (FOR ME) for the simple reason that I can play against people who are better than me without getting instantly destroyed. It feels like I actually learn something from losing instead of playing Melee where I just feel like "welp I literally had zero ability to change that outcome".
There's nothing wrong with considering a game one of your favorite games just because you enjoy a "small" aspect of it. Melee and the other Smash games are some of my favortie games just for the competitive aspect alone.
I hate to get political, but i guess that it sorta is because it's like comparing apples to apple gummies or hard candy that's apple flavoured. There's very little apple in apple candy, but it has a much sweeter and arguably better flavour than regular apples. See what I'm saying? You can't really call apples your favorite food just because you love apple candy so much. Smash at it's core is like fruits, while smash at competitive is like candy.
@@hugglesnuggybear5822 i think it's more like a sport, you can like playing soccer casually with friends or competitively at high levels, either way you enjoy soccer.
@@hugglesnuggybear5822 It's all subjective. I can say I personally value apple candy over any other food i eat. That doesn't mean I can't say I don't like apples still. Everything has it's own independent level of appreciation per person.
I think that its disingenuous to claim, for instance, Call of Duty is your favorite game if you only play Zombies mode for instance. No one would argue you are wrong to say it, since favorites are entirely subjective, but its like claiming to like cake when in reality you only like fondant. If you could find fondant without cake, youd never eat cake again. Do you really like cake? Its arguable.
What is wrong with that? Zombies mode is still part of the game. A big BIG part of why people like the competitive aspect of Melee is because of the movement and mechanics alone (which are the most fundamental part of the game). I don't think it's disingenous at all, since the judgment on wether you like a game or not comes after the fact of experiencing said game. I personally like to boot up my Wii and just go into training mode to practice techskill, of course I still played adventure mode, classic, unlocked every character, all of the events, but I don't enjoy them as much as simply going into practice mode. What I'm saying is that it's unlikely that someone that participates in competitive Melee has only and exclusively experienced the competitive aspect of it. Also, having a favorite anything is an inherently subjective and personal decision. If someone enjoys just staring at menus and listening to the music, it still part of the game, and nobody can change that.
How could you forget the "Race to the Finish" stage in Melee? That was one of the most fun parts of melee single player, trying to get to the end with every character.
After rewatching this video countless times, I indeed think you are the core a of melee. Your analysis of this topic is very interesting. More videos like this, please!
One thing melee has over its sequels is momentum. Knockback feels much more fixed in the later games, and I dislike the sharp distinction between moves which are and aren't "kill moves".
Ultimate's knockback momentum was incredible weird to me when i first saw it and honestly it's too forgiving, I can hit Marth's foward smash at 148% and instead of flying natrually into the blastzone they will stop abruptly right before it
It isn't just the knockback here. Something he glosses over is the reduction of DI as a whole-- there is a LOT of DI followups/mixups in Melee, along with the importance of SDI. Those have all been severely reduced in Smash 4/Ultimate to the point where it is one of the reasons that Bayo was such a terror. The freedoms which are afforded to the player in Melee help them have counterplay to what would otherwise be stupidly strong options. Even chaingrabbing in Melee takes practice (for the most part, anyways, Sheik is a pretty good exception) due to this. It might look easy to uthrow chaingrab a Fox as Doc until you try it.
I disagree with your opening thesis, I don't think you have to enjoy or even experience the entirety of a game to have it be one of your favorites. I'm also a little confused by why two different metrics are being used to grade a game as if they are interchangeable. "Is Melee a good game", and "Is Melee on my favorite games list" are two different questions, so I find it odd that you use evidence for one question as if it answers the other.
My thoughts exactly. Its like saying brawl has the most characters because of project m. Ultimate has the best built in online (which isn't saying much) but melee has none so they're not comparable in that sense.
@@willywakka7830 I don't really think that's a fair comparison because online Smash didn't exist at all when Melee released. It's not the same as poor design of a feature that's considered standard.
Yeah, talking about online in this video at all was a bit weird because I bet fans would make something a lot better than official nintendo online if they were forced to. Melee didn't ship with online play because that wasn't really plausible on the gamecube and that feels fine to me
For those who need help with it (part 3), neutral is more 'what if..', and punish is more 'if.. then..'. Neutral is all about creating more openings for yourself, and punish is just punishing failed attemps to get into advantage. What this means is later smash titles are much safer games, where you dont have to think about every single input, as opposed to older games where every single input has a gajillion different outcomes that you have to plan for, at breakneck speeds.
@bathestyles ofc! For others who need further explanation, in ultimate you'll see a player like Light spam bair at ledge. This isn't mashing. It's quite literally optimal. Due to low landing lag and its safe but strong nature, Fox bair alone puts a lot of pressure on ledge. This is more of a trapping mechanic to keep the opponent on ledge and force them to create a punishable option. This is in contrast to Melee, where players opt to sit on ledge (to ledge hog ik different games hard to compare), or will jump up in prediction to an attempt to land on stage. In laymans terms, in Ultimate, you cover as create pressure, while in Melee, you play mind games. Both good games. Have fun!
I've probably only played 3 games where I could clearly tell when I "get in the zone" because the movemoment is so precise and crisp. It's like entering god mode for a while and that alone makes it one of my favorite gaming experience. Can a game not be amazing if you find yourself telling your opponent, mid-match, that what he just did blew your mind? Even tho you've been playing for over a decade.
Same for me. Those kind of games are rare but when you find them there is nothing like it. Melee/P+, Rivals, Destiny 1 (sounds crazy but the movement was amazing), Overwatch on Tracer specifically. It feels like you can do almost anything you can imagine when given the most freedom to do so. My brother keeps insisting League of Legends is like this also but I'm nowhere near good enough to see that yet.
Sonic Riders is pretty good for that. The game feels like it has endless depth. So sad we will probably never get a new game in the series. (Honestly, if you just slapped the Gravity Ring's turning into Riders 1, made a few new maps, and made it easier to nope out of Turbulence that would be the perfect racing game imo.)
I'm not the best player ever, but I've dabbled in competitive smash for a couple years now. While I only ever went to 1 real tournament for it due to living conditions at the time, Project M is probably my favorite Smash game, even if its not quite official. To me, PM is the best of both worlds; big viable roster, melee's fun movement mechanics, the very slight input buffer that doesn't require me to break my god damn fingers trying to play it. Makes me wish Nintendo embraced what PM was instead of only looking at it on a surface level.
I've only gotten to touch Project M a few times but it was damn near life-changing, even in all my time of Smashing. These days I'm lucky to get a round in where I can but I always savour the occasion😺
Project M Subspace Emissary was some of the most fun single player smash I've ever had. The speed of Melee's mechanics really make the already good boss fights just that much better.
If anyone seeing this has an instagram, go follow @ Project.m.stuff for great daily clips. While I agree Melee is the GOAT, PM/P+ truly challenges that title with, as Yellow Yoshi said, the best of both worlds. My favorite smash game/experience by far and still developing to this day. I really hope, if Ultimate is the last Smash game, Nintendo embraces P+ and actually supports them.
As a casual, I just like how all the fighters look. Not just graphical, but the characters design like Samus’s Super Metroid suit and Adult Link’s OOT look
I love Melee as a casual game. Kicking the ass of CPU’s, clearing the events, defeating Adventure, classic, targets and stuff like that. Collecting trophies. But I can understand how when you’re able to play at a competitive level that the rest gets boring and pales in comparison. I never touched anything outside of ranked when I was top-rank on Splatoon either
Heh same, when I first tried ranked battle in splatoon 1 I never went outside of it to the point turf war feels awkward to me wheb online friends i play with drag me into it. (Hydra splatling user)
imagine playing a musical instrument with the equivalent of a buffer, like a drum that fixes your rhythm or a piano that could sense when you didn’t mean to hit a note. Getting good at melee movement feels like practicing an instrument, and practice turns initial clunkiness into beautiful creative proficiency in the same way
Imagine deciding to limit yourself by playing an old and nearly broken piano that can give good results only if you invest years into playing it (and even modify your entire hand), while not even knowing whether you were actually good enough to be a skilled pianist for those years, because you chose to play that piano instead of one that works well for everybody. I’m not saying I really feel this way, but I am saying analogies like this are pretty dumb.
I feel like this isn't a very good analogy. Playing an instrument is about stringing notes and chords together in a certain rhythm to play a song. Playing Melee is about string a set of movements together to perform complex combos and kill your opponent. That kind of skill should be difficult to master. However, the act of playing a note should be simple. Sure, playing certain impressive chords and tones might require more skill, but the basic parts should be easy to play. In the same way, you want to be able to do basic things like short-hopping or inputting smash attacks to be simple, which a buffer can help with in many cases. Now, I would say too much of a buffer can be suffocating and make skilled play clunky (Ultimate's buffer system is terrible), but having some leniency is not a bad thing. A game should not be hard to play, just hard to play to its fullest potential.
@@Edgeperor Dashback is broken, yes, but there are musical analogies to things not working perfectly. For example, sustaining a note is limited by having to switch your bow motion on a violin. the mechanical technical proficiency required to play fast melee characters takes practice before you can do anything, and it's fun to build up your skill. There are things like wavedashing, shield dropping, and ledgedashing that you have to keep up and can always improve at, like scales and arpeggios. I like ultimate, but it doesn't give this feeling. It's like playing guitar hero on easy instead of guitar. It's still a lot of fun, but the skill and enjoyment comes from the other parts of the game
Rewatching this and appreciating it even more than the 1st time around. Extremely well made analysis vid. I don't even play Melee, and yet that 37 mins flies right by and I'm enthralled for all of it. Truly Sausy.
I think there's an important distinction to make when discussing casual players vs hardcore players: Its not black and white, morerather it's a greyscale that has a variety of shades, I'm not a hardcore smash player but I'm certainly not a casual, I think the greatest mistake in smash development is to distance these two player bases entirely... there needs to be a relatively linear progression of time input to skill output (ideally speaking).
Saus, I say this with the bottom of my heart, the transformation of your YT channel from "clip collection" vids to these super great "basically video essay" type videos is phenomenal. Keep it up, you are easily one of the best YT channels out there. Atleast for me :)
oh yeah, neutral is incredibly mind-game heavy, and it is fun. however, punish heavy gameplay is fun and respectable too. we need another mess and incredibly fast game other than melee
Osu! Would like you to rethink what you just claimed. All of you. Go look at a 7 or 8 star beatmap and WEEP over how fast it is. You NEED 120Hz monitor just to keep up. Fast? Melee looks slow compared to it.
I loved the single player and play all stages with friends, with more casual ones even with items. Tournament Meta is definitely better ofc. But it’s still a Great Party Game
Yeah the game was amazing at release as a completely noob casual. There's a reason it was the best selling gamecube game. I find it weird comparing all the games with current day's perspective instead of around time they were released.
@@YangiTheCat because the question eventually becomes “why would you still play this now?” as a game ages. Melee was great for its time, but competitive scene notwithstanding, it has aged, and the other Smash games have improved on it substantially in elements like character roster, single player modes (Brawl especially), soundtrack (definitely at least in sheer amount of songs available), casual control, and graphically.
J Hamron Lifelight's melody is--and i say this with Brawl being my first Smash game--the best theme in the series. it feels so pervasive and transcendant. it's gotten stuck in my head infinitely more times than Brawl's ever has. and Brawl's theme is great! that's how good Lifelight is to me. it *is* Smash now, or at least it's essence. that said, i'm kinda mixed on the actual lyrics haha. i think i enjoy them in a slightly ironic cheesy way, which still means i enjoy them!
I look at melee in its entirety and bro I love it all. My brother and I would just spawn poke balls, split pokemon standium in 2 where wed stand on each side and just have poke battles
Even two years after posting, getting caught off guard by Lifelight burns my soul. Hearing your opinion on how it sucks tho, I was more glad about the comedic aspect of the vid. Good job :^)
@@Edgeperor nah offline ultimate still has more input lag than melee netplay with a good connection (to be fair part of the point is that melee netplay with a good connection has the same input lag as melee offline)
sahib763 He’s referring to the actual clip being played of the Snake player shielding while the 12 frame online input lag is being mentioned, and in the context of that clip that is definitely more than 12 frames lmfao. Probably some dude with a shitty connection on the other end. But yeah, melee netplay is actually ridiculously optimized. What a crazy community.
@@valentds Both wavedashing and L-canceling were known by the developers and were intentionally left in the game, because they added to the game, making it more fluid and dynamic. Nobody had any idea it would become as optimized as it has.
Paradigm Shift L-Cancelling was never a glitch. It was in 64 and was actually nerfed pretty heavily in Melee (Melee only halfs landing lag while 64 flat out skips it and goes into regular landing). A command that flat out negates ending lag isn’t something that is made by a glitch. It has to be intentionally programmed in. If I can guess, L-Cancelling was probably included as an easter egg. Something cool that they never thought would see much use. Wavedashing on the other hand is an exploit in the engine. It was not left in because it added to the game or made movement better. Sakurai didn’t care about that. They left it in because they didn’t think anybody would notice, let alone actually use it in their gameplay.
You just perfectly articulated how I feel about platforms in Ultimate, and I don't even play Melee. They've always felt more like obstacles than something that actually expands my options.
RoA definitely stands above Melee in certain aspects. While there are fewer characters, they're all very distinct with no clones, or semi-clones. The game is also very well-balanced. On top of that, it adds the buffer system for wavedashing mentioned in this video. And finally, the Steam workshop is amazing.
I personally think if the game allows you to play it your way, even if you're only touching one game mode, its still an incredible game as a whole The rest of the game only serves as a bonus and the fact you can get so much out of just one part just goes to show how evergreen the game is
It’s just something you enjoy, not a mechanic that should define the game. I can agree the game would feel really fun with that mechanic, but most games like Melee aren’t surrounded by 1 part of the game.
Good video, although in regards to the Faster Melee protion of the video, I have to say it isn't exactly fair to compare that to the online of ultimate, especially since earlier in the video you had stated that "mods can fix it does not invalidate criticism". Faster Melee and Slippi are mods and it would be much more fair to compare it to Yuzu
I apreciate Melee as something I could never get into. Its got a super high skill celing but its skill floor is also very high. I prefer Ultimate because it is intended to be part competitive fighting game and can have design choices made around that. Mind you I'm saddened that the Melee players may never get a propper follow-up to their game, once which can be designed and built fromnthe ground up to be like competitive Melee and because of it be a better, modernized version.
I appreciate melee as a good game aesthetically. Like Sheik's whole moveset just gives me that good feeling that you get when you listen to a new album and go "damn, every song on here is a jam". Sheik back air? Oh I like that. Sheik dash attack? Hell yeah. Sheik fair? Yes! Sheik down b? Well they can't all be winners.
I feel like you undervalued single player content in melee. Events, adventure and classic are all quite engaging as ways to fill out the roster, stage list and trophy collection which are fun goals tp achieve.
Great video, but I have to address the notion that Ultimate replaced advanced movement tech from Brawl/4 with “nothing”. That’s simply not the case. Ultimate added universal cancellable dashes, into either another dash or, more notably, into attacks. Some characters in 4 like cloud, diddy, and pikachu could move like you can in ultimate, but now every character can. Also the ability to do tilts out of a dash makes macro movement way more flexible than it was in Brawl or 4. Ultimate also gave every character the same jumpsquat frames, which let characters like Bowser and Ganondorf leave the ground just as early as anyone else, greatly improving their movement as well. In the end, all of Ultimate’s changes from Brawl and 4 served to improve the macro movement while limiting micro movement, and while ideally both would be deep (like in melee), for a fighting game like smash I believe that macro movement is significantly more important to the metagame. Again, just wanted to address this part, great video nonetheless!
Ehh, ult sorta just takes things from other smash games and makes them worse. Sure ult has some original ideas like p.c.t’s. But in melee you could already do dash to dash. Ult adds turn around frames to dash dancing, which makes it worse. Don’t get me wrong ult is a good game. But Idt it gives us enough for what it takes away.
There is still undoubtedly some very advanced movement options. Instant double jumps and wave bounces are near frame perfect, many characters still have edge cancelable moves, and some characters like ZSS and diddy have movement options simply engrained in their kits. Ya, it’s nowhere near as many techs as older games, but it’s still enough to make the movement fluid and enjoyable.
@@thunderd7904 idt wave bounces are frame perfect ethier way how would that be a good thing. People don’t care how hard the options are they just want universal options. Not one most characters can do. And characters like zss n diddy are just some characters. Platforms are limited and there are no micro spacing options even with these few characters.
I know Saus isn't mentioning Project M (now Project +) cuz it's a mod, and he doesn't wanna risk losing sponsorship, but it really is THE best thing Smash Bros. has to offer. Saus is right in that there was no reason for Sakurai to remove those elements that made Melee competitively deep, cuz the game can be played just fine without them. Casual players wouldn't know the difference. All Smash REALLY needed was a game based on Melee's playstyle with the bigger flaws removed like the dashback issue. That's basically what Project M did. Not only that, PM offers Brawl's expanded single player modes while adding additional in-game features and easter eggs which casual players like. Of course, the roster is also considerably larger than Melee's, and even has Knuckles (who is actually fleshed out, unlike Legacy XP which added Geno, Waluigi, Ridley, Metal Sonic, Mage Ganondorf but were clearly underdeveloped). Another flaw with Melee Saus didn't mention, you can't do running up-smashes with the C-stick. I know it seems minor, but going from PM to Melee, I can't even express how frustrating it was going against good players and having to spend that extra half second pressing an extra input, which often resulted in missed punishes or conversions.
@@nahor88 He probably also doesn't include it because it's not a smash game.... It's a mod... that's all it is and all it will ever be... it would be unfair to compare a mod which can be tweaked anyway a community likes to a developer made game that either does or does not get patched over time
Honestly, I feel like grinding times in break the target is fun enough to be its own game and legitimize melee as a good game holistically, but I guess that also requires movement mastery.
Agreed! That's why an entire spin-off game was made (Break the Targets) which plenty of top BTT players play on the side. It's on Steam, if you want to check it out. Even has melee stages in it as bonus content
The movement and tech if melee is so enticing but I can't really sit down and learn how to work around it's lack of buffer. That's why I'm so unbelievably glad that p+ is so fantastic. P+ is by far my favorite smash game due to the movement, balance, freedom and all the great extras from brawl.
I think it's odd that you bring up netplay when comparing online Smash, when netplay isn't a feature in the actual game. How good netplay is shouldn't affect your judgment on the quality of melee.
He specifically said he was reviewing melee as it stands in 2020, not melee as it was released. If he were only reviewing melee as it was at release then it would undoubtedly be a game worth playing because the only other smash to play would be 64, which melee was a straight upgrade from. Get Rekt.
@@timhorton8085 it is strange for him to not have any regards to his previous "mods will fix it argument". but that is the way people play the game these days. he should've just acknowledged it and factored it into his "rating" with an asterisk at the end tbh. "melee doesnt even have online at all, but if you use a netplay mod it has online play miles better than ultimates shitty online"
If you enjoy a game so much that it’s your most played game, then it’s one of your favorites. In my opinion it doesn’t matter if it’s good or not if you can enjoy that small portion of the game regardless of the game’s status as a pretty shitty game.
@@MrCocktaiIUnfortunately in Melee you have to do all the shitty single player modes, events, and target practice to unlock the characters the fastest and it's the only way to get 3 of the tournament stages. Sucks having to go through all the horseshit just to get the memory setup for competitive play.
10:39 Ah, so that's why I just stick with Ultimate. Something felt seriously off about the turning in Melee, and I couldn't really find an explanation for this, but thanks for clearing this up.
almost everything talked about in part 1 and part 3 of this video is why more people should try out rivals of aether. actual dash dancing, wave dashing, wave landing, dacus, moon walking, and more that are actually part of the game and not just happenstance because of how it was programmed. paired with a small but adequate buffer, it makes these movement options more accessible while still requiring practice to use correctly and in the right situations.
@@MrPoke Did we play the same game? Rivals, floaty? Are you sure you're not thinking of Brawlhalla or even Slap City, which I would say very much feels floaty by comparison. To me, Rivals feels almost identical to Melee/P+. High fallspeed characters like maypul, zetter, etc feel weighty and fall fast, at a comparable speed to melee(Especially when implementing fastfalls). Comparitively, Wrastor, Absa, etc feel 'floaty' but in exactly the same way Samus, Puff, or Peach feels. In fact, these characters feel a lot better to me in Rivals compared to "real" smash installments because their fast fall speeds tend to be faster than their Smash counterparts, meaning their comboing is more fluid than most floaties in smash games.
I'd argue that the "casual players won't notice it" point is heavily incorrect. In older days like around Melee or Brawl, probably, but considering the fact that most people play 4 and Ultimate online, if somethings there, the casual players are going to notice it. A similar situation would be something like the competitive CoD community. Look fun in tournaments, sounds fine, but those competitive players sometimes also play casually, so some poor schmuck on the opposite team now has to play against someone that good. Same thing for Smash. If there's fast movement and tech out the ass of Ultimate, players online who play casually aren't going to be able to play all that often, because the more competitive part of the community will stomp them repeatedly. Its not that he wanted to take away movement options for good players, its that he wanted to even the playing field for those who don't have the time or don't care to be able to do so much of the more complex stuff. The people who, like you mentioned earlier in the video, don't want to spend lots of time practicing.
"The most fun game I've ever played" I agree, it's easily the most fun. Melee simply doesn't get boring, you only stop because you physically get tired 😅.
Wow I thought it would be 40 minutes of someone making excuses for their favorite game, but instead I got to understand both sides of the argument. I feel like people either love the game or hate it, the portion that can come to an agreement on these concepts must be small cause I never see it.
I get sick and tired of when people over exaggerate about how good or bad the game is. It's either "MELEE IS THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME" or "MELEE IS A STUPID SHITTY GAME BECAUSE WAVECHEAT AND FUN CANCEL"
Great video, but I wanted to say that ultimate actually has a really big emphasis on punish game also. Characters have big damage combos but more importantly keeping people in disadvantage using ledgetrapping, juggling and corner pressure are really important in ult as its really hard to reset neutral
Really the main issue is the depth of punish game. If you know Luigi's 3 combos, you know Luigi's punish game. If you learn a peach combo in melee, you have learned specifically how to combo (character) on (stage) at (percent) with specific DI. This allows for a punish game that can be improved further by players who have been at the top for years while if you learn diddy's infinite, congratulations, you know what to do if you hit the setup.
@@sunday1294 Ultimate's depth of punish game isn't in the combos, it's in the ledge trapping, which takes a ton of practice and character knowledge to get good at, and is more freeform with a ton of mindgames.
@@auroraourania7161 id say ultimate edge guarding is alot more free form because of how much more lenient recovery is. Ledge trapping however doesnt really seem that much different, besides the fact that in melee you have to react to ledge dash as another ledge option
There was a long period where my friend set our copy of smash to only do Pokefloats and Rainbow cruise if we selected random. Those were the best years because I was playing Mewtwo a lot at the time.
to your point at 27:00, as a casual smash player i can enjoy watching melee but I've never been more frustrated playing a game of smash then when playing against my friend who regularly practices melee mechanics like L-cancelling, dash-dances / dash cancelling into up smash on fox, and all the other juicy options. it's beyond frustrating to deal 11% over the course of being 4 stocked, and not an experience I'd recommend to anyone.
Even though I'm a primarily Ultimate player, I love watching Melee and I'm forever grateful for the scene it created. This video is an embodiment of why Melee is great. Flawed? Yes? Good game? Heck yes. Great vid, keep up the good work.
This is by far the best review and analysis I've ever heard for Melee and Ultimate especially from an indepth movement perspective! But, just because you enjoy the competitive aspect of Melee, which you say is a "small" aspect of the game, doesn't mean it can't still be one of your favorite games of all time. Like you said, most others and yourself don't care much for smash's single player content. Then it essentially just leaves playing the game multiplayer wise, casually and competitively. Comepetitive Melee may be just one portion of which that game has to offer, but it is what Melee has made itself out to be for the past nearly 19 years. It is the reason it is still a popular game today. You don't have to undervalue your love for the game, just because you deem your favorite game aspect (and most signigicant part) to be "small", which in it's community is large! TLDR: Basically, I'm saying objectivity shouldn't influelnce what makes and doesn't make your favorite games of all time. If you love just a "small" portion of it that much, I think it can cross into favorite game of all time material. Maybe that is just me.
I would much prefer simplicity over being obtuse. Melee's design flaws, oversights and just age lend it to have a very high skill ceiling which makes it fairly interesting from a high level competitive setting. But melee only excels at that. Truly great games with competitive and casual scenes excel at both. Team Fortress 2 has a pretty intense skill cap but it also has a very accessible entry level. Melee for a lot of people will feel like it is just pissing on their time, you got to practice hundreds of hours to get to a point where you start 'having fun' compared to say Ultimate where you have fun while getting better. It was a fun game for its' time but better games have since come out and Melee is one of those games where time has just obliterated. Plus Ultimate has King K. Rool and you can't have a good game without King K. Rool.
you are exaggerating a lot about how hard it is and the amount of practice involved. im not technical at all but there are a lot of high and mid tiers that are pretty easy to pick up and that i play regularly with my friends. also idk how to tell you this but both melee and tf2 have higher skill floors, its just that both have easy chars. you obv are gonna be able to be good at somebody like heavy a lot faster than like axtinguisher pyro or some shit. i think the reason that you have this idea that ult and tf2 are low skill floor is that the people in the online are way worse than the people on melee unranked. that being said, shit like the buffer being ass and some characters being very hard to pick up does ring true sometimes, and if you want a more accessible "melee" like game you should try rivals of aether, its very technically forgiving, and i played it for a while before i picked up melee.
its not really true at all that you need to learn any advanced techniques to enjoy melee, it was the best selling gamecube game by a good margin so clearly a ton of people unfamiliar with even the existence of these mechanics still love the game. going out on a limb here and assuming you havent actually played melee :P
"Sorry man, I can't come over to play melee, my controller's functioning normally"
😂😂🤣
It be like that sometimes
Sheridan Comnene I hate melee because it’s like Fox hits you with nair at like 13% and then you are in a death combo
Sheridan Comnene also the fact that the movement is unbelievably stupid, you’re limited in your vertical and horizontal movement, you fall like a rock and going off stage more than an inch your dead. Every thing is too fast and it’s more muscle memory than strategy. In Ultimate you have time to think about your actions
Sheridan Comnene the game is so broken and unbalanced, half the characters are never played. People only like it because of nostalgia
I can’t believe I’ve fallen into the trap of watching another entire AsumSaus video, knowing full well he’s clearly *EXPLOITING* the RUclips algorithm by providing incredibly well-made and entertaining content. You’ve extorted me and my eyeballs for the last time AsumSaus!
Honestly though, this is great! Really love what you were able to do with a much longer video like this, and I can’t wait to see what you do next. Excellent work as always!
The nerve on this bastard!
lol one of my favorite smash content uploader reacting to another fav of mine
I wish he would try to do something different, whatever he is passionate about, I think talking about video-games can be really restrictive.
I came in thinking ok I'll watch like 10 mins...then 37 mins flew by
hello fellow plussy
You forgot about koopabackdashwaveslide hoverwalkmoonlandings in the movement section
Who came up with that name lol
@@JoeMama-nl5yk asum himself
Ikr
Heh! You’re joking right?
you’re joking right?
*oh god you’re not joking*
Jk I know what that is. A wavedash with frame perfect inputs so that your traction value is replaced with your walk speed during it.
@@IStoleUrBaguette yeah
The biggest downside of Melee’s single player is the C stick moves the camera instead of controlling your character, making it nearly unplayable if you are used to using the stick for your aerials
yeah I never actually played but there should be an option to cut it of
@@noir269 20xx or Uncle Punch Training Mode are mods that allow you to use c stick in single player
@@vDeadboltnot the point
@@user-lv8lt8gu4g my guy, I'm offering a solution to the problem lmfao.
If you played around that time, dual stick wasn't the norm. It's hard to explain, but you wouldn't immediately go for the second stick to do anything. A lot of us came from a single stick N64 controller
*played 5200 hours on steam*
"the game is alright"
I had a cousin just like this. He had like 700 hours on killing floor and gave it a 6/10 in his review on the steam store lol.
that's about what I say of Team Fortress 2 at 6300 hours.
me with terraria
Isn't that what it means to enjoy something while understanding it's flaws? Nothing is perfect and I don't think I've ever played a game that i could without a doubt say was a masterpiece, even if I happen to sink a lot of time into it.
Would you rather them have 5 hours logged on the game and say it’s an ok game?
I wish this guy was one of 5 quintuplets, and the other 4 did the same types of videos for the other games.
Nah, you only need one video each for 64, Brawl, and 4:
64: play Melee unless you're a Kirby main
Brawl: play Ultimate unless you're a Meta Knight main
4: play Ultimate unless you're a Bayonetta main
@@SongbirdOfficial
Okay I don't care about the other two, BUT BOI, YOU BETTER NOT BE DISSING BRAWL
THE *BEST* GAME IN THE SERIES
Put up your dukes, we're having it out.
@@Lechgang saying a game is the best in it's series is entirely subjective & false unless its qualities far surpass it's opponents. brawl isn't the "best game in the series" if you're playing competitively (tripping, slow speed, meta knight as a whole, etc.) while ultimate and melee excel in the competitive scene- the former being a game that appeals to both casual players and competitive players. people who watch videos like these are probably competitive players, so your opinion would be seen as wrong in the eyes of many other people. gotta admit subspace was fire tho
tl;dr - your opinion is pretty eh
@@nesinabox You just basically said my opinion was false and I gotta say dude, I can't agree.
You've got some audacity to say this by the way, I'm not usually one to be offended, but I just REALLY hate your response.
I said brawl is best, so what? You said it wasn't? Don't act like your opinion holds more ground.
I like Ultimate too, but I personally think Brawl is heavily underrated and melee is overhyped. Melee's core battle mechanics are because of errors and glitches in the games code. Technically speaking it's absurd to say that Melee is better because it's a buggy glitchy mess. Sure, brawl is slow, but Melee's jankiness makes it a technical inferior game.
Sure you could mention competitive, but the competitive nature of a game is secondary to the casual parts, and Brawl is easily the best casual game of the bunch, maybe Ultimate rivals it, but Subspace Emissary puts so much of Ultimate to shame IMO.
You basically tried to be nice in saying I was wrong and that other games were better, and I'm sorry but I ain't taking that.
i never said your opinion was wrong in any way. i dont think my opinion holds more ground, i just think that brawl isn't the best game competitively. that was the original statement of my comment
as a man in a documentary once said, "brawl excelled as a casual game, but it suffered competitively." this is because of the updated mechanics/speed and the fact that one character alone dominated the competitive scene
i don't see why you think subspace puts most of ultimate to shame just because it's a far more rememberable and fun singleplayer mode. sure, it outshines wol effortlessly, but i think that's one of the only things brawl does better than ultimate. melee's pretty wack and stupid but it did better *competitively*, with the most history behind it and a reputation as the most competitive game in the series
sorry if it seemed like i was attempting to prove your opinion wrong, i just wanted to point out that brawl isn't the best game in a competitive sense
“Exploiting RUclips algorithm”
This when I realized that the video is almost 40 minutes long
How would one exploit the algorithm? Curious 🤔
@Rensi It's not that easy to become a late-night talk show host man.
thanks for letting me know, didnt even realize it till I read your comment
Holy shit. I didn't even notice.
23 minutes in and then I saw how long it is
It's insane how well this game is even though it had 13 months of development and how the competitive scene was entirely unintentional as the game was never meant to be so fast
I feel like it's the fan base that made the game what it is today. In a way, they help develop the game.
goes with a lot of games actually
@@dalgusmaximus4557 *cough cough* mario kart wii (not saying it's a bad game btw)
"Were they short on time or something?"
For those who didn't get the joke, Melee's development cycle took 13 months from start to finish. This is incredibly short compared to the industry average, where games usually spend about 36 months in development instead. It's kinda amazing how good the game turned out, keeping this in perspective.
Yeah. It IS incredibly impressive what was accomplished in such a short window. The crunch faced by the end must've been unbearable for most. Unfortunately, the insane tenacity and work ethic of the developers can only compensate so much when your game rushed by TWO YEARS. That's why the game has some jank.
I laughed out loud when he said that
Pretty sure that was the joke...
I honestly don’t think melee would be what it is and where it is today if the developers had more time. Most of the bugs would have been patched so we wouldn’t have such insane moves like foxes shine.
@@ballba11ball what bugs?
“ Smash ‘God’ drops out of tournament because his controller isn’t properly malfunctioning”
This is why outsiders hate us
Pat, from Super Best Friends Play and Pat Stares At, threw out an incredible rant about this particular incident back in the day, on the old podcast, basically saying that this is why the FGC doesn’t take the Melee community as seriously as they want to be taken.
@@BareBandSubscription Nah, the FGC doesn't take smash seriously because it's actually fun. Smash has no problems appealing to a casual audience, and that's basically the defining feature of the fighting game genre at this point.
@@AllUpOns
No, they don’t take Melee seriously because the Melee community is historically ridiculous, and because the metagame is so dubious. It’s basically a party-fighter that got bullshitted into a deep fighting game, utilizing what are essentially just exploits, and the tech is so precise and specific for performing such basic actions that the game overlaps more with the speed running community than with the actual FGC. Trust me, there are plenty of reasons Melee gets such a mixed reception in that community, and they’re mostly legitimate. Ultimate has actually received more legitimacy from the FGC at large because, unlike Melee, it was actually designed with the conceit of being a proper competitive fighting game in mind, even if only mildly so, and because the Ultimate crowd doesn’t have it’s head three feet up it’s ass.
@@AllUpOns what about tekken
@@BareBandSubscription idk Id rather have a meta thats somewhat of an enigma than a paper cut super simple game that is Ultimate. Its not trying to bullshit its way to being a deep competitive game when it by complete freak accident has all the pieces in place. Ultimate despite being made with that intent fails in so many aspects to be a proper competitive game, its not surprising most players have been burned out or not enjoying the game as much as lately although that could be wifi talking but people were pretty negative at the end of 2019. Doesnt help some FGC folk have tried it and never really stuck with it, game somehow manages to be more of a mess in its meta while trying to oversimplify the smash formula which only leaves both sides of players frustrated. And thats just the mechanics, it also manages to take control away from the player and feel stiff in platform movement and something as simple as dashing wont even let you reverse aerial rush something youd be able to do in the last 2 games, its sad that Smash 64 feels a lot more responsive for being a near 25 year old game (not that Id call it better than Ultimate).
Even newer fighting games that have come out recently dont leave me feeling this hopeless cause theres still some aspects to enjoy about them even if theyre not as hard or complex as the old fighting games that made a name for themselves.
The only part I agree with is that the community does feel more in line with speedrunning than fighters cause most fighters dont feel as demanding and have as much crazy tricks to pull of as Melee which is more free form, its a weird game thats managed to attract people as insane as me to give it shot in spite of its hurdles. Another thing that dissapoints me so much is I wish there was more crossplay into other fighters from Melee players, something only Leffen has tried to do.
As someone who had put in 1000 hours into ultimate and 30 seconds into melee, I wish there was someone making videos of this quality for ultimate
MockRock is pretty good
My cousin has 2,000 hours on fornite and he only decent
Just play melee
Rud 100% agree
@@kutchop8613 2000 are not that much
Melee suffers from StarCraft syndrome. It looks incredible and is incredible but fucking BRUTAL to compare the average joe to top play and really not easy to get into.
Also keep in mind that for single player melee (AND practice mode), the c stick functions as a camera rather than as an extension of your aerials/smash moves.
this so much like whyyyyy
i hated this as a kid and i still hate it today
I remember thinking it made sense when I first noticed that as a kid. I was like "C-stick for Camera. Yeah."
Its been 20 years since I've played melee. I forgot about that. And now that you've reminded me of it, I'm worse off for it. Thank you.
I hate that. It makes Home Run Contest literal hell on earth.
Uh-oh, reaction videos incoming. Armada on the loose. M2K already taking notes. Zero about to steal those notes and make his video first.
I hope so that would be so cool
@@TylerCloke Did you see Armada reaction of M2K video of top 10 Melee player of all time ,when HuGs come first and Armada insult him with the n-word
leffen gonna watch the first 30 seconds then dislike and click off
I would love to hear what they have to say, especially zero
30:55 "Hungrybox, who plays Jiggly Puff, a character with a losing matchup to F--"
*Armada pauses the video for 5 minutes to talk about how broken Puff is*
A wise man once said "melee's siick"
who?
@@Adam-jo3tr that wise man that said it
@@Adam-jo3tr C9 Mango at Nintendo SSB Ultimate reveal show.
@@Adam-jo3tr Mang0
Sick
It’s definitely ok to know that a game can be super awesome and well made, while still having some flaws. The very best of the best, legendary titles, have also been broken down into crazy speedruns or niche ways… people loved melee that had no idea about it’s competitive rise too! Love the long melee discussion!
I think there's a difference between ranking a game in terms of personal favorites and reviewing. If you are ranking your personal favorites, and you enjoyed a game the most, but only within very confined rulesets, I think that absolutely still counts as your favorite. However, if you are reviewing the game objectively or for others, you absolutely have to take various caveats into account.
I don't see why you'd say melee isn't your favorite because aspects you don't interact with have problems, but I can see why you'd give it a lower "review score" because of them.
Basically made the comment I was going to make. I agree that a subjective favorite isn't the same thing as an objective review!
Exactly what i was thinking.
I kind of agree, but I'm tempted to say that if the aspect that makes a game your favorite doesn't really belong to the game proper, then it's not the game that you're enjoying, it's almost an entirely different, derivative product.
I'm not sure if this is a good comparison (need more time to think about it tbh) but saying "I love competitive Melee, therefore Melee is my favorite game" is, to me, a little bit like saying "I love Red Letter Media's Plinkett Reviews, therefore the Phantom Menace is my favorite movie." The competitive aspect of Melee is like paratext, instead of text. Suppose I only enjoy playing zombie mode in Black Ops, but it's literally my favorite thing to do in the world. Would that make Black Ops my favorite game? I'd definitely say no.
Anyway, sorry if I'm coming across as pretentious philosophy 101 dude, that's not my goal and I don't know anything about philosophy. I just think it's a really fascinating discussion.
@@mantistoboggan537 Except it does belong in the game. Smash has always been a multiplayer centric game. The entire experience revolves around the mechanics of the game to the point where the singleplayer modes are just battles in a different context. While yes, the singleplayer is underwhelming, it's never the focus of the games. Multiplayer will always be more important than singleplayer and that goes for most fighting games. While you could argue that competitive Smash isn't intended, I'd argue that it is. Smash has always been a very versatile game. You have complete control over what items show up, their frequency, and the stages. If Smash was intended to play one way then would this level of control be given to the player to fine tune the experience? There are several games that can be enjoyed in several ways. Take Pokemon for example. Some people shiny hunt, some people play competitive, some people enjoy the singleplayer, some people try to catch every Pokemon and some people enjoy doing challenge runs like Nuzlockes. People who enjoy the singleplayer but don't enjoy completing the Pokedex, are missing some of the experience. People who don't play competitive are also missing a huge part of the experience, or maybe some people like competitive but despise completing the story. Does enjoying only one of these aspects mean that people can't say a game in the franchise is their favorite? That's absurd, you can enjoy a game for whatever reason and I think Smash is the same way.
I'd argue that Melee shouldn't be in his list because not only does he need another person to play with (in the same room) to make it fun, it has to be another person who's put in hundreds of hours practicing.
If only a mod of Brawl existed so that it's as competitively deep as melee while fixing all of the controller issues and having a small buffer while keeping it's precision and fluidity. That would be a great Project.
Sounds cool, but I hope the devs don't stop updating the mod to make their own heavily flawed game or anything though
Waiting for a woooosh comment
I hope they add Roy and Mewtwo to Brawl.
Yeah and it'd be really cool if they made everyone equally good in brawl
@@cassidy8307 Wait what? Making their own game?
I think the concept of my “favorite games” should be based on the amount of fun I’ve gotten out of it
I agree
@@AverageHandle_ thank you JoJo Mama
Yassssss
truee
Yeah, saying a game is my favorite even though I only enjoy 1 small part of it doesn’t seem weird to me.
I found your comparison of melee and ballet at 7:13 to be very apt! Many young dancers begin ballet thinking they can execute the elegant and exciting movement ballet is known for without understanding the serious time grind to get down the precise minute movements that make up just a part of the flashy moves. I have felt that dancing at a professional level has given me absolute freedom over control in my body, but it did take a lot of effort to get there. I enjoy working towards perfection, so you totally sold the game to me (on a competitive level haha 😅).
Honestly, in my opinion you can like a game for almost any reason.
You can like Smash 64 for its simple style and charm even if there's not much content to the game.
You can like Melee exclusively for its gameplay and mechanical exploits, all while ignoring its side content.
You can like Brawl not for its raw gameplay, but for its game modes and side content.
You can like Smash 4 for its style, but not like its lack of gamemodes.
You can like Ultimate not for its single player modes, but love its gameplay mechanics and roster.
Basically, if you like playing a game, *you like playing a game.* Period.
This is true.
If the question is whether or not you like a game and can put it in your favorites list is entirely dependent on you enjoying playing that game and spending time on it. How you play it or the options you choose to customize your gameplay are irrelevant.
But if the question is about whether it's a good or balanced game, you are lying to yourself if you ignore aspects of the game that you choose to ignore while playing. The whole game going by it's proper title is not "good" if you only play part of it.
Correction for Smash 4, just Smash Run. For me, there is no other reason to play Smash 4, and Smash Run isn't even that fun for me in the first place.
Like the souls games Too each one has their own strengths and weaknesses and exploits.
i like brawl because of its raw gameplay
:)
I do love brawl for the gameplay. It's far better than melee
I'd argue that even if you only enjoy a small part of a game, you can still have that as one of your favorite games.
Well it also works the other way around, Gothic, an RPG game would absolutely my favorite game ever if not the middle-early segment of the game, it's a moment where everything is too tanky, hit's too hard and the game basically makes you master the fighting system and after that the difficulty just takes a nosedive down until the end of the game. At the beggining the game's cruel, in the early-mid game it becomes literal hell, late-mid it is back to just cruel, late game is extremely easy compared to what the difficulty was before and the game becomes cruel again, just a difficulty wide ride, not speaking about the middle segment taking far too much time to complete. I both love and hate this game to be honest
You can call anything your favorite game and don't really have to defend it, but the video is about whether it's good as a whole. "I enjoy this, but would I actually recommend this to the average person?"
i feel like this, Ult its my favorite game of all time, and in my opinion its a bit mediocre
imo, there's a difference between my favorite games, and the games I consider to be the best games.
If Dark Souls II Pvp actually was as good as fucking Melee then yeah it would definitely be considered one of my favorite games despite not really loving the rest of the game
Feel like this thesis doesn't really make a lot of sense. Even if you enjoy just a small portion of what a game has to offer, it can still be your favorite game. You dont need to like EVERY aspect of the game.
Maybe I'm just old and jaded because I had the same reaction I see Ultimate players have when they announce a new fighter. It was mind blowing to watch the melee opening compared to smash 64. But what kept you around was that depth. I can thank that small portion of the game for lifelong friends and experiences. That's what makes it one of my all time favorite games.
Personally, I think he framed his question and analysis wrongly in the video, and the correct question is in the title. This is talking of the objective components that make a game good, and that does mean its universal aspects. I felt the same way when he spoke of "favorites," considering some of my favorite games of all time include the clearly flawed Kirby and the Amazing Mirror and Sonic Adventure 2. This is probably a miscommunication.
Is Melee a special game? Obviously. Nearly 20 years later it still has a dedicated community in the competitive field and still finds new players dripping into the scene. But being a landmark game and being good on all fronts are two very different things, and I think that especially in the first part of the video, he did a fair job explaining why the game might seem so archaic to the greater public, those who aren't interested in practicing for so long just to feel like they're in control of the game they're playing.
Edit: I'm clarifying real quick that I do agree, this shouldn't keep him from saying it's one of his favorites, or any flaw within the game, for that matter. It being its own, special, intricate game is its own reason to be a favorite to many.
thank you for saying this
Competitive melee is one of his all-time favorites, but it's wrong to say Melee period is one of his favorites because he only enjoys such a small part of it.
@@starwarriorterra8373 I'd say if nothing else this video proves there is no such thing as an objective good game. What traits make a game "good?" How are the traits you consider important not subjectively chosen? You end up having to make distinctions like "my favorite game that I've played for 2 bazillion hours is technically not good" and that's just a bit silly now innit? Sure, you could say Street Fighter 2 is a "good" game because it's core versus gameplay has enough depth to hold up for all these years, and you could say it's a "bad" game because it has stiff animations and a non-existant story mode. Neither answer is "objectively" correct, the things people consider important vary.
Too Few Secrets but they are the same game none the less. Even if it’s an exclusive part. I guess the best comparison would be minecraft. With how much you can do in that game, you probably are only doing a small part of it. Even if you just only enjoy one or two mods of the game, you would still say you love minecraft, because it is the platform allows you to do it.
As someone who is a bit of a Melee naysayer I honestly really appreciated the perspective here as well as still acknowledging Melee's shortcomings overall, while also showing how something like Ultimate is better in some areas but also ends up being more limiting as well.
Sounds like if nothing else Ultimate would feel much better at high level if it made some tweaks to make platforms back into a tool to play around like Melee instead of them being more like an obstacle that's puts you at a disadvantage that you try to avoid.
Very informed and balanced outlook, Tomoko.
I really enjoy both, having 700 hours in ult and probably more in melee since picking it up in march 2020, and just sometimes wish for ultimate to have a little bit more similarities to melee. Better wavelanding (not wavedashing), so you can do grab techchases, waveland off platform, shield dropping, reducing the buffer a little, etc. i play both a lot, though ultimate more at school for like 30 min every 2 days with friends cause online players play like they have no father figures.
I would love ultimate, for example, if it had similar movement options to melee (I mean it already HAS wavedashing, it's just fucking useless in ultimate), had the platform options you mentioned, AND had the option to remove the buffer system entirely (as well as reducing input lag plz). That buffer system, despite being a standard in modern games, has a tendency to make something come out I didn't intend to come out because of how large it is (I believe in ultimate it's a 9 frame buffer, which is huge for a fighting game), and is the primary reason I don't even touch the game to this day.
ah and maybe less end lag on moves in general for everyone, no l-cancel needed, just make everyone faster to compensate for the horrifically low hitstun.
@@RPGgrenade the amount of un-intended dashes i made in Ultimate would let you to believe the game is still in beta, how can a game be so close to perfection and at the same time so far away from it?
My main issue with Ultimate is just the way neutral plays and the slower speed.
I'm mostly a P+ player rather than a Melee guy, and seeing as my main is infinitely Ganondorf everything after Melee excluding P+/PM throws him to the trash bit.
For whatever reason, I feel like Melee is way more fun to watch than play. I love melee to death but it feels strange to me. But I can (and have) watched Melee tourney vods, videos, and highlights for literally hours.
I can see this but I only think that you say that is maybe because us plebs can't be as good as the top players which are more sick and are really good and have entertaining gameplay.
I can totally agree. I've been watching melee since 2017 and ultimate since it's release and I would emulate it, but I don't have the money to buy a good computer to play, but I'm still happy watching these amazing videos. Someday I'll play for sure, but for now I'm gonna stick to RUclips and twitch.
Its like anything else in life. If you're willing to put the time in it's going to be a struggle, but the rewards are great. Been playing for a while and every time I reach a new plateau the game becomes even more fun. But I feel you, StarCraft is way too much stress for me I get it but just cant
of course, cause it's a haaaaaard game
I agree. I have never watched any videos of smash except for Melee… but then again, that’s where all the videos are made. No one is busting out Brawl videos. I think my issue with Melee being considered “the best ever” is because of the history of it’s development. Melee had the smallest development time of any Smash game. Now I get that games can be over developed but this idea that Melee is the best game because the developers literally overlooked some things? That is just kinda funny. People like Melee because it the developers made mistakes. Seriously, that’s what they like. If Nintendo released Melee in today’s timeline, they would have pushed a LOT of patches.
“Melee is one of my favorite games and I’ve only ever played 15% of it”
Yeah, it's that way.
@Ultra Irrelevant Nobody
10/32 of the game's levels are Sonic's and they're at least twice as long as the other characters' so it's more like 50% sonic by play time at least
@SharinganSakura Idk if I'm missing something but I've never heard of somebody getting Sonic Adventure just to play Sonic's story and stop playing.
i love life and i would only wanna live through 15% of what life has to offer
me
Somehow having “Beneath the Mask (Rain),” and “MTT Hotel” playing in the background helps drive your points into my head.
That is what i was thinking
I understand Sakurai’s beliefs regarding the casualization of later smash games. As a very, very, casual player, the idea of playing Melee is almost intimidating. It almost feels like I’m not supposed to play it unless I learn it’s very complex mechanics and movement, which I personally don’t want to do. Ultimate feels a lot more welcoming and friendly, and even if melee’s more depth results in much more fun competitive gameplay, I prefer the comfort found in ultimate’s much more simple, yet still fun, gameplay.
Exactly if this were Melee players like you would have left early making the game community smaller, while games like Ultimate strike a balance letting you enjoy the game casually while also being competitive friendly.
I was briefly part of the competitive scene for Melee (locals mostly but I went to one single regional) and you're exactly right. I couldn't, and still can't, do a single advanced tech and so I lost nearly 100% of the games I played. It fucking sucked lmao, literally the only reason I was there was for my partner at the time. Could I have gotten better with months of sustained practice and failure? Sure, but that's just not fun for me. I don't enjoy doing the same thing day in day out with zero reward.
Ultimate is more fun (FOR ME) for the simple reason that I can play against people who are better than me without getting instantly destroyed. It feels like I actually learn something from losing instead of playing Melee where I just feel like "welp I literally had zero ability to change that outcome".
Okay online Samus.
There's nothing wrong with considering a game one of your favorite games just because you enjoy a "small" aspect of it. Melee and the other Smash games are some of my favortie games just for the competitive aspect alone.
I hate to get political, but i guess that it sorta is because it's like comparing apples to apple gummies or hard candy that's apple flavoured. There's very little apple in apple candy, but it has a much sweeter and arguably better flavour than regular apples. See what I'm saying? You can't really call apples your favorite food just because you love apple candy so much. Smash at it's core is like fruits, while smash at competitive is like candy.
@@hugglesnuggybear5822 i think it's more like a sport, you can like playing soccer casually with friends or competitively at high levels, either way you enjoy soccer.
@@hugglesnuggybear5822 It's all subjective. I can say I personally value apple candy over any other food i eat. That doesn't mean I can't say I don't like apples still. Everything has it's own independent level of appreciation per person.
I think that its disingenuous to claim, for instance, Call of Duty is your favorite game if you only play Zombies mode for instance. No one would argue you are wrong to say it, since favorites are entirely subjective, but its like claiming to like cake when in reality you only like fondant. If you could find fondant without cake, youd never eat cake again. Do you really like cake?
Its arguable.
What is wrong with that? Zombies mode is still part of the game. A big BIG part of why people like the competitive aspect of Melee is because of the movement and mechanics alone (which are the most fundamental part of the game). I don't think it's disingenous at all, since the judgment on wether you like a game or not comes after the fact of experiencing said game. I personally like to boot up my Wii and just go into training mode to practice techskill, of course I still played adventure mode, classic, unlocked every character, all of the events, but I don't enjoy them as much as simply going into practice mode. What I'm saying is that it's unlikely that someone that participates in competitive Melee has only and exclusively experienced the competitive aspect of it.
Also, having a favorite anything is an inherently subjective and personal decision. If someone enjoys just staring at menus and listening to the music, it still part of the game, and nobody can change that.
How could you forget the "Race to the Finish" stage in Melee? That was one of the most fun parts of melee single player, trying to get to the end with every character.
Bowser can't in Race to the finish
It gets even better when you get the Debug Menu and change their sizes to see how small you can beat the game as
it can get a bit samey
After rewatching this video countless times, I indeed think you are the core a of melee. Your analysis of this topic is very interesting. More videos like this, please!
Always liked 64 the best. I think it was just because of it’s charm and simplicity. And when you add the Remix mod, oh man!
One thing melee has over its sequels is momentum. Knockback feels much more fixed in the later games, and I dislike the sharp distinction between moves which are and aren't "kill moves".
that's a very interesting point about kill moves.
Very true. This became a real issue with Smash 4 which also heavily nerfed the impact of DI overall from Melee & Brawl.
Ultimate's knockback momentum was incredible weird to me when i first saw it and honestly it's too forgiving, I can hit Marth's foward smash at 148% and instead of flying natrually into the blastzone they will stop abruptly right before it
I actually prefer Ultimate's more triangular trajectory because of the distinction of what will and won't kill
It isn't just the knockback here. Something he glosses over is the reduction of DI as a whole-- there is a LOT of DI followups/mixups in Melee, along with the importance of SDI. Those have all been severely reduced in Smash 4/Ultimate to the point where it is one of the reasons that Bayo was such a terror. The freedoms which are afforded to the player in Melee help them have counterplay to what would otherwise be stupidly strong options. Even chaingrabbing in Melee takes practice (for the most part, anyways, Sheik is a pretty good exception) due to this. It might look easy to uthrow chaingrab a Fox as Doc until you try it.
I disagree with your opening thesis, I don't think you have to enjoy or even experience the entirety of a game to have it be one of your favorites. I'm also a little confused by why two different metrics are being used to grade a game as if they are interchangeable. "Is Melee a good game", and "Is Melee on my favorite games list" are two different questions, so I find it odd that you use evidence for one question as if it answers the other.
Had to extend the length of the video somehow lol
It was a good video tho but I would of separated it into one short and one long video answering those two questions separately
GenialBunion You would of?
I'm not sure someone who says "would of" should be making such specific comments about the work of...anyone.
Ya..this guy is full of shit. He has horrible opinions.
@@notsogreatsword1607 I like how you think a grammar error invalidates his sentence like it didn't make sense to you.
17:00
“It’s a fighting, party, casual, competitive, it’s a... Fighparcashpetitive.”
-Introspecktive
Half of Ultimate's platform movement problems could be solved if running off a platform could get you off without neutering your horizontal movespeed
this the one
i feel like the online bit on Melee was strange since wouldn't that fall into the "mods will fix it" category?
My thoughts exactly. Its like saying brawl has the most characters because of project m. Ultimate has the best built in online (which isn't saying much) but melee has none so they're not comparable in that sense.
@@willywakka7830 I don't really think that's a fair comparison because online Smash didn't exist at all when Melee released. It's not the same as poor design of a feature that's considered standard.
I don’t think online was on the top of people’s minds in 2001
Yeah, talking about online in this video at all was a bit weird because I bet fans would make something a lot better than official nintendo online if they were forced to.
Melee didn't ship with online play because that wasn't really plausible on the gamecube and that feels fine to me
@@willywakka7830 can’t even say that because Smash 4 legit had a better online experience than ultimate
Strange opinion:
Despite not being my favorite smash game, smash 3ds had my favorite classic mode
Smash 3DS had a good classic mode and possibly the best singleplayer experience in the entire franchise in the form of Smash Run.
Gosh darn the final boss was so epic. Having it get crazy with the higher difficulties made it so much fun to attempt 8+ difficulty runs.
Smash 3DS had one of my favorite modes: Smash Run
@@krubbington Hell yeah, they need to bring Smash Run to Ultimate >:D
@@krubbington smash run was so much better than smash tour it's almost criminal lol
24:52 The stages look like this -_-
@June it is for me tbf
And then there’s Yoshi’s frowning in the distance
|[
I prefer ____
Frisk
For those who need help with it (part 3), neutral is more 'what if..', and punish is more 'if.. then..'. Neutral is all about creating more openings for yourself, and punish is just punishing failed attemps to get into advantage. What this means is later smash titles are much safer games, where you dont have to think about every single input, as opposed to older games where every single input has a gajillion different outcomes that you have to plan for, at breakneck speeds.
Thank you for the explanation; this helps
@bathestyles ofc! For others who need further explanation, in ultimate you'll see a player like Light spam bair at ledge. This isn't mashing. It's quite literally optimal. Due to low landing lag and its safe but strong nature, Fox bair alone puts a lot of pressure on ledge. This is more of a trapping mechanic to keep the opponent on ledge and force them to create a punishable option. This is in contrast to Melee, where players opt to sit on ledge (to ledge hog ik different games hard to compare), or will jump up in prediction to an attempt to land on stage. In laymans terms, in Ultimate, you cover as create pressure, while in Melee, you play mind games. Both good games. Have fun!
“Down time sucks I payed money for this game, I’m not waiting for my opponent to Wiff” -fire the pyro (“slightly” altered)
I've probably only played 3 games where I could clearly tell when I "get in the zone" because the movemoment is so precise and crisp.
It's like entering god mode for a while and that alone makes it one of my favorite gaming experience.
Can a game not be amazing if you find yourself telling your opponent, mid-match, that what he just did blew your mind? Even tho you've been playing for over a decade.
Comment put a smile on my face
Same for me. Those kind of games are rare but when you find them there is nothing like it.
Melee/P+, Rivals, Destiny 1 (sounds crazy but the movement was amazing), Overwatch on Tracer specifically.
It feels like you can do almost anything you can imagine when given the most freedom to do so.
My brother keeps insisting League of Legends is like this also but I'm nowhere near good enough to see that yet.
mirrors edge is a good one for that
@@Saskaruto16 Tf2 and counter strike pull this off well also.
Sonic Riders is pretty good for that. The game feels like it has endless depth. So sad we will probably never get a new game in the series.
(Honestly, if you just slapped the Gravity Ring's turning into Riders 1, made a few new maps, and made it easier to nope out of Turbulence that would be the perfect racing game imo.)
I'm not the best player ever, but I've dabbled in competitive smash for a couple years now. While I only ever went to 1 real tournament for it due to living conditions at the time, Project M is probably my favorite Smash game, even if its not quite official. To me, PM is the best of both worlds; big viable roster, melee's fun movement mechanics, the very slight input buffer that doesn't require me to break my god damn fingers trying to play it. Makes me wish Nintendo embraced what PM was instead of only looking at it on a surface level.
Yeah pm was great, now project + is kinda popular but nintendo love stomping on community made stuff
I've only gotten to touch Project M a few times but it was damn near life-changing, even in all my time of Smashing. These days I'm lucky to get a round in where I can but I always savour the occasion😺
project plus/m is dope and is my fav
Project M Subspace Emissary was some of the most fun single player smash I've ever had. The speed of Melee's mechanics really make the already good boss fights just that much better.
If anyone seeing this has an instagram, go follow @ Project.m.stuff for great daily clips. While I agree Melee is the GOAT, PM/P+ truly challenges that title with, as Yellow Yoshi said, the best of both worlds. My favorite smash game/experience by far and still developing to this day.
I really hope, if Ultimate is the last Smash game, Nintendo embraces P+ and actually supports them.
As a casual, I just like how all the fighters look. Not just graphical, but the characters design like Samus’s Super Metroid suit and Adult Link’s OOT look
It's kind of strange but I feel like the graphics aged better than brawl's
I personally also like the classic Mario character designs and good ol' fat Pikachu.
Even Yoshi?
The N64 era of Nintendo characters is definitely something special
@@LalitoTV Yeah I think an exception is Yoshi abd Bowser
I love Melee as a casual game. Kicking the ass of CPU’s, clearing the events, defeating Adventure, classic, targets and stuff like that. Collecting trophies.
But I can understand how when you’re able to play at a competitive level that the rest gets boring and pales in comparison. I never touched anything outside of ranked when I was top-rank on Splatoon either
Heh same, when I first tried ranked battle in splatoon 1 I never went outside of it to the point turf war feels awkward to me wheb online friends i play with drag me into it. (Hydra splatling user)
i love all the singleplayer stuff in melee except event matches. i get them out of they way asap to get FD and never touch them again lol
He's back! Our savior has come; with gifts non the less! May this day be remember as "AsumSaus" day!
June is now known as AsumSaus month actually
Simp
@@giantclaw138 who?
happy world milk day
Rumple Foreskin le MORK
"What, did they have limited time or something?"
I see what you did there.
I was thinking "...yes, they did!!"
imagine playing a musical instrument with the equivalent of a buffer, like a drum that fixes your rhythm or a piano that could sense when you didn’t mean to hit a note.
Getting good at melee movement feels like practicing an instrument, and practice turns initial clunkiness into beautiful creative proficiency in the same way
Nelson Horsley That might just be one of the best analogies I’ve ever read. Wish I could hang it up on a wall
Imagine deciding to limit yourself by playing an old and nearly broken piano that can give good results only if you invest years into playing it (and even modify your entire hand), while not even knowing whether you were actually good enough to be a skilled pianist for those years, because you chose to play that piano instead of one that works well for everybody.
I’m not saying I really feel this way, but I am saying analogies like this are pretty dumb.
@@Edgeperor no
I feel like this isn't a very good analogy. Playing an instrument is about stringing notes and chords together in a certain rhythm to play a song. Playing Melee is about string a set of movements together to perform complex combos and kill your opponent. That kind of skill should be difficult to master. However, the act of playing a note should be simple. Sure, playing certain impressive chords and tones might require more skill, but the basic parts should be easy to play. In the same way, you want to be able to do basic things like short-hopping or inputting smash attacks to be simple, which a buffer can help with in many cases. Now, I would say too much of a buffer can be suffocating and make skilled play clunky (Ultimate's buffer system is terrible), but having some leniency is not a bad thing. A game should not be hard to play, just hard to play to its fullest potential.
@@Edgeperor Dashback is broken, yes, but there are musical analogies to things not working perfectly. For example, sustaining a note is limited by having to switch your bow motion on a violin.
the mechanical technical proficiency required to play fast melee characters takes practice before you can do anything, and it's fun to build up your skill. There are things like wavedashing, shield dropping, and ledgedashing that you have to keep up and can always improve at, like scales and arpeggios.
I like ultimate, but it doesn't give this feeling. It's like playing guitar hero on easy instead of guitar. It's still a lot of fun, but the skill and enjoyment comes from the other parts of the game
Rewatching this and appreciating it even more than the 1st time around. Extremely well made analysis vid. I don't even play Melee, and yet that 37 mins flies right by and I'm enthralled for all of it. Truly Sausy.
If u only like a part of a game but still have played it over 1000 hours then i thing u can say it's one of youre favorite games og all time.
I think there's an important distinction to make when discussing casual players vs hardcore players: Its not black and white, morerather it's a greyscale that has a variety of shades, I'm not a hardcore smash player but I'm certainly not a casual, I think the greatest mistake in smash development is to distance these two player bases entirely... there needs to be a relatively linear progression of time input to skill output (ideally speaking).
Saus, I say this with the bottom of my heart, the transformation of your YT channel from "clip collection" vids to these super great "basically video essay" type videos is phenomenal. Keep it up, you are easily one of the best YT channels out there. Atleast for me :)
I just love the slow thought out style of ultimate. Neutral to me is like a game of wit, and that’s what I love about it
oh yeah, neutral is incredibly mind-game heavy, and it is fun. however, punish heavy gameplay is fun and respectable too. we need another mess and incredibly fast game other than melee
@@tafu4049real. ultimate is super fun, but frankly, if someone as good at me can do as good as i do in ultimate, its not punish heavy enough.
“Where they short on time or something?” lul
“No game is as fast as Melee”
Quake:
_am I a joke to you?_
Screams in DOOM and Unreal Tournament
@@tcwentertainment screams in rocket jumping in tf2
Anime airdashers are seething
Osu! Would like you to rethink what you just claimed. All of you. Go look at a 7 or 8 star beatmap and WEEP over how fast it is. You NEED 120Hz monitor just to keep up. Fast? Melee looks slow compared to it.
These movement options are always possible, regardless of what mode you're playing
single button mode
kinda related but i know how to wavedash using tap jump
@@Reshi9984 Satan asked if you could teach him how to
@@Reshi9984 But you still can't wavedash without the L/R/Z buttons which Single Button mode disables
@@thrasher698 Which is why he said unrelated
Air Ride mode
the more i learn about melee, the more i understand why i was so shit at it when i played it as a literal toddler
I loved the single player and play all stages with friends, with more casual ones even with items. Tournament Meta is definitely better ofc. But it’s still a Great Party Game
Yeah the game was amazing at release as a completely noob casual. There's a reason it was the best selling gamecube game. I find it weird comparing all the games with current day's perspective instead of around time they were released.
@@YangiTheCat because the question eventually becomes “why would you still play this now?” as a game ages. Melee was great for its time, but competitive scene notwithstanding, it has aged, and the other Smash games have improved on it substantially in elements like character roster, single player modes (Brawl especially), soundtrack (definitely at least in sheer amount of songs available), casual control, and graphically.
I was with you except for when you trashed on Lifelight, that song is fire. A spire of flames, if you will.
"A spire of flames, if you will."
You could even call it an undying light.
@@benhuang2773 Us fans of Lifelight are here where we stand, hand clenched in hand, everyone caught in the struggle
@@JHamron I believe that he has the right to his opinion. After all, every soul contains a whisper of light, growing louder as it calls to unite
J Hamron
Lifelight's melody is--and i say this with Brawl being my first Smash game--the best theme in the series. it feels so pervasive and transcendant. it's gotten stuck in my head infinitely more times than Brawl's ever has. and Brawl's theme is great! that's how good Lifelight is to me. it *is* Smash now, or at least it's essence.
that said, i'm kinda mixed on the actual lyrics haha. i think i enjoy them in a slightly ironic cheesy way, which still means i enjoy them!
@@RacingSnails64 "Audi famam illius" was pretty cheesy too but it was Latin so it was a bit cooler.
I look at melee in its entirety and bro I love it all. My brother and I would just spawn poke balls, split pokemon standium in 2 where wed stand on each side and just have poke battles
Even two years after posting, getting caught off guard by Lifelight burns my soul. Hearing your opinion on how it sucks tho, I was more glad about the comedic aspect of the vid. Good job :^)
damn,an almost 40 minute AsumSaus video?This is gonna be fun...
32:39 you know, I'm well aware of how bad Ultimate's input lag is, but yikes.
I’m pretty sure that was with higher levels of lag, not the 12 frames mentioned on screen
@@Edgeperor nah offline ultimate still has more input lag than melee netplay with a good connection (to be fair part of the point is that melee netplay with a good connection has the same input lag as melee offline)
sahib763
He’s referring to the actual clip being played of the Snake player shielding while the 12 frame online input lag is being mentioned, and in the context of that clip that is definitely more than 12 frames lmfao. Probably some dude with a shitty connection on the other end.
But yeah, melee netplay is actually ridiculously optimized. What a crazy community.
Ironic how while not wanting to make a competitive game, Sakuri made one of the greatest competitive fighting games of all time.
Also keep in mind that it was rushed too, only had like a year of development and still ended up being that good
@@uptightpanic7058 rushed? i think (with sakurai casual mentality) if the game had more development, things like wawedash ecc never existed
@@valentds Characters were completely screwed too.
@@valentds Both wavedashing and L-canceling were known by the developers and were intentionally left in the game, because they added to the game, making it more fluid and dynamic. Nobody had any idea it would become as optimized as it has.
Paradigm Shift L-Cancelling was never a glitch. It was in 64 and was actually nerfed pretty heavily in Melee (Melee only halfs landing lag while 64 flat out skips it and goes into regular landing). A command that flat out negates ending lag isn’t something that is made by a glitch. It has to be intentionally programmed in. If I can guess, L-Cancelling was probably included as an easter egg. Something cool that they never thought would see much use. Wavedashing on the other hand is an exploit in the engine. It was not left in because it added to the game or made movement better. Sakurai didn’t care about that. They left it in because they didn’t think anybody would notice, let alone actually use it in their gameplay.
You just perfectly articulated how I feel about platforms in Ultimate, and I don't even play Melee. They've always felt more like obstacles than something that actually expands my options.
"haha space animal go fast"
That is the best description I've ever heard
You missed the oportunity to say "prrrrrrr"
In conclusion, Rivals of Aether: Definitive Edition releasing Summer 2020 on PC and Nintendo Switch
In all honesty, can't wait to preorder it
Ew no gross
oh fr? was thinking of getting this game, but glad to hear its going on the switch. hype
RoA definitely stands above Melee in certain aspects. While there are fewer characters, they're all very distinct with no clones, or semi-clones. The game is also very well-balanced. On top of that, it adds the buffer system for wavedashing mentioned in this video. And finally, the Steam workshop is amazing.
@@chasekellow3835 Why?
One funny comparison between melee and ultimate is that even melee’s MENU has better controls and less lag than ultimate’s menu
less lag is good, but the 1 perfect frame is a bullshit
tf are you talking about?
I mean the switch is too weak of hardware to make ultimate great with its current aesthetic
@@shanetobin3609 wut
@@shanetobin3609 so you could run ultimate at full graphics on a gamecube.
Umm..........
I personally think if the game allows you to play it your way, even if you're only touching one game mode, its still an incredible game as a whole
The rest of the game only serves as a bonus and the fact you can get so much out of just one part just goes to show how evergreen the game is
It’s just something you enjoy, not a mechanic that should define the game. I can agree the game would feel really fun with that mechanic, but most games like Melee aren’t surrounded by 1 part of the game.
100% correct. The premise of the entire video is idiotic.
Good video, although in regards to the Faster Melee protion of the video, I have to say it isn't exactly fair to compare that to the online of ultimate, especially since earlier in the video you had stated that "mods can fix it does not invalidate criticism". Faster Melee and Slippi are mods and it would be much more fair to compare it to Yuzu
Mods didnt fix Melee Online, Melee never had online, so the Mod actually added something that wasnt possible in 2001
@@Reshi9984 still falls in the category of "mods will add it" like the custom tracks for Mario kart Wii, DS and 7 online
Don't you think it's pretty hilarious that a few people in a basement made a better online experience than the billion dollar company Nintendo lmao
@@Jeff-uu9vo That has nothing to do with Melee as a game though
Actually a very fair point, why compare it to its least best version of online
I apreciate Melee as something I could never get into. Its got a super high skill celing but its skill floor is also very high. I prefer Ultimate because it is intended to be part competitive fighting game and can have design choices made around that. Mind you I'm saddened that the Melee players may never get a propper follow-up to their game, once which can be designed and built fromnthe ground up to be like competitive Melee and because of it be a better, modernized version.
I appreciate melee as a good game aesthetically. Like Sheik's whole moveset just gives me that good feeling that you get when you listen to a new album and go "damn, every song on here is a jam". Sheik back air? Oh I like that. Sheik dash attack? Hell yeah. Sheik fair? Yes! Sheik down b? Well they can't all be winners.
@@user-et3xn2jm1u down b is the b side of the album
@@user-et3xn2jm1u I would argue that sheik's side b is more useless than her down b
Isn't that why games like Rivals of Aether were made?
@@sunnyskies8412 I mean being able to nerf yourself in real time is a pretty cool ability. Haven't seen it in many other fighting games.
I feel like you undervalued single player content in melee. Events, adventure and classic are all quite engaging as ways to fill out the roster, stage list and trophy collection which are fun goals tp achieve.
I had the most fun unlocking characters in melee out of any game I’ve ever played
Indeed. I like it way more than ultimates single player.
There are people who take target test just as seriously, if not more so, than competitive players do vs mode
Yeah cuz leaving my console on overnight for Mewtwo sounds like loads of fun
Mimiko Ishikawa it actually was. I didn’t have internet then and felt like I had outsmarted the game, I was quite proud of unlocking mewtwo
Watching fox move around in competitive is like watching a fish have a spasm because he’s out of the water
Great video, but I have to address the notion that Ultimate replaced advanced movement tech from Brawl/4 with “nothing”. That’s simply not the case. Ultimate added universal cancellable dashes, into either another dash or, more notably, into attacks. Some characters in 4 like cloud, diddy, and pikachu could move like you can in ultimate, but now every character can. Also the ability to do tilts out of a dash makes macro movement way more flexible than it was in Brawl or 4. Ultimate also gave every character the same jumpsquat frames, which let characters like Bowser and Ganondorf leave the ground just as early as anyone else, greatly improving their movement as well. In the end, all of Ultimate’s changes from Brawl and 4 served to improve the macro movement while limiting micro movement, and while ideally both would be deep (like in melee), for a fighting game like smash I believe that macro movement is significantly more important to the metagame. Again, just wanted to address this part, great video nonetheless!
Ehh, ult sorta just takes things from other smash games and makes them worse. Sure ult has some original ideas like p.c.t’s. But in melee you could already do dash to dash. Ult adds turn around frames to dash dancing, which makes it worse.
Don’t get me wrong ult is a good game. But Idt it gives us enough for what it takes away.
They were already cancellable, ultimate just made it easy.
He is a bit biased because he credits melee imo too much and discredits mostly ultimate because it is the latest game ^^
There is still undoubtedly some very advanced movement options. Instant double jumps and wave bounces are near frame perfect, many characters still have edge cancelable moves, and some characters like ZSS and diddy have movement options simply engrained in their kits. Ya, it’s nowhere near as many techs as older games, but it’s still enough to make the movement fluid and enjoyable.
@@thunderd7904 idt wave bounces are frame perfect ethier way how would that be a good thing. People don’t care how hard the options are they just want universal options. Not one most characters can do. And characters like zss n diddy are just some characters. Platforms are limited and there are no micro spacing options even with these few characters.
"Lifelight bad" is one of the hottest takes I've heard in a while
It's one of those "songs that shouldn't have lyrics"
instrumental version is fine but the lyrical version makes me want to cut off my ears
I didn't mind it at first but now I hate it
This is the first time I have ever seen someone not like Lifelight. I didn’t know people like that actually existed...
I'm not really a fan either
someone in the competitive scene claimed that Melee was a perfect game with no flaws
they lied
I know Saus isn't mentioning Project M (now Project +) cuz it's a mod, and he doesn't wanna risk losing sponsorship, but it really is THE best thing Smash Bros. has to offer. Saus is right in that there was no reason for Sakurai to remove those elements that made Melee competitively deep, cuz the game can be played just fine without them. Casual players wouldn't know the difference. All Smash REALLY needed was a game based on Melee's playstyle with the bigger flaws removed like the dashback issue. That's basically what Project M did. Not only that, PM offers Brawl's expanded single player modes while adding additional in-game features and easter eggs which casual players like. Of course, the roster is also considerably larger than Melee's, and even has Knuckles (who is actually fleshed out, unlike Legacy XP which added Geno, Waluigi, Ridley, Metal Sonic, Mage Ganondorf but were clearly underdeveloped).
Another flaw with Melee Saus didn't mention, you can't do running up-smashes with the C-stick. I know it seems minor, but going from PM to Melee, I can't even express how frustrating it was going against good players and having to spend that extra half second pressing an extra input, which often resulted in missed punishes or conversions.
The game is so entertaining for some people because of the HUGE amount of flaws it has.
nahor88 I think u accidentally ranted to a simple question at 2 am I mean project m is fun
@@nahor88 He probably also doesn't include it because it's not a smash game.... It's a mod... that's all it is and all it will ever be... it would be unfair to compare a mod which can be tweaked anyway a community likes to a developer made game that either does or does not get patched over time
I agree ENTIRELY about World of Light's theme song. UGH. Those lyrics are worse than none.
No one loves the entire world, but there are very small parts of it that make us cry tears of happiness.
That’s beautiful mang
Honestly, I feel like grinding times in break the target is fun enough to be its own game and legitimize melee as a good game holistically, but I guess that also requires movement mastery.
Agreed! That's why an entire spin-off game was made (Break the Targets) which plenty of top BTT players play on the side. It's on Steam, if you want to check it out. Even has melee stages in it as bonus content
"haha space animal go fast"
You did it! You broke competitive melee down to its bare essenials!
The movement and tech if melee is so enticing but I can't really sit down and learn how to work around it's lack of buffer. That's why I'm so unbelievably glad that p+ is so fantastic. P+ is by far my favorite smash game due to the movement, balance, freedom and all the great extras from brawl.
You spoke earlier about not talking about mods, but your discussion about online talks about a mod.
Its not a mod, its just melee with netcode
@@kookoo275 That's a mod, it wasn't in the the base game therefore it's a mod
@@johnhood-morris1444 lol but the game hasn't changed at all? I'd say its a third party feature rather than a mod
@@johnhood-morris1444 It don't change anything on the game, it is just a better regular match.
Adding online to any game is a massive difference and can really change your opinion on it.
I think it's odd that you bring up netplay when comparing online Smash, when netplay isn't a feature in the actual game. How good netplay is shouldn't affect your judgment on the quality of melee.
He specifically said he was reviewing melee as it stands in 2020, not melee as it was released. If he were only reviewing melee as it was at release then it would undoubtedly be a game worth playing because the only other smash to play would be 64, which melee was a straight upgrade from. Get Rekt.
@@timhorton8085 melee in 2022 is the exact same as it was in 2002, this is a dumb argument
@@timhorton8085 then isn’t what he said about ucf not true
@@timhorton8085 it is strange for him to not have any regards to his previous "mods will fix it argument". but that is the way people play the game these days. he should've just acknowledged it and factored it into his "rating" with an asterisk at the end tbh.
"melee doesnt even have online at all, but if you use a netplay mod it has online play miles better than ultimates shitty online"
WHY DOES THIS BLOW MY MIND SO MUCH
THIS IS LIKE THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FOR MELEE AND I LOVE IT
If you enjoy a game so much that it’s your most played game, then it’s one of your favorites. In my opinion it doesn’t matter if it’s good or not if you can enjoy that small portion of the game regardless of the game’s status as a pretty shitty game.
Yeah. Such a weird metric in this video. I never play parts of a game I don't enjoy, why would I?
@@MrCocktaiIUnfortunately in Melee you have to do all the shitty single player modes, events, and target practice to unlock the characters the fastest and it's the only way to get 3 of the tournament stages. Sucks having to go through all the horseshit just to get the memory setup for competitive play.
10:39 Ah, so that's why I just stick with Ultimate. Something felt seriously off about the turning in Melee, and I couldn't really find an explanation for this, but thanks for clearing this up.
almost everything talked about in part 1 and part 3 of this video is why more people should try out rivals of aether. actual dash dancing, wave dashing, wave landing, dacus, moon walking, and more that are actually part of the game and not just happenstance because of how it was programmed. paired with a small but adequate buffer, it makes these movement options more accessible while still requiring practice to use correctly and in the right situations.
That game feels way too floaty
+1
@@MrPoke Did we play the same game? Rivals, floaty? Are you sure you're not thinking of Brawlhalla or even Slap City, which I would say very much feels floaty by comparison. To me, Rivals feels almost identical to Melee/P+. High fallspeed characters like maypul, zetter, etc feel weighty and fall fast, at a comparable speed to melee(Especially when implementing fastfalls). Comparitively, Wrastor, Absa, etc feel 'floaty' but in exactly the same way Samus, Puff, or Peach feels. In fact, these characters feel a lot better to me in Rivals compared to "real" smash installments because their fast fall speeds tend to be faster than their Smash counterparts, meaning their comboing is more fluid than most floaties in smash games.
Is melee a good game? Yes
Is melee a well made game? No
I think this is the most accurate take I've seen yet.
this is a perfect explanation
Is melee accidentally perfect? **YES**
@@queuedjar4578 x30
this is the best way to summarize Melee
I'd argue that the "casual players won't notice it" point is heavily incorrect. In older days like around Melee or Brawl, probably, but considering the fact that most people play 4 and Ultimate online, if somethings there, the casual players are going to notice it. A similar situation would be something like the competitive CoD community. Look fun in tournaments, sounds fine, but those competitive players sometimes also play casually, so some poor schmuck on the opposite team now has to play against someone that good. Same thing for Smash. If there's fast movement and tech out the ass of Ultimate, players online who play casually aren't going to be able to play all that often, because the more competitive part of the community will stomp them repeatedly. Its not that he wanted to take away movement options for good players, its that he wanted to even the playing field for those who don't have the time or don't care to be able to do so much of the more complex stuff. The people who, like you mentioned earlier in the video, don't want to spend lots of time practicing.
Exactly.
"The most fun game I've ever played" I agree, it's easily the most fun. Melee simply doesn't get boring, you only stop because you physically get tired 😅.
more like physically in pain
Wow I thought it would be 40 minutes of someone making excuses for their favorite game, but instead I got to understand both sides of the argument.
I feel like people either love the game or hate it, the portion that can come to an agreement on these concepts must be small cause I never see it.
I get sick and tired of when people over exaggerate about how good or bad the game is. It's either "MELEE IS THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME" or "MELEE IS A STUPID SHITTY GAME BECAUSE WAVECHEAT AND FUN CANCEL"
id say its an amazing game, but not the best one
Great video, but I wanted to say that ultimate actually has a really big emphasis on punish game also. Characters have big damage combos but more importantly keeping people in disadvantage using ledgetrapping, juggling and corner pressure are really important in ult as its really hard to reset neutral
Really the main issue is the depth of punish game. If you know Luigi's 3 combos, you know Luigi's punish game. If you learn a peach combo in melee, you have learned specifically how to combo (character) on (stage) at (percent) with specific DI. This allows for a punish game that can be improved further by players who have been at the top for years while if you learn diddy's infinite, congratulations, you know what to do if you hit the setup.
@@sunday1294 Ultimate's depth of punish game isn't in the combos, it's in the ledge trapping, which takes a ton of practice and character knowledge to get good at, and is more freeform with a ton of mindgames.
@@auroraourania7161 id say ultimate edge guarding is alot more free form because of how much more lenient recovery is. Ledge trapping however doesnt really seem that much different, besides the fact that in melee you have to react to ledge dash as another ledge option
This was refreshingly honest. You took a complete look at a game you love as a whole and came to an honest conclusion. Big ups my guy!
There was a long period where my friend set our copy of smash to only do Pokefloats and Rainbow cruise if we selected random. Those were the best years because I was playing Mewtwo a lot at the time.
This video was overall great. It's a small detail, but I liked the implementation of the Piku Niku music, and the Pikmin music near the end.
It seems like no matter where I go, I can never escape "Beneath The Mask"
I'm not gonna complain tho... It's a good ass tune.
to your point at 27:00, as a casual smash player i can enjoy watching melee but I've never been more frustrated playing a game of smash then when playing against my friend who regularly practices melee mechanics like L-cancelling, dash-dances / dash cancelling into up smash on fox, and all the other juicy options. it's beyond frustrating to deal 11% over the course of being 4 stocked, and not an experience I'd recommend to anyone.
Even though I'm a primarily Ultimate player, I love watching Melee and I'm forever grateful for the scene it created. This video is an embodiment of why Melee is great. Flawed? Yes? Good game? Heck yes.
Great vid, keep up the good work.
smash community needs more people like you
When the pikuniku music started I had to go back to hear what you said because I was boppin' to it
This is by far the best review and analysis I've ever heard for Melee and Ultimate especially from an indepth movement perspective!
But, just because you enjoy the competitive aspect of Melee, which you say is a "small" aspect of the game, doesn't mean it can't still be one of your favorite games of all time. Like you said, most others and yourself don't care much for smash's single player content. Then it essentially just leaves playing the game multiplayer wise, casually and competitively. Comepetitive Melee may be just one portion of which that game has to offer, but it is what Melee has made itself out to be for the past nearly 19 years. It is the reason it is still a popular game today. You don't have to undervalue your love for the game, just because you deem your favorite game aspect (and most signigicant part) to be "small", which in it's community is large!
TLDR: Basically, I'm saying objectivity shouldn't influelnce what makes and doesn't make your favorite games of all time. If you love just a "small" portion of it that much, I think it can cross into favorite game of all time material. Maybe that is just me.
I would much prefer simplicity over being obtuse. Melee's design flaws, oversights and just age lend it to have a very high skill ceiling which makes it fairly interesting from a high level competitive setting. But melee only excels at that. Truly great games with competitive and casual scenes excel at both. Team Fortress 2 has a pretty intense skill cap but it also has a very accessible entry level. Melee for a lot of people will feel like it is just pissing on their time, you got to practice hundreds of hours to get to a point where you start 'having fun' compared to say Ultimate where you have fun while getting better. It was a fun game for its' time but better games have since come out and Melee is one of those games where time has just obliterated. Plus Ultimate has King K. Rool and you can't have a good game without King K. Rool.
k rool sucks
you are exaggerating a lot about how hard it is and the amount of practice involved. im not technical at all but there are a lot of high and mid tiers that are pretty easy to pick up and that i play regularly with my friends. also idk how to tell you this but both melee and tf2 have higher skill floors, its just that both have easy chars. you obv are gonna be able to be good at somebody like heavy a lot faster than like axtinguisher pyro or some shit. i think the reason that you have this idea that ult and tf2 are low skill floor is that the people in the online are way worse than the people on melee unranked. that being said, shit like the buffer being ass and some characters being very hard to pick up does ring true sometimes, and if you want a more accessible "melee" like game you should try rivals of aether, its very technically forgiving, and i played it for a while before i picked up melee.
I prefer Ultimate over Melee, but your profile pic causes your comment to reek of bias at the end there
@@tylerironside8109 of course there is bias there is no avoiding bias in an opinion it is the nature of the beast...
its not really true at all that you need to learn any advanced techniques to enjoy melee, it was the best selling gamecube game by a good margin so clearly a ton of people unfamiliar with even the existence of these mechanics still love the game. going out on a limb here and assuming you havent actually played melee :P