It's worse in Brawl than in Melee.
This is because in Melee, the balance between offense, defense, and grab was better. In Brawl, it revolves more heavily around defense, so basically the game comes more down to whoever can do most out of shield, and whoever has better options for dealing with other shields. In Melee the shield was less safe to use because it was laggier and harder to powershield. This is not the case in Brawl of course.
As far as I'm concerned, this is why Metaknight is THE best character in the game. Almost all of his attacks are safe on block, he has at least two out of shield options that kill, and he is very good at pressuring the shield. Also he doesn't get gimped. IMO, having good recovery is much more important than being heavy.
In case you are curious, I think SSB64 is weighted on the attack because combos are extremely prevalent in this game. Grabs are also lame in SSB64, but they don't combo much (but they can kill). And the shield and dodge system is more primitive. 64 is also more unbalanced than Melee btw.
On the other hand, you could lightshield in Melee as well, where the additional pushback often made it impossible to keep up pressure (similar to Guilty Gear's FD, except reversed).
64: 4 (Kirby, Pika, Ness, Fox) out of 12 characters are good enough to not have substantial disadvantages. 2 more (Falcon, Puff) able to perhaps follow suit.
Melee: 5 (Fox, Falco, Peach, Sheik, Marth) out of 25 characters are good enough to not have substantial disadvantages. 2 more (Falcon, Samus) able to perhaps follow suit.
Yes, 64 got less to balance, but it still got nearly the same amount of tournament-availible characters. Unlike Melee, it's not a poster boy of horrible balance.
I play 64 competitively and this is simply not true. 64 is actually quite well balanced, as it is still very possible to win with a low tier character, unlike in SSBM. When I play people near my skill level, I find that I still have pretty much the same chances of winning regardless of the characters I choose and their tier placement.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
The problem with the balance in melee was that the game seemed to have marth, and the 3-4 characters that had a relatively good match up against marth.
the 64 version did not have this same one character to beat sort of identity, and I think thats a good thing. What we can do now is hope the neither mk nor snake turn out to create this same situation for brawl. No one wants to go to a tournament that is mostly one character, and play against nothing but him all afternoon, as was getting to be the issue with melee.
I don't know why such an emphasis is put tiers in fighting games. Ok in some games there is clearly better characters, mostly because of how good the secret ones are or because there is actual stats. Its all about understanding each of the characters strenghts and weaknesses, because of tiers in melee, pretty much all the advanced strats became developed for Fox and Falco.
Most stages in Brawl get banned because of King Dedede and his chaingrab against almost the entire cast of characters which is infinite against walls and on stages that allow you to walk to the blastzone.
However you can counterpick G&W against him and screw him over. =)
Oh yeah? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuuQCqvp_0s
You have more and better advanced commands in Melee btw, and you have a better defensive system to counter against offense.
You don't have good defense in 64 to stop yourself from getting comboed to death, so basically in 64 it comes down to whoever has the most reliable and powerful combos, and this can be graded accurately since mobility is fairly simple in 64.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
A2ZOMG - I'm talking in the context of Melee. Brawl has banned stages for different reasons. It's interesting though: by banning walk off stages, Dedede went from killing machine to... wherever on the tier list he is now. Probably not very high.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Oh I see. Yeah, that makes sense. Also stages like Yoshi's Story and Hyrule were banned due to laser camping from both Falco and Fox if I recall. But funny, Fox actually STILL has an infinite against walls, but it's easier to perform.
And actually DDD is still amazing without his 0 to death chaingrab on certain stages. His chaingrab is a very good way to racking up damage especially at higher percents if you put in grab attacks in between. His recovery and projectiles are also quite good. Add his good range, other throws that can kill, and his strong aerials, he's very solid.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Yay, I'm lagging behind, but who cares.
Just got Brawl, done SSE on normal difficulty 100% and I'm struggling to find stuff I actually WANT to do in the challenges. Is there anything particularly fun and unusual I can try in singleplayer? (my internet is lacking and my best gaming friend is 100 miles away so no co-op for me)
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
There's about 130 different ways to play HRC and BtT if that's your thing. Check http://allisbrawl.com for info about them.
Otherwise, no, not really.
Also, Brawl is a horrible game. This is based on playing against Ice Climbers. Getting grabbed means one stock less, and without L-cancel and all that fancypants stuff, it's much harder not to get grabbed. Also, they can turn around within the infinite now. Goddamnit, Sakurai.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Broken characters aside, they introduced too many "random" occurrences that impact the game. tripping, and most of the new maps are unpredictable, and diminishes the skill element. (as luck has a bigger factor)
It seems like they wanted this game to fall in line with the mario party games, by adding enough random shit so that anyone can win, even people who suck.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
Even with the randomness, my room mate and I have a very hard time losing to most people. We even play 2v2 handicap matches against level 9 CPU and still win a great portion of the matches.
Sakurai has made several explicit statements about "both players should feel like the winner" and that "everyone should be able to play and win", so, yeah, he has actually gone out of his way to make downright SURE that everyone can win by sheer luck.
Doesn't prove much. Even with the AI being much better then in Melee, it's still horrible.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
I didn't realize they had stated it explicitly, but it comes as no surprise.
I tend to be competitive, and as much fun as brawl was for a few weeks there, its just not what i want in a game.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Part of what this game suffered from is over-hyping. Before release, fans hyped this sucker way up, more than I had ever seen, expecting it to be the end-all, be-all game. Then the anticipated release came out!
And it turned out to be little more than an expansion of the Smash formula which has been around for a decade now.
Obviously this didn't meet the expectations that various fans had put in place. For about a month, you could hear people whining, "This game sucks because Ridley isn't a playable character! A pox on you, Sakurai! How could you let us down like that?" Seriously. It got hyped up so much that wishlists somehow became features it was going to have, not what it should have.
Of course, some disappointments are legitimate. Tripping is stupid, it items aren't as fun (I'm looking at you, Pokéball), many of the new stages are over-the-top, the online is an absolute mess, and the franchise itself is becoming more and more like The Nintendo History Channel than an opportunity to just rumble with some friends as Nintendo characters.
But, at the end of the day, it's still a Smash game, nothing more, nothing less. As long as I can have a fun time with some friends, it's cool.
Just don't act like a pompous jerk when we're playing, okay? :(
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Since Brawl has finally been released in Europe I thought I'd give some comments on it.
-No L-Cancels or wavedashes :( and you cannot airdodge in a direction. That makes Fox weaker, since he can't wavedash his opponents to death.
-The new HrC is somewhat cool actually. However you cannot spam BD-combos as easily as in Melee now.
-Easy in Brawl is harder than in Melee, however the highest difficulty isn't as hard as in Melee (you hope you get my point :P)
-Fighting Tabuu on intense = FUN. I always do it when I am bored.
-Snake and Sonic fit amazingly well in Smash Bros.
-Meta Knight is like I hoped him to be.
-The Final Smash feature is cool, but some FS' just suck (eg. Peach, Luigi).
-Marth was getting nerved.
All in all, it is what I expected. It's like SSBM with much more content.
I really hate how they removed the catchy theme from Melee with silence, though. Waiting those minutes for the bag to finish flying was better with a catchy theme in the background.
What? The drug zone is awesome! Free KO on anyone who gets stuck within it, more or less.
Do you mean "nerfed", as in getting worse? Because in that case, can't agree with you. He's better then in Melee, it's just that Snake's even worse.