Reality

I don't really consider the dungeons to be the defining feature of Gaiden/SoV, but I mean.. Gaiden: you could probbably loosely call Pool of Radiance (and the games descended from it) hybirds of SRPG combat and dungeon crawling... Albeit all of them have more mechanics not only than a game like Gaiden but also compared to Fates or Radiant Dawn. Genealogy's big maps aren't it's biggest inherent problem. I'm not in the mood to go through my post history. An SRPG with big maps can be okay if the way through them features events and local strategies along the way .. In Genealogy, you are mostly encouraged to simply avoid all non-flat terrain for convenience. This contrasts both the forests/pillars of other FE games, and even the use of terrain in strategy games (you would never fight on road in AW for example). Having the enemy's in formation is also a net negative since it means that splliting them up is pretty much encouraged AGAINST which is a big contrast to other SRPGs (Disgea, Front Mission, FFT, the other Fire Emblems). The small positive of making them feel more like an organized army really isn't worth sacrificing core design. Finally the game has two types of "empty turn" the former, where you and the enemy burn a turn movig toward each other isn't actually that bad. The latter kind of empty turn though, is a problem. This is the one where you do see unintended comat and it's non-lethal to your units. This is especially absurd when looking at Genalogy's "frail" classes, such as clerics/swordmasters, who can fight physical enemies (or at weapon triandlge disadvantage) multiple turns in a row without dying. I think having some "single turns" not matter is pretty anemic to a game that markets itself as a stragety RPG. Mistakes (letting WTD or 2 range locked units get attacked especially from 2-3 slots in a single turn) can almost always be corrected by walking the damaged unit out (so that it faces 0-1 enemies on the second mistake turn), and most player unit deaths require mistakes over multiple turns. Gen 2 C10 and endgame also has a horrific enemy phase focus, mostly by placing Magic heavy enemy swarms by some of the castles and requiring ONLY a tiny pool of units being allowed to enter their range. It's a clear case of "difficulty" that isn't created by enemy AI. I can imagine a good SRPG with big maps. But I can't imagine a FE4-like SRPG with good maps.

I didn't really include SoV and Heroes in thinking about the "current state" so I guess I'll touch on them. SoV is a miracle of presentation. Gameplaywise it's passable enough (mostly due to at least playing quickly), but is mostly a waste of potential and really, a contender for most embarrasing map design in post 2008 FE. It can be used to illustrate the mechanics / story / levels "three pillar" gameplay model. However, I think the full potential of SoV is a lot lower than other games that intentionally shun 1 (or even 2) pillars, such as PlaneScape: Torment and Jagged Alliance. SoV mechanics with its skill/magic/arrow range would be better on maps specifically designed to accomodate it (or even on GBA maps) but it would still be a pretty light RPG. Heroes - Gameplaywise, Fire Emblem Heroes is sometimes really brilliant... More strategy is packed into it's lunatic and infernal maps than in the hardest difficulties of most of the main series games. This is increasingly applicable even to it's Hard mode maps. I find it especially remarkable that IS has responded to the type of units/strategies players favor to continue to create challenges. When looking at SA 1 compared to what we have today - we can see the use of Skill-less enemies with strictly high stats on the one hand contrasted with far more complex design. Heroes does have the perenial RPG problem where it's Player V Event content can decay a bit for people who have succesfully built exceptionally strong units and can simply beat down new content on its first day, but this is nothing that the main games (with postgame maps) can't really be said to be free from. In addition most people are decently below that point, and do actually need to put in a lot elbow grease into new content... Granted the allowance for difficulty is due to the non-permadeath nature of Heroes, but I think at least the kind of design in its Hard mode maps should definately spill over into a new main series games. The map design is especially nice considering that the Developers can't narrow down into knowing the players will always use a small pool of 25~ units (as with a main game. The Late-Game maps of most Fire Emblems tend to be a really mixed bag, espeically in the 4 games with Re-classing. I think it's a positive reversal of the trend of IS not being able to account for the range of player compositions. I think a lot of why I prefer Fates and Heroes over most of the main series games is that they strike a much better balance between rewarding player phase strategies and enemy phase strategies. Many of main series games of course, feature far more enemy phase combat than player phase combat, sometimes to an absurd degree. In Heroes this is possile with EG, a steady breath or Dragon Team, but you can't make a clear cut judgement that those are strictly better than a player phase team (eg brave/firebow/Desperation stuff). In the regular games, the best EP units are more or less also the best PP units, which can lead to problematic centralization of charathers and (but this is less talked about) the variety of positonal strategies used in the game. Obviously a few games have made serious attempts* at making Player Phase combat equally important , but I don't think that they have done so quite as naturally as Fates and Heroes have for the most part. *(FE6 gives enemies steel weapons so that they will do some damage and die so that another unit can take their slot, meaning that it encourages a strong but not too strong appraoch to chokepoints- FE11-12 simply steroids the enemies to the point where you'd better not even think about playing the game like it was Blazing Sword)

I like that Fire Emblem is shedding a little bit of its conservatism. I wish they would shed more of it though.

I don't really like E3 tournaments (the smash 4 or the Pokken Tournmanent one) ... I would l rather see competetive game for new games after some semblence of a meta-game has developed, as I find that figuring out things as people go along to not really feel competetive to me... I feel like using this kind of pre-release strategy taps into blind/let's play appeal, which is unnecssary for helping the game sell well or representing it. Which is why I also think that certain games should have waited a year to get their first appearance at certain EVOs I think a playable demo and presentation at E3 would just work better for me fhan a nonsensical tournament.

Favorite Moment - Jagen being the one to snap and call out Lang for his horrible morals in Mystery/New Mystery. Worst Moment - Lewyn Coming back from the dead in Geanology of The Holy War.

I read the book... and this kind of rumor makes no sense. The main conceit of Ready Player One was that the virtual reality was made up of things from 1980 culture,. I think the main video games featured in the novel IIRC were the text adventure Zork, Pac-man, The Tempest and Ultima 1. The virtual reality technology in the novel DOES support modern games (from its 2011 perspective) but relatively few people (in-universe) played them, because essentially the person who made the virtual reailty made all the main hub worlds etc into his 1980-85 playground (and that's where the competetion and scanvenger hunts that drive the novel take place) The novel's breadth of pop culture expanded slightly further forward in time for anime/live action shows, but the range of video games it had a serious focus on was quite specific. I have heard that some more modern things are being put in (eg overwatch), but I think those are going to be few and far between, not to mention being only able to get cameo roles, since all the videogames that affect the plot should already be set in stone. I think that the only Nintendo charathers to have any business in this movie are the ones with Arcade Roots, since the kind of period approiate games used in the books are even pre-NES. The book almost exclusively used (early)arcade, Apple computer, and things like Atari, to define its setting. Fire Emblem in particular faces the problems of Nintendo licensing (and while Spielberg is quite cabable of putting up money compable to what Disney did for Wreck it Ralph's cameo). There is also the utter inapproiateness of Fire Emblem to the setting. (The Famicom games had a low import history, and given the prefernce for the American home computer market and arcade (eg midway wiliams) hard to justify Fire Emblem over eg, Pool of Radiance / Rebelstar (themselves 2 and 4 years later than the median video game in the book compared to FE1's 6 year too late) Fire Emblem is also problematic as a medivel-fantasy derived series, since Ultima fills that niche heavily in the novel already( novel's final battlefiled, and virtual/avatar identity of the dead proggramer who's will puts the plot into action are direct homages) Yes, I think that the movie adaptation of the book will try to reach a wider appeal, and therefore use more "recognizable" charathers, but I don't think it would go that far.... especially as (in my personal interpretation) the older style games kind of played into the anti-corporate theme of the book relative to things that have mainstream international appeal....

I guess talking about non Switch Games Star Control Origins Ghosts of the Precursors 40 Winks (Cancelled N64 game put on Kickstarter)

Yoshi Metroid Prime 4 Kunio Kun / Super Dodgeball series compilation Wasteland 2 - Director's Edition - I've been holding off since my PC isn't up to the system specs. Not sure if the Switch version will be able to include the original game as a bonus though...

The Puzzle Game master race marches on!

I think the prompt questions were kind of weaker this time around. Some things I disagreed with - Oracle of Ages having good puzzles - Oracle does some smart things with the seed shooter and it's "swapgun" hookshot, It had some room-based puzzles, like the colored floor puzzles, and like Oracle of Seasons, it pushes the feather in ways that other 2-D zelda's don't, since you have to combine it with peasgus at times, do diagnol jumps, etc. However, the good puzzles are undermined by the bad ones in this game. It's the most backtrack heavy zelda. Doing the Islander and the Goron areas back to back is basically torture. The way that some areas are used with the past/present mechanic had similiar problems. Even within the dungeons themselves, you have the spinner/hallway thing (which shows up in 6/8 of the dungeons) that forces you to go all the way around and reset it so you can make it go right twice. Jabu Jabu's Belly is probbably one of the worst dungeons in the series since changing the water level and going all the way back to the top floors multiple times really didn't work out well in 2D. Oracle of Seasons has all of the good things that Ages did, without having as much a problem with backtracking. The rod of seasons had a much shorter cutscene (and never got overused to the point of using it once every 2 screens like entering zora village/symmetry cliffs in Ages did). Seasons had it's own set of good items, including the seed shooter (again) the magnet gloves and the roc's cape. It keeps the higher difficulty and need for diagnol jumping that Ages have (compared to 2D games like Link to Past /Link's awakening) I feel that overall it is definately the stronger game, mostly due to not wasting your time nearly as much (although the subrosa sequences share problems with oracle of ages). Twilight Princess's Zelda - I definately don't think she's one of the absolute best zeldas like spirit tracks/skyward sword/wind waker, but I do think that she's definately at least medium quality. Most of her strength or lack of strength as a charather comes from how people interpret she healed Midna... If you just think it was magic (as you seem to in the conversation), then yeah, she's kind of passive in TP. However, most people think that Zelda has a more extreme role in that cutscene and that she actually gives Midna the triforce of Wisdom. This is mostly backed up by Midna flinching away from the Master Sword when Link first gets it and then realizing that it's light won't burn her. etc. I also appreciate that Zelda wears a black moruning shroud, since while she's strong charather in other game's she doesn't usually do much with her role of being the kingdom's princess. Honestly you could ust make her a non-royal "priestess of light" in a game like Ocarina without changing the story, while in Twiligtht Princess her political status is a little more important.

I liked this game, although I kind of feel like it was a little wonky with some gameplay stuff. Mostly things like the interaction between Armor damage and Health Damage, and using Advance Wars esque attack formulas - eg your damage scales with your health so only full health units do full damage.

Starmie will do for now.

I mean, I think remakes are unhealthy compared to new games, so I would say none of them as a short answer. If we take a case by case look- Arachena : There is a case for Marth's vitality tying in with FE's brand recognition, but personally I believe this aspect of marketing to be over-valued, especially in the wake of FE Warriors and FE Heroes, which cannot really be said to benefit Marth more than other charathers included in them. However, I personally prefer these games kept short, and free of having its villians "psychologized" or for its story and charethercs expanded, because I enjoy that it feels like an earnestly presented saga in the old heroic mode. I like that it is free of self-reflective and deconstructive elements, and I feel that a remake, even if it had the overrt intention of preserving the original's tone, could not create this same impression. Go argue with Ian Dawe about re-constructionism as a literary movement. This is not because of a lack of faith in the current IS's writing team or anythig, but I feel it is kind of intristic in the very nature of remakes in and of themselves. Judgral: I think that without the creative vision of the original writing team, a Judgral remake would be somewhat hollow, even if we sidestep the people who want its gameplay intact versus those who want it modernized. Elibe: I think people have hyped (FE6) a lot based on speculation due to that one twitter post, but I really do not think that the team really has as personal a conncetion to this game as many of the others. Additionally it is very hard for me to envision much of what remakes of these would do. I mean I can see fixes to FE7's normal mode being too easy, thrones, gaiden chapters being slightly annoying, etc, but these do not seem like big enough additions to justify a remake, since they are more along the lines of balance tweaks. FE6 is a much easier game to suggest chapter by chapter gameplay improvements and a story overhaul, but it has it's own problems. . Even in a remade form, I feel that FE6's bloated cast size would be difficult to manage. An SoV-esque approach to charatherization would justify less Support converstaions even than in the original game, for example. It would be nice to have the game's setting finally harmonize with FE7 however. FE6 also has the problem that Path of Radiance and the Judgral games have where the main villian is completely outshined by his subordinates, and his actual story prescence is very low, even in cutscenes. How many people even know who Jahn is? And many people asking for remakes would like for the problem to be even worse... Think about how people call for Zephiel / Reinhardt story expansions comapared to the nominal big villians. Especially considering that the latter is part of a Freege sub-arc that distracts from Leif's focus on Lenster and Ledrick (a narrative already competing for screentime with the Loptyr cult's regional leader and FE4 references). I think that the inevitably of a game like FE6 commiting even further into "completely seperate non-overlapping arcs" is a major reason for it to remain passed over. Sacred Stones: One thing I feel strange about FE2 geting a remake in SoV, is that the game was shorter than normal by FE standards, so it would be strange to remake another shorter than average game. If the output of the company took the form of another lightweight game (after the presumably heavy-weight FE Switch), I feel that it would make the entire (Echoes brand) feel like a "skippable" experience compared to new bi-annual main series games. I feel that it would benefit the entire Echoes (remake line) to have their next offering be a "meaty" game for this reason. Telius: PoR for me is somewhat disapointing gameplaywise, since it is kind of SS-like in difficulty ( in addition to the animations being slow) and while there are a few variety maps like (priest map, desert map, cliff map, bridge map) the other 19~ maps in the game feel fairly similiar in their objective variety and those 6 "variety" maps include a few that are more annoying or forgettable rather than memorable.. I feel like it could stand a remake, and like arachnea, it has a weak marketing excuse to do so in the form of Ike's bing a good canidate to promote brand recognition, again due to Smash and Heroes's proclaiming him the strongest of all Lords. Radiant Dawn cannot be remade because it's would be like doing a re-run of a tb show's second season and does not invite new comers to pick up the story from the middle point alongside veterns.. Awakening: Fates:

It's true that Nolan's strengh is bad, but his main (DB) advantage is his bulk. More importantly, you can partly fix it after promotion, since Warrior gets bows as a secondary weapon, and from there you can use the crossbow to deal fixed damage. Obviously, the Crossbow itself doesn't have the damage to scale to endgame, but it's enough to make him useful for considerably longer than just what his own Strength does. I wouldn't compare him to some of the Arachnea axe users. Also echoing that Telius Axes are fine, even if Nolan isn't one of the people who will be using them. They are kind of hoarded by Haar, Jill, and the Axe Paladins, but still. They have more HT and less weight almost across the board compared to the GBA games, and RD's are even further buffed from POR. I feel like the RD crew can do better without forging than the POR axe users, but even without that, I feel like Axes are easily the best second weapon to take upon promotion for all the POR cavaliers, and with it hand axes completely rickroll that game (to a far greater extent than forged javelins do). In RD you don't get nearly as much money, so the forge isn't quite as broken, but it's still an option. I consider Nolan a good unit for much the same reason FE11 H5 Jagen is a good unit. He's there to help make the early game consistent, not to hang around and break the game

I think the tutorial tells you that the trainee charathers can promote(the first time only) without needing an item. The world map works similiarly to Awakening, the main special features are that any map that originally had an armory in it allows you to buy its items directly from the world map after it has been cleared. Enemies can appear on the world map, but the game is set up so that the next chapter is always 1 space away, so it's even less of an issue than in awakening. You can also 100% flee from any random battle though a menu command on turn 1. Finally, the game has an armory in the Preparations menu so if you lock yourself into a save with very bad weapon durability, you always have a source of E-rank weapons available. This even works on multi-part chapters (the tower of valni and lagdou ruins). These are the only mechanics that are really unique to Sacred Stones over the other games. If you play on Hard first- Sacred Stones does like to hide one horseslayer/halberd unit in the back of its clumps of 5 steel sword / steel axe units, so don't assume that because your unit can fight 1 of the guys with almost no damage, don't assume you can take them all without checking. Fog of War maps tend to use flying units in this game, you'll probbably want to either keep your big attackers VERY seperate from your vulnerable units to distract them or ele to be aggresive with the torch item. Resistance is a dump stat for most of the game, but for the last 5 or so maps it becomes very important. Remember, "lategame" means chapter 16-Final because SS only has 21 chapters. A lot of units that are super good at the early and middle game have to be used a lot more carefully at this point. Most enemies with Siege magic or Status staves will use their full walking movement AND their full staff range, so they cover a larger area than some other games. Ballistas don't have too much might, and can be tanked through their full durability with a wide array of units. Siege Magic on the other hand should never ever be taken for granted. It has both high might and high accuracy on Hard mode. Both human mages and monter mages can have it, although the latter is more common. I think playing Sacred Stones on Hard first is better than playing it on Normal, because I don't like being able to walk up into the enemies and wait turn at them to death. Granted I think that Blazing Sword and Path of Radiance Normal mode have the same problem.

I thought about jumping on the coloseum hype train, but I can't really decide which I like best out of the normal battle, coloseum semifinal, and cipher peon. So I'll go with the Pokemon Stadium Semifinal themes. It's just so satisfing to get to the second music change in all the tournaments. The finals for me aren't quite as impressive, mostly because I kind of feel like battle 4-6 is the serious hump in most of R2's tournaments. Trainer 6 Petit and Trainer 5 Pika are way more random and inconsistent than the boss for example. It's a huge relief for me to finally get through to the new music. I'd probbaby take the Prime Cup semifinal as my favorite of them because you can realistically get to it multiple times in your life as it stands out due to not being a remix of normal RBY battle music. I think it's based on one of the route themes instead, but it works surprisingly well as a battle theme, and is probbably one of the only (non-petit) battle themes that are slightly calm instead of super intense.

I like a good mix of proper stages to fight on andsilly stages to mess around with. I prefer minigame/moving stages for this over "super massive stages", because the way camera zooms out in Brawl/Smash 4 makes a stage a like Great Cave Offensive or Paulenta's Temple completely unbearable. I think Melee's camera made it's Temple stage and the classic Star Fox stage a lot more enjoyable, but the former is... not a good stage. I can't remember if the subspace emmisary and melee's event battles had any really interesting non-standard stages in them. Past stages to get in

I voted Roy>Robin>Corrin. Roy is still benefiting from people's obsession with Novelty. Much like Mother 3 people rave over him because the inaccesibility of his game makes them inflate what they think about him. And so his fanbase extends obscenely beyond the amount of people actually willing to play his game. Of course within the FE community he has fans as well, but also people who think his game is firmly in FE's dark age mechanic and map design wise, not to mention occasional complaints that it has a slightly derivative plot and a cast overall less memorable than the games around it (most notably FE7 and his own father outshining him as a charather while having the same visual design). I have a lot of personal distaste for the means by which Roy attracted his large following, but if you ask me to be honest, the fact that following is in place will help him return. Nintendo won't want to make people feel like it's taking a charather that the fans "earned" through the DLC voting. Robin will probbably return because 3DS sales, etc. I personally don't like their moveset the least of all FE charathers, but their visibility extends to both his in-game personality and firsthand experience with Robin's game, even for a large spread of the casual audience (despite being a blank slate in theory). He benefits from the most recent FEH banner, and its worth pointing out that for new users, he has a presence in the pre-download screens, while Fates is represented by Takumi/Camilla instead of Corrin. I think it's also beneficial that the promotional material doesn't divide the Robin's depending on the game (female nohr / male hoshido). I hate to place Smash!Corrin the lowest, because lot of thought went into his moveset and I love how many different thigns he can do out of his side B. People talk about robin being a unique charather, but IMO he's unique in a bad way. having an incentive to space is good fighting charather design, but he's in the unhealthy breed of projectile charther (not neccesarily weak, although most of the charathers with a decent approach can bully him). Corrin as mentioned has his male/female variants tied to the different Fates games, which slightly reduces his visibility, and while I perosnally like the charather design the fact that his charather design is just as much a showcase of technology advancements (no feet awakening) as part of his actual visual is a minus. At least dragon form is unique compared to the European dragon type. I think all three charathers have a high chance of returning despite how they compare to each other internally.

Well the Kaga game's bosses and the FE6 dragon didn't have AI to move either, so I don't think so. The Fire Dragon (and the other final boss units) having a movement stat seems to have been for no real purpose

Some of the Snake Codec converastions were funny, but others were kind of dry and forgettable. I feel like the Paulenta's guidance were pretty high quality and an improvement over them when taken as a whole. I think sticking with humor is the best way to make a "guidance" thing memorable, because obviously none of these are serious attempts to help you prepare to counter the charather's movesets and stuff. Kid Icarus charather's seem like they would be more consistently funny than Fire Emblem going into the next game. I mostly hesitate to go with Fire Emblem, because they have a hit and miss record with humor. There are many very funny chrathers in the games (and even stuff like FEH's directs and the manga), but on the other hand, they sometimes run jokes into the ground and I find the acknowledgment of community generated memes to be a mixed bag... If they weren't available, Fire Emblem would probbably only be my 4th choice. I think Splatoon or maybe the Mario&Luigi RPG or the Paper Mario team ( the actual dialouge in Color Splash is often still on par with TYYD) could work pretty well, but the latter two have difficulty in justifing the advice-giver. Starlow and Huey feel like they wouldn't bring the requiste amount of ham and snark, despite the high level of comedey in their franchises, as they partly act as some of the few straigthmen in the games. Other charathers from these games (recent and old) would be better, but their finding a connection between them and whatever charather started the conversations would be harder. I still think a lot of things could work, even if it was as flimsy as TTYD Kammy Koopa giving Bowser advice. I think a major weakness with using a commentator like the Squid Sisters (or fire emblem's Anna) is that they can't really comment on the Inkling directly while they are doign their bit about the enemy charather, while someone like (the KI people) or Kammy Koopa have stuff to say about the person receiving the advice as well. In the case of Kammy>Bowser, this could involve quite a lot, probbably trying to flatter him some times, Bowser claiming he doesn't need help, occasional glimpses that Kammy doesn't actually fully respect bowser, etc. I think a major strength of the Kid Icarus commentary is that Paulenta was pretty often willing to antaognize PIt and clearly had a history with him. No matter what kind of charather is used for the next game's "guidance" I hope that the "help" at least shows a relationship between the commentaor and the player fighter, instead of say just listing off all the TVTropes memes for all the charathers with no effort put into the delivery itself, only the jokes.

I'm kind of reminded of an old thread about smash roster called something like "should smash be a celebration of Nintendo History or gaming generally?" I think most people want to see Smash 5 have all old 3rd party charathers AND several more (usually those important to Nintendo System history, such as Banjo Kazooie or Simon Belmont, although some peple go for charathers whose games have recently gotten Switch ports such as Doomguy and Crash Bandicoot) One of the thing that bothers me about most suggested charather lists, is that Nintendo's franchises really don't have many surprise games or series that are unreprestened really. Let's not start the assist tropy promting to playable excitement again I feel like adding additional representives for the series already in Smash may be a better way to go than to include new and obscure stuff in some ways, but I think it's silly if it goes too far or unleashes too obscure/minor charathers (people from very early games that didn't reapper in sequels, people from spin offs, etc) I think that today, with Nintendo now forwarding a console that can carry ports of most major "cross platform" games, Smash can better justify trying to be a celebration of gaming generally, as Nintendo.has shown that it negotiates with more companies on a regular basis than it has been doing, and because I feel like celebrating Nintendo franchises should be for charathers that are for everyone, rather than obscure trivia charathers (except within their own subset of the Nintendo fanbase, etc). Smash could continue to be a Nintendo celebration first and foremost, but if it does so, I hope that greater effort to avoid this kind of problem is taken than in the last few smash games. Also before I forget, I hate people putting the Murasame Castle charather on their predicted rosters to be "realistic expectation" just due to Sakurai's personal preference in a tweet. While it's true Sakurai's personal prefeence has shown its imppact on the series, I trust him to be able to hold back from such an absurd judgement call. The game in question had no long-lasting legacy (meaning in Japan), and as a zelda 1 clone it has serious problems (being shorter than zelda 1, the way enemies constantly spawn on most screens, etc) despite having later-era NES graphics (although not improved to the extent of Mario 3 or Kirby's Dream Land). It also feels wrong to put a one-off NES charather like this on the roster after Little Mac(despite sequels) and Duck Hunt now represent some of the NES's actual culturally important games. R.O.B. and Ice Climbers shouldn't continue to set a bad precedent although the former at least has higher visibility due to being a peripheal and appearing more aggresively in commercials.

One of the things that I thought both Melee and Brawl did better than Smash 4 was the camera. In smash 4, I always feel like the camera is zoomed out too much, especially in 1v1. I don't think it feels quite right in 4 player matches on most stages either it feels like they use the 8 player camera to me. I kind of hope that Smash for Switch has a camera that stays closer to the action. since it was one of the main non-charather things that bothered me in Smash 4.

Speaking of reworking existing charathers- Zelda: I know having finnicky sweetspots make it all the more satisfying when you do land them, but I don't think that the physics of most Smash game's really work with her (consider who can succesfully follow up if zelda lightning kicks into a shield versus if captain falcon knees). I'm not really sure if she should try to reflect some of the more interesting of Link's items or go magic based, especially since BotW wild zelda doesn't show a strong grasp of magic until the end of the game, unlike OoT and TP zeldas. Whichever path she goes, I hope she becomes a more balanced charather, as all the players who want a heavy duty techinque charather already have plenty of options between peach,greninja,ness etc Gannondorf: While there is a certain sastifaction in the whole "king of disrespect" thing, it's not like watching captain falcon main's isn't fun anymore either, and he could probbably do better than repeat. I see a lot of support for Zelda 1 / LttP Pig Gannon, but I personally a revamped humanoid ganon would be more interesting. Part of me just doesn't want a heavier charather than Bowser again. Paulenta: What I hear the most is that Heaenly Light should be her default special instead of a custom one. With it she's a pretty nice charather, without it, she's hot garbage. King DDD: I think the Smash4 nerfs to Meta Knight worked out really well, since he was still usuable as an offensive charther, but DDD kind of got screwed over both ways. I kind of prefer think that a "heavy-medium" like Donkey Kong is a lot better designed than a charather with many ultra risky attacks, but I think he could strike a balance without reverting to the brawl silliness of heavying superheavyweight tilts and smashes, but lightweight combo friendly bairs and so on. Jigglypuff: I kind of doubt she's going to get a return of her melee knockback scaling. There are other ways to develop Jigglypuff though. Even though her Specials have always been unique, some of her regular moves, have had kirby-like frame data since the first game (only fully decloning because of changes to kirby rather than herself), and really I think she could maybe have her tilts and aerials remade to reflect the reason she was popular enough to justify as a charather in the first place - namely her famous "marker" from the original pokemon anime.

The first thing i thought about when reading the title is that even though every conflict in Fire emblem is presented as being a formal war, wouldn't seom of them be more along the lines of undeclared "police actions"? I mean presumably the euphenaism never aplies because that would assume that the stronger nation got away with it with and continued its politics, but still...

On the one hand, I think that "clone" charathers do have a place in fighting games overall, with Street Fighter and Soul Calibur probbably demonstrating how very small differences between chatethers can have major effects on the "feel" of the charather On the other hand, I'm not really sold on most of the smash bros clones. I think that there is too often a clear cut winner (whether melee or smash 4). In the case of mario/ dr. mario, the clone was even better than the original in one smash game, and then the inferior the next time they both re-appeared In the case of Lucina vs, Marth, I tend to see non-tipper gameplay as a downside because 1: fighting people at your maximum range also keeps yourself safer for spacing reasons. 2: a charather with tipper and non-tipper attacks can take advantage of the reduced knockback of his sour-spotted attacks to combo longer in some situations. I know that Lucina mains have won and placed in many differnt regional events and there are a lot of resources out there on smashboards and other places, but I've always seen her as a bit weaker. In any case, I think that Lucina as a Marth clone would be more interesting with multiple tweaks, akin to Ken or Sakura as a Ryu clone in street fighter. For other charathers (such as dark pit and lucas) I can argue that clone and non clone play fairly diffent from each other even when their main difference is specials rather than normal attacks/aerials. But for these charathers, (again using a street fighter example) I feel like they play less like (street-fighter style) clones, and more like the difference between picking the I and the II ultra combo on the same charather.