It has lots of potential, but imo it should have done a step further and try to be even more different from smash, like using a different way to ko opponents for example.
(I didn't expect this to turn into an essay when i started it)
In the 6 minute tutorial video on the fig page, it mentioned that there are 2 percentages. The first is the normal white one, and the second is the red one. Its similar to how 2v2/3v3 fighters, in the idea that the red one is heal-able with certain actions. That said, i believe knockback is calculated based on the red one, and that heavily impacts how KOs are handled.
That said, i believe changing the KO/Percentage system would only ever hurt any platform fighter, and would be akin to saying that a traditional fighter should change the health bar or that a shooter should change the way opponents are killed. With the exception of PSABR, Platform Fighters are interesting due to a few key differences from Traditional Fighters.
1. Variable Knockback. In Traditional Fighters, doing certain moves will always move the opponent a certain distance. In Platform Fighters, knockback is based on percentage, so it could be different at any point in the game, changing the way combos are handled, if at all.
2. Directional Influence (DI). If you hold the stick in a certain direction while being hit, your character will move in that direction. In non-competitive, its an intuition that can save your character, but in competitive, it also changes how combos are handled.
Those two systems make it so that every hit in a game can lead to a unique result. This works well with (Hell, is literally designed for) the percentage system, because as the number goes up, the knockback increases, and the potential for directional influence does. If you change things, youll lead yourself into the following.
1. Changing the objective while keeping the percentage system. In Splatoon, you still kill people by shooting them, but the objective is different. In this case, Time and Coin mode already exist in Smash, and assuming we aren't removing the systems that make the games interesting, your left with modes like King of the Hill and CTF. I can't think of a decent objective to design around this type of game if the percent system is kept.
2. Change the objective while removing the percentage system. This is where PSABR comes in. PSABR changed the objective to winning by scoring points with specials, and it didn't have percentages or health of any kind, so it also didn't have Variable Knockback, and to my knowledge, Directional Influence. Because of this, combos were like those in traditional fighters, in the idea that they are always consistent/the same. This is problematic, as a big difference between Smash (and games that want to be like it) and PSABR, is that in those games, unless it is literally an infinite, you will rarely sit there without some sort of option to escape. Casual smash is designed so combos aren't stupid, and competitive smash has DI, allowing you to interact with the game while being hit. In PSABR, when Kratos hits you, you sit there and watch. Outside of the excessive salt introduced from losing specials to grabs or outright missing with them, this is what made PSABR unfun for me.
3. Change the Health Portion of the percentage system to something else. With the Percentage system, as the number goes up, so does knockback. Smash also has a Stamina mode, where when you get hit, you health goes down. Due to not using the percentage system, knock back is disabled, but DI still works. While you could remove the stage boundaries and make a game based on this. At the end of the day, you'd end up at what amounts to a Traditional fighter with a different set of movement options (Similar to PSABR, cept with a Health Bar. Fake Edit: This seems to already exist in Jump Ultimate Stars)
There is alot more to what makes Smash fun and unique, as it accounted for everything for its party game format. A notable example is Items, which shortly put, are randomly placed incentives for you to participate. That said, if you look at the competitive side of Smash and decide to make a game like it, you'd be hard pressed to end up at a result other than the KO/percentage system.
The point im trying to make here is this, if you try to make a fighter, history shows that you probably shouldn't change the win condition from a health bar/time out. In the same vein, if you character has a gun and it shoots things, its expected to kill the people on the other side, regardless of the objective. In that same vein, if you are trying to make a game thats fun and in anyway inspired by, or intended to be similar to, Smash, you probably shouldn't deviate from the KO/percentage system.
To address another point commonly seen in "Game Name (Smash Clone)" threads, At this point. what makes them different from Smash? Well, there are two things. The first is that its similar to how most fighters differentiate from each other, and thats through various additional systems or other revisions in the genres gameplay. While it all looks like people punching each and throwing fireballs with different graphics, each game controls and feels differently. This is immediately seen just looking at just the 4 currently available Smash Bros games, and its also why no game will ever be able to achieve the same feel as Melee when played competitively (Ill go into this in the next segment). If you watched the video, this is obvious for Earth Romancer. In Rivals of Aether, there are massive changes to how defensive play and the recovery system work. Icons has something called Gust Shield, but that doesn't seem to change things too much...
Which then leads us to the second thing, the fact that none of these games (to my knowledge) coming out are being designed with the idea of being a party game. This is a very important thing to consider, because if you pull an Icons and literally take Melee Fox and shove him into a game designed around competition, you'll end up with something very far from what Melee Fox was intended to be, and something that still feels, and possibly plays different, from what Melee Fox currently is. As i said before, no game will ever feel like Melee, and that's because alot of what makes Melee what it is would not make sense anywhere else. Mechanics like L-Cancel or Jump Cancel grabs would never make it over to anything else, because at that point you could just design your game around low lag or running jumps being the same as the standing ones. While mechanics like Wavedashing have transitioned, they seen various changes (For example, in rivals, it can be done directly left/right and the input for it is signifcantly easier). And most importantly... Shine/Reflector doesn't reflect. Its because of obvious changes like those and various under the hood changes that these games all feel and play differently from not only the 4 already available Smash games, but the other Platform Fighters available and emerging in the market. And so long as Super Smash Brother's Movesets and Engine/Feel decisions are primarily made for the market that plays it as 4-8 Player Items on Free For All (Which note, it should, as to my knowledge, its still the only one), then these new Platform Fighters shouldn't have a problem differentiating themselves from Smash more than, say, Blazblue Crosstag Battle and Dragon Ball Z Fighters do the same from Marvel VS Capcom 3 and Infinite.
TL:DR
Response that should've ended at the 1st paragraph turned into an essay. Games with guns or people fighting each other don't re-invent the wheel, neither should any game that tries to be like Smash. These games are designed around Comp and not Party, so they end up different anyways. I always end up salty at "Game Name (Smash Clone)" threads because no one else ever seems to look for and discuss whats unique, only whats the same.
