Super Smash Bros. Ultimate just came out and it's pretty darn great. A gigantic amount of content in terms of stages, music, single player content and fighters in it. Just look at the size of the character select screen.
However, there is one pretty big problem with the game (Ok, online might be a problem as well, but I don't have an Online Subscription to test it) and that is in the mulitplayer, you don't start with that many characters. You start with this many.
Yes, only 8 of the 74 fighters. I get it, it's the original 8 from the first game, it's a cute reference. But any cuteness about it wears off when you start going through trying to unlock everyone in it. And I can already here people saying "What problem! I see no problem having to unlock all of those fighters! That is the game for me!", Before I list the big issues I have with the unlocking of characters, I'll address the common defences for having to unlock everyone first.
A Roster of 74 characters to start with would be too overwhelming for newcomers!
This is perhaps the most reasonable argument for not having everyone available at the start, having everyone might overwhelm people to begin with. The Smash 64 roster is also fairly easy to pick up and learn as well with a lot of them being fairly simple moveset wise. It's much easier to pick up and understand Mario or Kirby than, for example, Robin with his/her various Magic Move meters or Inkling and her/his Ink Mechanic. The only slightly irregular character is Yoshi of the original 8. That said, there are some characters that are fairly easy to pick up and learn that are not included. Peach for example with her incredible horizontal recovery, Dedede who's the easiest Heavy Weight for a newcomer to pick up, there also some move concepts the original 8 don't have like Physical Counter Moves someone like Marth or Ike have.
There is also a lot of things Smash could do to make things easier for beginners that it doesn't do, like have a proper tutorial mode, you just have the video at the beginning, a command list and a tips section. It's tutorial offerings are lacking compared to similar fighting games on the market like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, UNIEL, Skullgirls and many more that offer playable tutorial modes that overview all the games mechanics, character specific mechanics and gameplay mechanics, combo trials of varying difficulty, even general fighting game playstyles and systems like rushdown, zoning, spacing, applying pressure until they block and mixing it up with a command grab if that's how your character's playstyle works... it goes on. This is a discussion worthy of it's own thread so I won't go into it fully here, but Smash doesn't exactly make itself the easiest game for newcomers in all, it does some good thing, simplified controller scheme, beginner rooms online to name a few, but it has a long way to go in this front. It's another discussion for another thread though.
This is the one thing I'm most lenient on, but even then, a few more simple to learn characters could be included as starters if they wanted to go this route (and newcomers are likely to be overwhelmed by the large number of stages they see beforehand instead.)
I want to be surprised by who's in the game!
Yeah… that worked in the past Smash Games. Previous smash games would go so far to even change UI menu and the opening video depending on who you have and haven't unlocked in the game. But this game is less subtle about hiding it's characters. Even if you have hidden under a rock not to be spoiled who's in the game. The opening video shows every single fighter in the game, same with the world of light opening cutscene, characters you haven't unlocked will show up in Spirits Mode and Classic mode anyway, Classic has a giant Mural with every character on it. If you go to Tips it shows tips for all the characters unlocked or not. Heck, even the physical game box shows everyone in the game in the inside art. There isn't any character surprises this time around.
But it's fun to unlock all the characters!
This is subjective. I know there's a lot of people out that love the whole "Challenger Approaching" alarm fight to unlock system. I know some people consider they have completed the game when they have unlocked everyone and move on different games when they do. However, this is not the absolute consensus, there are also players that just want to boot up the game and play as there favourites from the go. Some people may want to hit the training room and see what changes their character has. Some people may want to go online and just show the world how good they are from day 1, other may just want to finally play as Ridley, and they will eventually, but they won't be able to right out of the gate. This varies. And there's one specific thing I'll talk about later that makes this the one defence I'm least willing to listen to.
So, the problems.
The Unlock Process is long and tedious.
First, yes, it does not take as long to unlock everyone in this game as it did in Melee, no more 10 hours game time for Mewtwo or 1000 matches for Game and Watch. It's shorter than Brawl's was as well. However, it's significantly longer than 3DS and Wii U's. I took about 6-7 hours having to unlock everyone for my cartridge, and that was using the reset exploit along with it (most people probably don't even know about the reset exploit unless you look it up on a website on fastest ways to unlock everyone in Smash), with only 1 or 2 classic mode runs during the process since I wanted to try it out. Still, on launch day with 3 hours of pure grinding for a launch party, I could only get 31 of the 74 unlocked. And at the launch party (our prefered method of playing was all randoms for those curious) we got 4 characters unlocked during our hour of playing our game (We couldn't do the reset technique so there was the 10 minute cooldowns between characters here).
Even if that number was 1 hour or 30 minutes though. Those numbers are still too high. For many, they want that number to be Zero. Why should people that want to play the way they want to play be denied by all these character unlocks? It's not like the game is lacking in the unlock department, you have Spirits, Music, Mii Customisation and Challenge Board objectives if you want to unlock stuff. All stuff that doesn't affect the core multiplayer gameplay.
It's going to take probably upwards of 12 hours for a regular gamer, probably more… if they even can unlock them that is.
Some people might not be able to unlock all the Characters
As you unlock more and more characters, the difficulty of the challenger matches increase. And some of the later ones have absurd high difficulty levels. In my attempt, I required 7 retries on Challenger matches, 1 on Roy, Robin, Incineroar, Snake and Rob, and 2 matches for Dedede (Your list will likely vary depending on order you encounter them, these were some of the last fighters I got the challenger approaching with to unlock). Now, I consider myself an above average player (I was able to get a 9.9 Classic Intensity Clear on my second run through Classic Mode with Pikachu). For someone that isn't as good at games, or perhaps this is the first console game they ever own? I have doubts they might be able to unlock everyone. I know some people on Resetera here already say they can't do these matches, and we're a pretty hardcore gaming community that play games a lot.
I assume the AI will get gradually easier and easier every time you beat them, too early to tell if that's the case so far but I assume that's the case. But even on the easiest level some people might not be able to unlock that. So they are gatekeepered out of playing the characters they want to play just because they can't beat the unlock match to do so.
And don't say "Get Gid" as a response for those struggling. It shouldn't be that hard to unlock everyone. The tagline for the game is "Everyone is here!" not "Everyone is Here, but you might not be able to unlock all of them if you are bad at fighting games"
Tournament organizing is going to be more frustrating due to unlocking the characters,
You think unlocking all the characters once is frustrating? Try being a Tournament organizer where you will need to unlock all the characters on multiple units. Even when a fully optimized unlock method as planned out it's still probably going to take at least 3 to 4 hours to unlock everyone on one unit (and assuming you are fairly competent enough to beat the challenges on their first try as well for time saving). Melee with it's absurd unlock times at least only required doing it on one memory stick, then you can just copy that save onto the other memory cards you need. Smash Ultimate saves are locked to that one switch, and you'll need a Online Subscription Service if you want to create a backup of that save. And save transfers are one way at present. It's a lot of uneeded hassle for tournament organizers to set up and might actually affect the tournament scene for the game in the long run.
Alright so if you have read through all of that, acknowledged the current problems that people have with the unlock system and still think you have to unlock all the characters because it's more fun to unlock all of them despite that not being what everyone thinks, here's the kicker.
World of Light is a mode dedicated to the people that love unlocking everyone.
If you unlock all the characters through Classic or VS. Matches, you still have to unlock them in your World of Light file. Here's the thing, for me personally at least, it has been much more fun to unlock all the characters in World of Light than it is through unlocking through classic or vs matches or the like. First of, you only start with Kirby, there's actually an in-game reason why you only start with Kirby with the opening cutscene so there's justification for why you are only starting with one character here, now you have a motivation to go and unlock everyone. The overworld map can give a clear visual route on how many matches you need to do before you get to unlock someone, there may even be multiple routes to reach if some of the spirit matches are giving you a hassle, there's even branching paths that make you chose which fighter you want to unlock now and which you will wait for later (Choice in which fighter I want to unlock first? You spoil me World of Light.). In addition, you also will be gathering spirits that can use to help tweak your playstyle, maybe you equip spirits that increases your special attacks, maybe one that heals you over time, maybe even one that starts you with a Death Scythe, you can tweak it to your preference. It also solves that difficulty issue from earlier, outside of the starting Easy, Medium or Hard difficulty select, you can go into the match with one super powered high level spirit and crush through the match, you can hit the "Autopick" button so the game picks a spirit that tries to give a good fair match for a good level of rewards, or you can even create a spirit build that will be at a disadvantage or even enter with No Spirits at all if you wish for a challenge. There's also Skill Spheres that you use to put into a skill tree that lets your modify your gameplay further. It's actually quite fun to unlock the characters in this mode, and there's 3 save files so you can do it multiple times. Oh, and there's 7 additional fighters to unlock as well! The only real downsides are it's single player only so you can't unlock it in a group co-op unless you do a pass the controller system, and that it doesn't have the warning siren I guess? They probably can add that in a patch in the future if need be.
World of Light actually makes it fun to unlock everyone, so the question now is… why wasn't World of Light the dedicated mode for people that love to unlock everyone in their fighting games, and for everyone that prefers, wishes or requires to have all the characters unlocked at that start of the game can just jump into Smash, chose their favourites and go? For those that like the process of Unlocking characters, wouldn't you agree to just keeping it to World of Light. Beginners could be even steered towards the mode as the one to go to learn the ropes of the games as it has, the mode already has a lot of aid systems to help out new players like the spirits and the skill tree, and Kirby is basically the perfect starting character for a newcomer being one of the most beginner friendly characters to start with, and Mario being the second character who is also very beginner friendly as well makes it probably the best mode for a newcomer to jump into when starting the game. The unlock process mainly something for single players to enjoy, and it's repeatable due to the multiple save files as well. Meanwhile multiplayer focused players, tournament organizers or even people that just want to hit the lab and relearn their old mains can just do that without having to jump through all these hoops to unlock everyone to play the game how they want to play the game.
...Woof, that took a lot to right, apologies if there's typos, it's nearly 3am over here now, I blame Smash for sucking up most of my time doing so, half annoyed having to unlock everyone for a gaming event tomorrow, half gleaming with joy really, really enjoying the game with it's graphics, soundtrack, stages and gameplay. Honestly I'm amazed the game didn't even launch with a "Tournament Friendly" mode with everyone unlocked but no progress is saved like gathered spirits, or there isn't some cheat code like entering the Konami Code on the title screen to unlock all characters. I hope they can at least patch that in like how they patched Super Mario Maker to allow everyone access to the Level Editing tools right away instead of having to wait a day for the next tier of level editing tools to unlock.
TL:DR - World of Light should be the only mode with the Unlocking the entire roster aspect, let there at least be a mode or cheatcode that has all fighters available to play as for everyone that needs it.
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