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Smash Bros Rank the Smash Bros Games

Threads relating to the Super Smash Bros series.
Joined
Aug 31, 2019
Entirely personal to your tastes. Fond memories of a game, Liked/disliked nerfing/buffing of your favourite character, added/removed content.

Which is your favourite/least favourite & why?

Super Smash Bros
Super Smash Bros Melee
Super Smash Bros Brawl
Super Smash Bros 3DS/Wii U
Super Smash Bros Ultimate

smash bros.jpg
 
5. Brawl
I hate the random tripping and while the Subspace mode had cool cutscenes I really didn't enjoy playing it.

4. Wii U / 3DS
Meh.

3. 64
The original, nostalgia abounds in this one. I like the simplicity. I like the cast of familiar yet surprising choices with the likes of Captain Falcon and Ness.

2. Ultimate
Every character, every stage, so many options. Endless fun. Though I don't like the spirit mechanic at all, this is still a great game just to smash with so many characters.

1. Melee
I love, love, love Melee. I'm not a competitive Smash player. I just love Melee because it felt so good at the time, it felt like such a meaty sequel over the original and I love the challenge/event mode (battling on Majora's Mask<3) and I love being able to play as characters from other games in levels they wouldn't usually be in.
I love taking on Goombas as Link, ReDeads as Kirby and running an F-Zero Circuit as Peach.

So so so so good.
 
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Princess Niki

Allons-y
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5. N64 I can only use Pikachu, Kirby and Link in this game the rest suck.

4. Brawl cuz of the tripping other wise not a bad game

3. Melee fun game but no random button and when I play for fun I like to randomize my character. Probably the best single player campaign.
(honestly these 2 could be flipped)
2. 3ds/Wii U good character selection

1. Ultimate, I mean the name kind of speaks for it, it is the ultimate experience.
 

mαrkαsscoρ

Mr. SidleInYourDMs
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5. 64 - to be honest, I've only ever played this a friend's house, but I do plan on diving into it myself one day

4. 3ds/Wii U - probably where I had the most multiplayer fun since I was w/ certain friends at the time and not so much these days, solid games though

3. Melee - my first smash and one of my childhood favorites, to this day I still go for a round of classic mode or adventure mode, and a few of the events

2. Brawl - lost 4 years of my life playing this and was the first time I was ever madly hyped for a game's release, also Project M

1. Ultimate - pretty much objectively the best smash right now, lacking modes aside
 
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I don't think it's fair to group 3DS and Wii U together as they have different game modes even if they have the same rosters.

My ranking:

6. Super Smash Bros.

It's extremely bare bones compared to later installments. I like playing through the 1 player modes and board the platforms is a novelty that never returned but the game is forgettable compared to its sequels.

5. Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS

Smash Run is such an addicting mode, but there isn't much going for this installment outside of that. It was fun to have Smash Bros. on the go but it's now been eclipsed by Smash Ultimate.

4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl

I liked playing through the Subspace Emissary one time but I never felt compelled to go back to it. I did enjoy refighting bosses in Boss Battle mode, though. Sadly, the event matches are lacking and the physics are so sluggish.

3. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

There isn't much of a single player mode to this one, but the gameplay feels refined, and the event matches in this installment are pretty good. Smash Tour is trash, though.

2. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

I love World of Light. It's a lot of fun exploring the world and it's basically a collection of Event Matches, which is my favorite mode in single player. The balancing of the game and physics are also great.

1. Super Smash Bros. Melee

There's something special about this game from the moment you boot it up and see that opening cutscene. It still has my favorite Classic, Adventure, All Star, and Event Match modes. It also has the best physics of any Smash. I love how fast it is.
 

TheGreatCthulhu

Composer of the Night.
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5. Brawl

Something about Brawl I just didn't like. The random tripping was annoying and just feels clunky.

4. Smash 4

I felt that air-dodging, spot-dodging, and rolling were abused heavily in this game, leading to matches being piss easy, because reading other led to easy wins.

3. N64

While I love the N64 game, I felt that its game mechanics weren't really fleshed out.

2. Melee

Melee was a godsend for competitive Smash players. While I never mastered the advanced movements of wave-dashing or anything like that, I just remember having so much fun in Melee.

1. Ultimate

I feel everything comes together here. It punishes rolls, repeated air-dodging, and such enough that it's unwise to abuse them, the roster is diverse, with Terry being one of my favorites this go around.
 

el :BeoWolf:

When all else fails use fire
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6. Smash bros 64, while a good game and a nostalgia factor it is small in scale but that doesn't mean I disliked it at all but it just doesn't compare to later games

5. Smash bros Melee, a great upgrade to the original. Had some fun but everything to come after it is waaay better.

4. Smash bros 3ds, tho almost the same as it's wii u counterpart it's missing some things the other has.

3. Smash bros Wii U, another fine upgrade with more characters and even mii fighters for those sweet CAC's.

2. Smash bros Brawl, the best in the series until recently. It has a fun cross over story, realistic looking characters (tho a few really shouldn't have gone down that route) and a huge cast of characters. Not to mention trophies trophies and more trophies. One of my favorite games of all time till the next entry

1. Smash bros Ultimate, it truly is the ultimate smash game and with "Everyone is here" plus more on the way. More mii fighters, custom stages(tho the custom stages could use some improvement) so much music it doubles as a Nintendo iPod (nPod?) The idea of Spirits is a nice idea that, tho not always, with a bit of imagination can give us characters that otherwise never would be fighters. It really beefed up and learned from the others.
 

Mellow Ezlo

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I haven't played the N64 title so it will not be included here.

5. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

I'm not sure what it is with this game. Something just felt off whenever I played it. The lack of engaging single player modes is a turn off, graphically the game looks... OK, some characters are so blatantly overpowered. But that's not my problem with it. As a competitive/party game, those are things I can overlook (except the extremely unbalanced roster), but this game just feels weird to play. Maybe because I mostly played the 3DS version and didn't get a lot of experience with this one as a result.

4. Super Smash Bros. for 3DS

I preferred this one over the Wii U version for a few reasons: Smash Run is actually a somewhat decent mode, the 3DS graphics are charming, it's handheld, and the 3DS felt very good to me as a controller since I was used to it (leading to me using it as my primary controller for Wii U). It suffers from the same problems Wii U had, but it felt better to me as a whole.

3. Super Smash Bros. Brawl

This is probably the most nostalgic Smash game for me, as I spent countless hours playing it at home with my friends in school and running through the Subspace Emissary with one of my best friends. The slower pace felt a little weird after having played Melee, but I didn't hate it. The main problem with the game from a gameplay standpoint is the tripping, which was extremely annoying. Brawl had a great character roster, a fun and engaging story mode, and just provided so many hours of fun for me. One huge issue with it, however, was that the game came on a double-layered disc, which my Wii stopped being able to read after a while, so I was unable to continue playing. Also the graphics don't fit a lot of the characters at all.

2. Super Smash Bros. Melee

This game was so much fun for me as a kid. Brawl is a more nostalgic game for me overall, but I still have many fond memories of playing this with my family. Overall, the game has few problems, with a relatively balanced character roster, intense fast-paced gameplay, awesome single player modes and great event matches. Close to a perfect game, if I'm being honest. I really don't have anything to complain about.

But as great as Melee is, it's hard to beat...

1. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

It's in the title. With every single character from the previous games and nearly every single stage, plus several new faces, it really is the ultimate Smash Bros. experience. World of Light was a really fun and surprisingly challenging game mode that I spent hours completing and never got bored of. The gameplay feels really good, probably the best in the series. Graphically, the game looks amazing, bar a few character textures that I'm not huge on. The massive collection of music includes some of the best pieces of music in Nintendo's library, plus some of the best tracks from other third party games. Overall, this is easily the best Smash Bros. game to date and I honestly don't know if they'll ever top it.
 

Sheikah_Witch

I just really like botw
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5. Brawl. One of the most disappointing games I've ever played.

4. 3DS/Wii U. Didn't grab me at all.

3. 64. I like the heaviness in the hits here and there's a certain kind of appealing tactility in the character's movesets.

2. Melee. Fast, swift, light-footed and oh so good.

1. Ultimate. It brings the best of both worlds - the fast-paced, almost nauseatingly swift feedback of Melee with the heaviness and oomph of 64. Amazing game.
 

thePlinko

What’s the character limit on this? Aksnfiskwjfjsk
ZD Legend
I used to think that every smash game was better than the last but after thinking about it...

5. Smash 64- great game, bare bones compared to later entries, yadda yadda yadda moving on. I will say that this is the last smash Bros to have an appropriate amount of fire emblem reps.

4. 3DS/Wii U- they may have different game modes, but aside from that the mechanics and roster of the main game are the exact same so I consider them to be the same game. I used to think that this was the best Smash Bros on account of its roster and (Comparatively) refined mechanics, but now that ultimate is out it’s hard to really say anything good about it. Unlike the first three games there is absolutely no reason to come back to smash 4. It was only good at the time because it was the most up to date.

3.Melee- This is the game I have played the least (I literally got a copy of it just yesterday). It was a step up from 64 for sure, but it is definitely not the flawless game people pretend it is. For one thing the entire competitive scene is built around exploiting bugs and unintended mechanics, which isn’t good for a fighting game. The entire artstyle feels outdated in the worst of ways. The design of each of the characters is way before they were finalized. I mean just look at Yoshi, he looks terrible! I can’t really fault the game because of when it came out but it’s still very off-putting. I guess I do prefer melee link to all of the later ones though.

2. Brawl- Competitively, yeah this game sucks, but in literally every other aspect brawl is a better game than melee. Just the sheer amount of content Brawl added and expanded upon makes it an easy upgrade. I’d take the subspace emissary over melees adventure mode and ultimates world of light any day. None of this excuses the random tripping and other terrible mechanics of brawl which is why melee is very close to being better, but I’d still say the pros clearly outweigh the cons and make this definitively better than melee.

1.Ultimate- this is not only my favorite smash game, this is one of my favorite games period. I easily have more hours in this game logged on my switch than any other game, even BotW and Mario Odyssey. It’s the best of both worlds, the competitiveness of melee with the content and singleplayer of brawl. The sheer amount of characters is astonishing (even though it is a little heavy on the weeb chess side of things) and it easily has the best classic mode in the series. I do miss the trophies, but spirits are nice too. Everything about this game seems to be tailor made to be as perfect as possible, and I can’t see how Sakurai could possibly follow this up.
 

twilitfalchion

and thus comes the end of an era
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6. Smash 64 - Good game, but surpassed by nearly every title that followed. Although the fact that the game runs at such a nice frame rate is quite impressive for an N64 title.

5. Brawl - I don't think it's a bad game by any means. It was just (like most games in the Wii era) hurt by Nintendo's attempts to make their games accessible to a wider audience. Still a good game in its own right. Slow, but still fun to play. Subspace Emissary is the best SP mode in any Smash game IMO.

4. Smash 4 (3DS/Wii U) - I really enjoyed the feel of the engine in this one. It was similar to Brawl's speed, but it just felt fun to play in. It's not my favorite Smash game, but it's still fun to return to online MP on 3DS every once in a while.

3. Ultimate - Probably the best Smash Bros. game due to content alone, but the awful lag online and the frame buffer make it not as enjoyable as it could be. But the speed of play is near-perfect and almost every character is fun to use. Marth needs buffs though. The speed of the game and low priority of the tippers make his defining gameplay mechanic almost useless. Lucina (who I also like a lot) is pretty much the better option in every situation.

2. Melee - An excellent game with a high skill ceiling. There are a lot of different mechanics and techniques that are way above my skill level, but it's nice to see so many people able to make a lot out of a relatively simple fighting game. The controls feel a bit clunky and slow to me though. There's just something about it that makes it not feel as fluid as it should be. Oh, and this was Marth's first appearance in Smash, so that's nice as well.

1. Project M/Project+ - No doubt my favorite Smash game. The speed, weight, and overall feel are absolutely perfect. It combines the momentum of Melee with the higher accessibility of the later games and is just enjoyable to play. Marth has never felt better, although Ike is really good too. My go to Smash game when I want to just mess around beating the crap out of CPUs.
 

AwdryFan1997

you are not immune to propaganda
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Of the ones that I've played:

2. Smash 4: It was good back then, now it's just rubbish. The roster is lame, the gameplay is slow, the extra modes are downright horrid, the game overall just feels too much like the system it's on.

1. Ultimate: Best installment of the series so far. Everything has been improved. I have a few minor complaints, but the game overall is stellar.
 

Chevywolf30

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Of the ones I've played:

Ultimate.
Don't @ me. I've played this maybe once or twice, and I never really got it. It felt too complicated. I'm sure my mind will change when I own a Switch.

N64.
This was the first Smash game I played, it was just this one afternoon we were visiting an old college friend of my dad's in 2018. I remember really loving it, and wishing I could play it again. Still do.

Brawl.
After that afternoon, I looked up Smash Bros games for the Wii. I remember seeing it called a subpar title and thinking "Oh, well, better than nothing." I never actually got my hands on it until early March 2020, some of my friends from my homeschool co-op were playing Ultimate at the (now-closed umu) game store, and I picked up Brawl while I was there. And then the shutdown. And I had to miss a month of work because related reasons. Me and my siblings played the heck out of Super Smash Bros. Brawl during the shutdown. It was so awesome to have such a great new game just as things locked down. Obviously a God thing. That is why Brawl will probably always be my favorite Super Smash Bros. game.
 

Long John Spaghetti

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5 - Smash 64. It was impressive for the time, but now, it's just ok.
4 - Melee. Okay, okay, it's great and all, but's it's really ruined by the overwhelming competivie scene.
3 - 3DS/Wii U. Smash Run. Enough said.
2 - Ultimate. Lots and lots of stuff here. It's awesome.
1 - Brawl. Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary.
 

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