After having a solid couple of weeks with Smash Bros. Brawl, I figured I'd weigh in on the new perspective. Formerly, while playing Melee I found character imbalance to be fairly disappointing with well-established character tiers. Not that it's something out of the ordinary in fighting games...it's just slightly depressing when the good folks at Nintendo(or SNK or Capcom) bring you a good 20+ characters to play as and, in the long run, only around half of those characters are common in competitive play. It's something the fighting genre in general has become accustomed to.



However, with Brawl, the character balance has been shuffled a bit. No longer do matches consist of Sheik, Fox, Marth, and the like, but character usage is now further spread out. Certainly there are still characters with advantages, but the playing in Brawl feels a bit more even. (These comments disregard the use of items and final smashes given the obvious advantages)The removal of exploits such as wave dashing and l-canceling provides a more even playing field for experienced players.

So how does this new smash bros. stack up next to tradition? I believe it's a radical improvement. Granted the style is generally the same, I'm glad the balancing provides more character variety and tactical options. Also, the gameplay flows much more than the more mechanical traditional fighters. I'm sure that as time goes on we'll develop a much more distinct tier list. But until then, I'll enjoy working with the variety.

[matt]