Character Analysis - Mewtwo (Part 2)

In this part we are going to go over kill options.

So as I talked about earlier, Mewtwo has gotten so much better lately. His aerials were boosted in percent damage and knock back, allowing his up aerial to be able to kill around 80-90%.  This was a much needed buff as he pretty much had nothing going for him before the patch.

Mewtwo's up special also has some cool interaction with ledges. He can perform something called a Ledge Cancel which allows him to pull off crazy combos. Ledge cancelling occurs when you teleport with the up special and land right on the edge of the map or a platform, then Mewtwo's mommentum carriers himself off the stage, no longer in the free fall position that would normally occur after an up special, and allows him to attack or continue his combo string if timed correctly. One thing you can do with this ability is get an early spike off the ledge when your opponent is recovering by charging shadow ball while they are off stage, making them believe they are safe and need to recover low, then canceling shadow ball with an up special and getting a down air right as the opponent is about to get to the ledge. This takes a lot of practice but is something that is really needed in Mewtwo's game play.

Mewtwo has an insane Up smash. It kills early, it catches people in weird angles, and has the ability to slide if you jump cancel it. It reaches through almost any platform and is one of his easiest kill options.

Overall I find Mewtwo to combo really well as I mentioned before, he is able to kill kind of early, recover long distances, but really lacks the ability to survive very long because of his light weight. His speed makes him great on the ground, his throws are amazing, but lack consistent follow ups, his grab is sub par. I think he is a good character but probably finds himself sitting around the middle 50% of the tier list. I think Mewtwo is an insanely fun character to play and I enjoy playing him myself a lot, but isn't a perfect character for competitive play.

Character Analysis - Mewtwo (Part 1)

So today I want to talk about Mewtwo. Mewtwo is another character that was brought into smash by DLC but was originally brought into the Smash Bros series back in Melee where he did practically nothing. Here in Smash 4, he was brought out with a very impressive up throw that killed extremely  early but he hasn't done much. He has received some changes lately in the latest patch 1.1.3 that have made him a lot better. I will not go over each individual move but I will talk about his play style as a whole.

Mewtwo as a character is very fast. He is 10th in the game for speed, tied with Metaknight, and is very light. He is massive too, one of the largest characters, yet he is the fourth lightest in the game. This causes him to die early if he doesn't play correctly. He is able to play from a far though, as he does have a very consistent and strong projectile. His neutral B charges his shadow ball which when fully charged can do 26% and apply tons of shield pressure. This allows him to get the ability to almost build up damage in a way while your opponent is knocked off the stage. Uncharged shadow ball can lead into a Jab lock situation and lets Mewtwo get a great punish. He can follow up into a down special which disables your opponent and lets you get a powerful attack off while they are stunned.

Mewtwo has a ton of range. His back air and up air cover so much of the screen it is ridiculous, and allows him to kill people early and rack up damage easily and safely. Mewtwo also has the best recovery in the game, having the largest double jump, side b, and up b to allow him to go far off the stage to kill the opponent quickly and and be able to recover easily.

Mewtwo also has a great combo game, he can combo his down tilt into nair or fair, and get a early percent lead. If you manage to maintain this lead by tacking on damage with his shadow ball or other aerial attacks, you can get an easy kill from his back throw or up throw. Both of these throws allows you to get super easy kills and are very safe to try and pull off. Short hop into air dodge can lead into a grab as soon as you reappear from the air dodge which allows you to mix up your opponent and try to get these early kills. Up throw kills around 120% and back throw kills around 100 percent at the side of the screen.

Character Analysis - Ryu (Part 3)

Now that I have gone over some of the basics about Ryu such as his moves and his unique attacks, I am going to go over a bit about his play style, how to learn to play him, and some tips about him in competitive play.

So, Ryu is a pretty heavy hitter. His moves are quite fast and combo extremely well. One punish can lead from anywhere from 25% off of a down tilt, to 50% + off of a focus attack (Down B). His moves that start combos or are able to combo well include light down tilt, light up tilt, nair, light hit of fair, and focus attack. All of these can combo into much more powerful attacks like his Shoryuken, or be used to rack up some quick damage. He is great at surviving. He is one of the heaviest characters in the game, can use Focus attack to dash cancel in the air, or use his side b to make up a great distance even in the air. His vertical recovery is pretty wonderful as well, as his shoryuken goes pretty high. Although he can be gimped by accidentally inputting one of his special moves instead of the move you were trying to input, his recovery over all is one of the best in the game. He is amazing at getting kills, needing to connect a frame two move ( light down tilt) to then connect into Shoryuken. Focus attack is amazing at getting early kills because you can lead into a nair, followed by an off stage dair.

Ryu has an incredible amount of shield damage he can apply. His light hit of his forward air down half the damage on a shield, and his heavy forward tilt down 95% of a shields capacity. If you combo a light down tilt or up tilt into a heavy down tilt it will completely break your opponents shield. This amount of shield damage is unmatched by any character in the game and is why he is such a high tier. I think that the ability to break an opponent's shield increases his kill potential too, as you can get in a fully charged forward smash to break their shield, or if you time it correctly, you could lead into a focus attack as soon as they come out of being stunned.

So over all, I think Ryu falls in the top 5 best characters in the game, and earns himself a slot in the S tier of characters.

Character Analysis - Ryu (Part two)

In part one I covered Ryu's aerial moves, go check that out if you haven't it's what makes Ryu amazing.

Smash Attacks -

Forward Smash - Ryu's Forward smash is a move that kills really early, it does 16 percent and does quite a bit of shield damage

Up Smash - This move is easy to combo into and it allows you to block some aerial attacks

Down Smash- This move is really great for trying to build space between you and your opponent as it comes out quickly, and it does 16% , so again it does lots, and has great range. Also his foot is invincible during it so he can do this over the ledge to try and catch people recovering.

Tilts -

Not going into specific about each tilt attack, but Ryu has twice as many tilts as most characters, with a light and heavy version of each tilt. Ryu's uptilt and down tilt are amazing for combos, and his heavy Uptilt allows him to be impenetrable to aerial attacks and can combo into Shoryuken.

Ryu's Heavy version of forward tilt is a great move as it has trample, which means it will pretty much just beat any attack it clashes with. This is also a great move for breaking shields, as any hit plus a heavy forward tilt on a shield pretty much means it breaks their shield.

Special Moves -

Ryu is unique in the fact that he has more special moves than any other character. He has the regular side B, up B, neutral B, and down B, but he also has ways to input his special move that resemble the inputs that you would use for Street Fighter, the game that Ryu comes from. You can do down, quarter circle forward B, Half circle forward B, or regular B to input a Hadoken, a firey blue ball of energy that does 8%. You can do a half circle backward or side B to input Ryu's Tatsumaki Senpuki, or tornado kick in which Ryu propels himself forward by hurling his foot around his body quickly. This move is great for recovering and racking up damage. Ryu also has his famous shoryuken that can be done by imputing up and B at the same time, or forward, down, down forward, forward, A to input his "True" version of shoryuken. This version kills extremely early and will be pretty much how Ryu gets 99% of his kills. This move is easy to combo into and has invincibility during it's start up.

Character Analysis - Ryu (Part One)

This will be the first of many character analysis you see and I will probably edit the format of it as I go, but this is going to be a type of post where I share my thoughts on a specific character, going through the moves of each character and how good I think the character is, how fun they are to play, and many other things I feel that are important to say about them. So, here is my opinion on Ryu.

Ryu currently is one of the top 3 characters in the game. This isn't really an opinion even, just based purely off how good the character is. I will go through his moves and analyze them in depth and how viable I think he is.

Aerial moves

Neutral air- His neutral air (nair) does 8% when it hits the strong hitbox and 4% on weak hitbox. This move combos extremely well, and if timed correctly can carry opponents accross the stage in an amazing combo string. Short hopping and immediately doing your nair allows you to be able to nair twice off the short hop, the first coming out right as you jump, the second starting up just a few frames before you hit the ground.

Forward air - Ryu's fair is amazing. It can do 15 damage at the base of his foot, 13 damage in his calve range, and 8 to 9% in his thigh area hit box. Depending on the hit box you get, you are able to combo it into other moves almost for free. Sour spot fair is a move that will allow you to combo into pretty much any of Ryu's other moves

Up air- Ryu's up air is a double hit that does 11% if both connect, it is decent, as it can kill off the top, and can be comboed into as it doesn't have much start up frames.

Back air - Ryu's bair is going to be a move that kills pretty early, it deals 16%, or 13% if you hit the sour spot, and has lots of knockback. It is a really good move for building space between you and your opponent.

Down air- Ryu's dair is amazing. It can spike at the tip of his arm, and does 14%. This move will pretty much combo into Ryu's Shoryuken, or many other moves making it great on and off stage.

Super Smash Bros for Wii U Opinon

Super Smash Bros for Wii U, also known as SSB4, is the game I play the most. It is very interesting how the game has played out, as after it was released, there were balances and changes made to the game and characters to try and make it more fair. This is unlike any other smash game before hand, and is one reason why the game is so great in my opinion. Now I am not going to say that SSB4 is the best version of Smash Bros, but I am going to say that it has been the version I have had the most fun on when playing. The game is so unique compared to the older versions of the game, having characters from so many different games and new mechanics of how the game works. They have characters such as Mario and Luigi, Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Pit, Mr Game and Watch, Sonic, Pacman, Megaman, and even Ryu. Just such as wide variety of characters just makes the game a lot more interesting and fun to play. The play styles of each character is unique and interesting. SSB4 for sure had the craziest character list of any of the games, and is even having more characters released after it was developed available as downloadable content. Characters like Mewtwo and Cloud have been released as DLC and some more are coming soon. SSB4 is the best version of smash to get together with some friends and just hang out and play for a while on weekend in my opinion. This doesn't mean that I don't think the game is competitive. I think this game is for sure able to be played at a competitive level and I know that there are very advanced technical aspects or techs that are possible to pull of in the game. Perfect pivoting, Ledge canceling, stage teching, and many other character specific techs that make the game really cool. I do however think currently that there are other versions of smash that are better for competition. I plan on going over mainly the character list in SSB4 as it is the game that I enjoy the most and play the most. I have played every version of smash that has been released by Nintendo. 64, Melee, Brawl, 3ds, and now Wii U, and I have loved them all, but I have to say that I love SSB4 by far the most of any of the games. I just find that I am able to sit down and play for however long I want and have a great time, get better, and pull of some really cool combos. It might have to do with my age but I feel that this game is the one that I really feel connected with as I didn't play the other versions nearly as competitively as I was too young during their release. The one problem that I see with this game is that it is for the Wii U. I specifically bought a Wii U for this game to be honest. I haven't played a single other game on my Wii U except Smash bros. It is really the only purpose for the Wii U currently, but if you are able to get your hands on one for SSB4, I highly recommend that you do.