Board 8 > The story mode for Smash Ultimate isn't fun

(+) Yeah! (+)

Fair warning, this is me whining, but I need to vent.

I know I'm way late on this game but I only recently got a Switch and Smash Ultimate. I've never been the greatest at Smash, but I beat the story mode for Brawl no problem back in the day. I figured I could bumble my way through it at whatever the normal difficulty setting is. Some of these spirit battles are complete horseshit, though.

Specifically, I just spent forty-five minutes trying to beat the Funky Kong one. DK, Diddy, and Captain Falcon in a level that constantly spawns bullet bills. The three of them alone I could handle no problem, but the three of them with bullet bills is insane. The computer has perfect aim and they keep chaining hits together. The items spawn all around the level at random, so with three of them there's no way to get to all of them first. Even if I do, it doesn't matter. I activate the bullet bill, sail straight through the enemy (I assume they activate their shield for the half second I would've made contact?) and, since they probably also have a bullet bill, they activate it the instant after I pass them, following my trajectory exactly, so that they hit me the instant my bullet bill runs out. This has happened multiple times. Using bullet bills is suicide. Trying to fight when one of them had a bullet bill was suicide. Keeping away just lets all three of them get bullet bills. I couldn't win.

I finally give up and google the level looking for a strategy. Turns out there's just a spirit or something somewhere that deflects bullet bills. That's it. No skill, no strategy, just BS to cheese through a badly designed level. And I bet this isn't even the worst level of them all! This is just the first harsh one where I really knuckled down and tried to beat it, and it turns out you can't even beat it normally. I'm not sure I want to keep playing if this "find the BS strategy" is how all the really hard ones will go.
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I disagree, it was pretty great
Every level had a unique gimmick and they tried very hard to make it connected to the character you fight
It was exciting

As for the fun factor - some stages were super easy and some were super hard
If something is too hard for you, either accept this as a challenge and try to get good until you beat it, or play other stages, level up your spirits and collect spirits that will help you when you get back to it

I don't understand what do you mean by "no skill" if you use a spirit...
If you want a challenge then don't use it. You have the choice

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How is it fun for every level to have a unique gimmick if, sometimes, the only viable strategy is a spirit that completely nullifies that unique gimmick?

For example, there were a few where the whole stage puts you to sleep. The solution? A spirit with sleep resistance! I hated those too but at least they were all over in half a second.
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I definitely beat that level without the deflect bullet bill spirit, and I played through the whole story on hard. The spirit will just make it a joke instead of difficult.

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Robazoid posted...

the only viable strategy is a spirit that completely nullifies that unique gimmick?

i'm really not very good at smash and never had to do this

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Yeah, theyre all absolutely beatable without the need for those spirits.

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A lot of the fire floor/sleep floor stages actually have safe platforms (not all of them though), so you can sit on them while the CPU comes to you, if you are really against changing spirits. This is a nice way of making you not use your over-the-top busted spirit configuration for a couple matches...because the game is so ridiculously easy, even on Hard mode, with a spirit configuration that makes you Giant and Metal. You can win almost every battle in less than 10 seconds...some in about 2 seconds.

I don't even remember the bullet bill battle, but there are definitely some tricky ones later.

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On top of what had been said, most of them are also harder initially than if you come back later with a higher leveled primary spirit. There are lots of ways to adjust difficulty.

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The bosses are great. The rest of the mode exists. I didn't think any of the spirits were that dumb except Dr. Wily

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World of Light was excellent.

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Pretty sure the only World of Light battle I struggled with to the point where I just cheesed it instead was The Boss.

For what it's worth, sometimes those stages are better to just stop for a minute and come back to later

There was a couple times where I was stuck on a spirit for like an hour, only to come back the next day and beat it first try

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That being said while I liked the story mode overall I really wouldn't preferred if there was more story to it. Like two cutscenes just didn't really cut out for me, especially after Subspace Emissary had such an excellent story mode


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I'm with OP on this one, I found World of Light to be a total chore. I dropped it midway through because it was so boring and repetitive. And I tolerated The Great Maze, so that's saying something...

Didn't care for the Spirits concept in general.

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yeah its neat at best but mostly a slog

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I really should finish this but I got kind of tired of it. Not really a tremendous amount of payoff for completing these either.

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World of Light is for sure worth finishing just so you can play as Master Hand in that 1 battle near the end.

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I think a lot of WoL enjoyment hinges on how many spirit battle references you get
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, the whole Smash Bros franchise has amazing potential that will never be tapped as long as Sakurai is in charge
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Seginustemple posted...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the whole Smash Bros franchise has amazing potential that will never be tapped as long as Sakurai is in charge

What

Can you elaborate? I am curious, this is kind of a hot take

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Yeah, that seems weird. Sakurai clearly has a lot of passion for it. You take him away and it probably ends up half assed just to turn a buck.

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Nanis23 posted...

What

Can you elaborate? I am curious, this is kind of a hot take

IIRC, Sakurai didn't like that Subspace Emissary cutscenes could be watched on YouTube or something and decided not to make a story mode like it again

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I personally loved World of Light, I blasted through it when Smash came out

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It's just too long and after a point I only ever fought Spirits with Ganondorf and brute force. Great final boss sequence though.

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hombad46 posted...

IIRC, Sakurai didn't like that Subspace Emissary cutscenes could be watched on YouTube or something and decided not to make a story mode like it again

Ohh, that's a real shame, I liked the cutscenes a lot
Subpace Emissary was fine! mostly thanks to the bosses that were amazing
The fight against Rayquaza was so good

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TomNook posted...

World of Light is for sure worth finishing just so you can play as Master Hand in that 1 battle near the end.

Pfft. Who cares? I played as him in the original Super Smash Bros. by putting in 10,000 hours of play, beating everyone's story mode in under 3 minutes, and then beating the secret boss Omni Bowser at the end without getting hit.

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The best brute force option is Byleth.

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I don't remember the bullet bill one, but it is stupid at that you need to put on spirits to completely nullify hazards like wind that are impossible to beat without.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Pfft. Who cares? I played as him in the original Super Smash Bros. by putting in 10,000 hours of play, beating everyone's story mode in under 3 minutes, and then beating the secret boss Omni Bowser at the end without getting hit.

And here I thought you can only play him in Melee.

:p

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pjbasis posted...

I don't remember the bullet bill one, but it is stupid at that you need to put on spirits to completely nullify hazards like wind that are impossible to beat without.

I think that's only applicable in a couple of stages, everything else can be beaten, albeit it is much more difficult.

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Go to your spirits, hit Y or X (auto-pick), enjoy.

Even with the best teams, some spirits are really tough. The Boss took a long ass time my first play through. Same with Rayman.

Paper Bowser (Legend, from spirit board) still gives me nightmares! Had him down to like 1% three times and died every single time.

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I remember struggling with Geno more than The Boss, but maybe I got lucky!

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I think The Boss was the only one I had to come back to. I remember Pauline being hard. Dr. Wily was initially extremely difficult, but much much much easier with Lucas.

Jakyl25 posted...

I think a lot of WoL enjoyment hinges on how many spirit battle references you get

This is definitely true. Most of them are brilliantly designed when you get it. I can see it's a chore if you just see them all as a standard battle. You can play through without beating them all though. Ironically you only need to get 21 characters I think, despite the plot heavily being about saving everyone.

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What little plot it has, anyway

World of Light not having a subspace style plot bothered me less than them introducing it with a massive cutscene that implied it would have one. But then you play the game and it's one of like, three cutscenes total.

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Yeah, getting how well designed the battles were based on the references was a big part of the enjoyment for me.

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charmander6000 posted...

I think that's only applicable in a couple of stages, everything else can be beaten, albeit it is much more difficult.

Well yeah wind is only in a few stages.

But also reverse controls and screen flipping is dumb as shit too.

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I saw those as challenges that had the option to turn them off using a spirit (and even the option to make them less effectful too, if you only wanted to lower the challenge slightly).

As for cutscenes, I would have enjoyed more too, I loved them in Brawl, but Sakurai said almost right away that there would not be any more cutscenes than the trailer/opening movie, so I'm just appreciating we had one. We ended up getting a few more too.

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I enjoyed world of light. It's not really a mode for hardcore smash players but as a filthy casual who enjoys the wacky part of smash it was great for me. I felt like for normies it would be better as just a mode you visit if you had like 30 minutes to waste and not a mode to beat over a weekend.

Ness' father best spirit

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Btw it's weird how you're fighting spirits that use Kirby. That should not have been possible to create, right

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ctesjbuvf posted...

Btw it's weird how you're fighting spirits that use Kirby. That should not have been possible to create, right

Yes its a plot hole
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Kirby has multiple souls and only one of them was ripped away.

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