Wall Of Text Alert - Proceed With Caution
I was talking in the perspective of the demo for Mario, so that thing about Bowser can be chucked out the window as he is absent. Also his final smash is really, REALLY mediocre. While it can deal 50%, I have tried him out (against real players, so dont say this is against CPUs cause it isn't) and I haven't been able to score a single KO with it. Players seem to drop out of it once they get past the platform and good combo breakers like Mega Man can easily escape it. Definitely not anywhere near the top, and I still feel that it should be last on our demo tier lists.
What are you talking about when you say that
Pikachu's down smash wasn't very good in previous games? It was argubly the best down smash in the game due to multiple easily-used hitboxes that racked up damage quickly if caught in its radius and also had big knockback on it, making it great for forcing medium-damaged opponents easy to force into the air to hit with either a Thunder or one of Pikachu's great Aerial attacks. Thunder had its range nerfed... a lot, meaning that it can no longer use that to get launches after smashes as easily as it used to, and it was always great at dealing heavy damage when it doesn't KO while still having great launching potential with the correct timing. While it isn't bad per-se, it is a lot worse than it was before, and the threat of one is much less daunting than it was last time around, with the threat of that being the main reason why it was so scary to go up againt when you had a neutral matchup in Brawl, Melee and the original. It only had one negative matchup in the original (Fox on Hyrule Castle) which was what made it the best character in the game. The threat of a Thunder means that players were always hesitant to jump to dodge and limited where they went as it was really easy to time. I am actually going to move it back up on my tier list as I have used it a bit more and it is definitely very good, although it is hurt by the increased difficulty in hitting that deadly down smash and the nerf to Thunder, and he's as good at edgeguarding as ever.
Yes, Link's attacks are easy to punush due to the large ending lag. However, after
Pikachu, Link is argubly the best character in the demo at racking up damage onto the opponent fast due to its high power attacks, many of which have quick startups, a great chip damage inducer in the Fairy Bow, means of moving players closer to him for a deadly double side smash with the Tornado Boomerang and a means of hitting into the air above him for launches using his Bombs. While he somewhat struggles with his aerial game (has annoyingly slow, weak or abusable aerial attacks and has shitty recovery), he has an amazing game on the ground; and due to his high weight compared to the other characters in the demo, he doesn't get sufficiently high very easily, meaning that he can get back to the ground quickly and carry on smashing, while the bombs also aid him in getting back down to earth if he is launched sufficiently high by launching players out of the way of his fall, meaning that Pikachu is the only character who can reliably keep him up with the threat of either a Thunder or aerial attack. However, I am actually moving him back down to three upon retesting him earlier today due to his exploitability when he misses.
Now, a minute ago I said that Mega Man was a great combo breaker, and he is due to the mechanics of his spring/dog/thing. As an example, he can escape a down throw or up tilt combo from Mario, ignoring any flinches or knockback caused, using his trusty dog and attack anything that may be in the air with his great aerials. His uair is great for getting players up high in preparation for either another up aerial or a devistating bair, and it is a great way of stopping players preparing to hit Mega Man with a dair or something and starting comboing by canceling their attack and pushing them up for Mega Man to then get away with ease, and he is the only character in the demo who can escape one of
Pikachu's chain grabs using the aforementioned spring technique. This is the main thing that I feel puts him above Villager and now Link. He also has great killing potential with his powerful, albeit short-ranged attacks in his up smash, down smash, side smash, bair, uair and dair as well as great ways of racking up chip damage fast with his neutral special, side special, up tilt, running attack, neutral attack and fair, as well as being able to get chip damage on multiple characters at once using his neutral special as it hits through opponents and is also great at shield-breaking due to the multi-hitting nature of the attack. His damage-dealing ability rivals that of Links without most of his attacks being overly exploitable, while his final smash isn't avoided with a well-timed dodge unlike that of Link, is unescapable if it hits (unlike Mario's), has a rather large hit radius (unlike Link's again) and isn't anywhere near as hard to hit as Villager's, which requires the same positioning as Captain Falcon's did in Brawl. I have moved this guy up to second as it is the only character who lacks any negative matchups outside of Pikachu (which I'd only put at around 40:60 anyway).
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Also want Solid Snake back
