Smash Ultimate is going to turn 4 years old this December, and boy have we come a long way. 12 brand new characters were added to the game, buffs and nerfs drastically impacted certain characters’ places in the meta, and the competitive community has had over 3 years to master the mechanics of the game. So where is Smash Ultimate heading? What does “late-stage” Smash Ultimate look like?
The thing on everyone’s mind lately is Steve. Steve was added to the game nearly 2 years ago and initial impressions ranged widely. Some people thought he was broken and others thought he might be one of the worst characters in the game. In retrospect, it makes sense why opinions were so divided. He was unlike anything we’ve had in Smash before. He is a resource management character that had horrible movement stats. He also possessed a crazy combo game along with the ability to build temporary platforms/walls. It was easy for a life-long smash veteran to pick him up and believe he was garbage because he was so slow, but other people saw his early discovered combos and saw infinite potential.
Well, it looks like the people who saw infinite potential were correct. Steve wasn’t a huge force in the competitive scene immediately, but after some time, he started to gain results rapidly. Today, there are multiple Steve mains who have won large tournaments and Steve is rapidly becoming a “skill check” for even the best players in the world. There is still potential for people to develop specific counterplay, but his results are increasing rapidly alongside the list of top players that have been upset by the character.
Some people are talking about banning Steve. The reasons range from personal hatred for the character to genuine concern that Steve is going to ruin the game for players and spectators. Nothing huge has been decided yet, but many are drawing comparisons to Smash 4’s combo-heavy DLC character, Bayonetta, who many claim killed Smash 4. They think it might be best to act now rather than let the game die and that thought has resonated with many people who played during the Bayonetta days in Smash 4.
Steve has been terrorizing the competitive scene, but he’s not the only combo-heavy, horrible base stats character doing so. KAZUYA MISHIMA! Ha ha ha… Mr. Mishima has also been part of a lot of discussions about bans, but not to the level of the Steve discourse. Kazuya has clear counter-play that is much more simple than counter-play to Steve. While you don’t want to interact with either character, Steve will mine, giving him access to even more deadly tools for when he does finally get his hands on you. Kazuya can’t do that. If you don’t interact with Kazuya, he doesn’t get better, so theoretically, you get the first hit on him, and it’s completely on him to approach you. Once Kazuya does hit you, you might die, but you don’t have any reason to approach him when you have the lead, unlike Steve.
Steve and Kazuya show an interesting trend about what characters are starting to become dominant in Smash Ultimate. Characters that can touch you once and do massive damage or even kill you are seeing a lot of results and it’s not just Steve and Kazuya. Ryu and Ken have been increasing their results recently with multiple representatives from around the world piloting them and getting wins on some of the best players. Bayonetta, while not nearly in her prime, has seen great results recently. Even Ice Climbers, a character forgotten by most, has popped up to get second at a large tournament. All these characters have complicated advantage states that lend themselves to being better the longer they’re practiced and perfected and we’re seeing the results of 3 years of development on these characters.
While “touch-of-death” characters are seemingly becoming more popular, another style is finding success as well. Mythra, Sonic, and Min Min might not seem similar on the outside, but all 3 of them qualify as “over-tuned neutral characters”. These characters can utterly dominate neutral with the correct player. While the meta seems to be moving towards getting the first hit and doing massive damage, these characters never let you get the first hit. Mythra’s fast disjoint that allows her to safely pressure, Min Min’s arms that let her pressure her opponents from across the stage, and Sonic’s ability to run away from almost any character in the game are all examples of extremely broken neutral tools. While “touch-of-death” character mains have been optimizing their advantage state, over-tuned neutral character mains have been perfecting their neutral and they’re becoming walls for their opponents. All the characters that can occupy this category usually have one very broken aspect like speed or a specific gimmick and use that one thing to dominate in neutral.
So where does that leave the rest of us? Well, thankfully it doesn’t seem like other characters are being made completely obsolete. We’re still seeing massively high character diversity in top 32s of majors and sometimes even in top 8. The meta isn’t becoming dominated by one thing at all, but there are clear trends toward the characters in the categories I mentioned. The Steve and Kazuya discourse is loud, but currently, character diversity is very high, and we’re seeing new characters break out every month it seems, so play the character you want to. The meta will settle and Steve might be the best character in the game, but we’re a long way from Steve dittos in every single grand finals. If we start to get close to that, maybe then we can revisit the topic of if he should be banned.
Thanks for reading!
Bernard Lamar Rice 