smady comments

Aku is another set I'm extremely late to the party on and it's hard to say anything new. This set is a weird one because its stated goal is to recreate the (awful) Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion set for Aku in Smash Bros without the unintended glitches of the PTE set. The set doesn't try and add much new to the set, the technically only new moves are the throws and a couple other inputs that are missing from the PTE engine. The set doesn't have a comedic writing style either, which might've made it a good joke set, so it's hard to see what the point was of this experiment. It's technically a success as it did implement Aku into the Smash engine. Problem there is that's not that hard when PTE has almost the same control scheme only lacking a few inputs. It did spawn a very entertaining chat discussion and FAQ so I can’t say a lot of good didn’t come from this set. Obviously, Aku can have a much better set than this where it's not limited by a PTE moveset.

Blaster-Tron is built on solid ideas but the implementation isn't great here. Blaster-Tron's universal charge shot is implemented as a straight buff in no particularly creative ways. The gimmick is putting another hitbox on top of the primary one in a move, where the move tends to be a generic sword slash. This wouldn't be too bad but everything just feels like it's layering on top of something that wasn't anything great in the first place. The field special was a decent idea: Blaster-Tron gets a general buff when he's stood on it and this works into a stage control playstyle. But that’s not enough to sell the rest of the set, and in general there’s just no real hook of a gimmick to keep the set coherent. I wouldn't say the set is poorly balanced at least, though it has some weird moves like a neutral aerial that shoots out infinite range missiles. It feels like it's lacking that flair of sets like Cronus that take some chances to stand out on their own. I wouldn’t say it’s all that bad however, just very bland.

My first thought on Judy Hopps is that it’s sad no one got around to a comment on it yet. I know how big you’re a fan of Zootopia and you put tons of effort into fixing Nick's set. I knew quickly into reading Judy that in spite of the little feedback you've received for this set, it's obviously one you care about and would want to improve. This set is far more competent than Blaster-Tron, its obvious goal is a combo character. For the most part it’s got all the right elements and it’s head-and-shoulders above Nick’s original set. You’ve got all the necessary core moves for juggling, comboing and speed to make the playstyle work.

Still, there are a few things you really ought to change and after you edited Nick I’m hopeful you’ll listen as I thought about how to improve this set a little bit. For starters, I’d axe the counter. What it achieves is easily achieved by any move that hits the foe into the air with high end lag. Combo characters certainly benefit from a counter, but it’s not necessary. You mention in the standards at one point how ice buffs the movement of said move, this could easily be a new down special where she has a prop to make the ground slippery in some way, giving her a way to reduce traction, go faster and force the way the handcuffs work. The other big, easy change is just swapping up and down smash’s inputs. Up smash never actually hits up but it does hit down, the actual position of the hitbox is most similar to Bayonetta’s disjointed down smash from the point Judy initiates the move. As for the tornado down smash, that could very easily launch foes at a vertical/diagonal angle, or straight up depending on the hitbox. It’s a little off that the down smash does 20-30% too, smashes are just the uncharged damage x1.4 for maximum charge.

Another change I’d recommend is the way she works with stun, by far my biggest suggestion. The thing is that in this set, if you stun the foe with the dart gun, all you get out of is one free hit before they’re out of stun again and that doesn’t help you much. You can pull them around using the handcuffs for one attack or something, not exactly super useful. What might help is if instead this stun made the foe immune to histun for attacks under a certain percent of damage so that Judy can actually do her combos on them for the duration of their stun and time it so that she hits them out of the stun at the end with her KO move. I don’t know if this stun goes up or down based on percent, I assume that because the set compares the stun to a shield break that it’s the opposite to grabs like a shield break and is worse/lasts longer at low percents, which might not be a bad idea… it however does need to be specified. The taser fsmash is also a bit mediocre in purpose so I would try and work that into the mechanic I just proposed. If you actually did stuff like this, it’d elevate the set a good deal for me, and I’m very interested to hear if you like my ideas. What you’ve done with the core and the handcuffs so far is pretty good, enough for me to consider what’d take it to the next level.

I read Captain Metal a long time ago, Roy and Muno covered much of what I wanted to talk about. The crab legs aren’t necessary and could easily be replaced in the specials by the down smash. The set has a few very fun ideas. Constructing your own minions from their parts after they’ve died had the possibility to be a super creative approach to a minion character and it would’ve then been easy to work the set into the ways you could adapt to the match or your opponent. The set gets far too wrapped up in trying to justify its multiple weapon switch mechanics. The forward and down smash should be moves that stand on their own as attacks, the attacks however are the secondary purpose and up smash just showcases that the weapon switch is pretty dull. There are definitely a good few moves where the fun part is supposed to come from the switch and instead these end up as two completely different moves where neither one feels particularly satisfactory.

You need to ask yourself in a set like this if you really want the weapon switch, as it seems to be an active detriment and if you do want one, you need to see if the moves when switched up add up to be greater than simply two alternate versions of the same move that exist in parallel movesets. If you want a good weapon switch, Shulk in Smash 4 has an elegant way of changing his stats and doesn’t rely on interactions or fundamentally changing his moveset. These mechanics end up harming you more than they help by splitting the moves in half.

All that said, I was disappointed this set wasn’t better as I liked the minions and felt the concepts presented on the forward/down smash had potential. It’s an interesting concept to swap the AI of a minion that deserved a place in the specials and then you didn’t even need further interactions after the specials. Ultimately you feel as if Captain Metal’s own set is being cluttered by all the interactions and switches. Frankly this is one of those sets where I feel cutting down the set’s length and axing many of the interactions would help improve it easiest. The leftovers would get closer to the heart of the character.

Cortex is a tough one to comment on frankly, as I have a very thought out plan for how I would approach the character and I can’t help feeling I might be too biased. When I look at this set of specials, I definitely feel like the hoverboard is wrong and largely irrelevant later, the jetpack is a similar deal and should’ve been a second/aerial jump or hover, the minions aren’t necessary and the shield is the one part I agree on the input, but not the execution. That said, the minions are good, they’re one of the best parts and that’s one part where I do like your attempt at giving Cortex some definition. I do wish it had depth beyond returning to the minions for later interactions, but nonetheless, it’s a cool idea incorporating those lab scientists into the set.

Where the set honestly is poorest for me is input placement, and it feels like poor input placement is rampant throughout the set. It’s weird to be throwing mines on a down smash, I know Snake plants a mine in the ground, my idea was putting them on a special so there wouldn’t be this problem. The forward smash is odd not on a special as its justification as a powerful smash attack isn’t there in the same way as MegaMan, it feels weird that this projectile transforms midair after a largely superfluous period where it’s a useful hitbox, I’d have put that on a special. The bomb on forward tilt is a little weird and could’ve been a smash or special. The up smash is also weird because while it does hit up, Tropy’s staff never does that, and the real important aspect of the move is when it comes down as you’d expect. So a lot of the time the set ends up feeling like it’s trying to justify these odd choices of input and the attack comes across as secondary to the interaction.

The interactions are the best part of the set as they give some reason for the minions to exist and generally are logical. They make the set into a largely minion-based playstyle which is not an execution I expected for a Cortex set. He never really summons or appears alongside them even. I don’t think there’s any frame of Cortex being next to one of the scientists in the original trilogy, though he does have them kidnap Tawna in the first game from off-camera. If I was going to pick out an aspect I really don’t like here, it’s got to be the really odd way you made the hoverboard work. He gets hit off it during the start lag too easily, the way it’s summoned in the air is very weird, I just want to ride the hoverboard! The jetpack isn’t much better quite honestly, I know I told you that it’d be bad to have too much recovery in both the jetpack and hoverboard being specials, but this isn’t what I had in mind. This set would just be improved if you swapped many of these move inputs to make sense and then that would naturally lead you to make smarter design choices, not have to spend all this time justifying why the inputs.

Cronus was a real fun set to read, and it goes a long way that you went to the trouble of showing off all the weapons/moves in images for a change! It's palpable how much you care about the character and make this into an AAA production. For starters, even more so than Guldo, this is a pure time stop set with no cop outs. The way the mechanic works is pretty clever in treating hits as currency for him to recharge his time stop, Kitanji had a similar mechanic but I actually prefer what you did here. You then have the smart and logical minion mechanic of hitting them to earn the hits easier, and it's definitely nice to see you try and balance this mechanic by giving him slow ways to summon both the minions as well as the clock. It's a little bit of a missed opportunity not meshing in the revival clock as a positioning tool or his melee up special, but at least it's there. The moves are some of your best at melee range simply for their imaginative animations. I like seeing all these different weapons and making a big deal out of their properties. Although I'm not sure I read how you deal with multihit moves or other outliers for the time stop mechanic? I would guess they all count as 1 hit for that.

I definitely liked the smash section although I'm not sure the forward smash is very extreme in its start lag and definitely did not need to be quite that slow, and generally the set might benefit from some super armour on moves that are that slow. When time is stopped, Cronus tries and makes a big deal out of moves interacting differently just by being in the time stop and mostly, it's just a way to get out different versions of projectiles and manipulating them around. I feel that in this respect, its direct comparison Guldo had a more succinct method, but Cronus definitely tries its utmost to give some fun mechanics for when you do manage to get the time stop off.

As far as criticism goes, I'm not sure that cronus should really get a Time Stop right off the bat if I'm reading it right. He should have to earn even that one. The set also has an interesting but unfinished feeling mechanic of having to press a button to do a second hit for many of the moves. This would've been a much better mechanic, and could easily be still if you gave some kind of negative for missing the second hit's timing, as it's way too vague at the moment. Maybe losing one of his "hits" if he doesn't time it correctly? As right now, this whole mechanic just seems like it's asking for abuse and the player to spam at the right time, so it's pretty worthless. This could also have worked into the way the hitboxes and time stop works to give some further depth to the character... but for now just working in any negative for it and being more specific about how exact the time is would really help. Overall though I'm happy how this set came out. It's definitely your strongest this contest not having read Bomb King yet and I hope there's more sets in this style from you in the future!

Bomb King is a little different from your usual set in that it goes for a simple concept, bombs, and has a very straightforward way of executing it compared to some of your other movesets that focus on complex mechanics and heavy, almost web-like interactions. If anything I agree with Muno that it'd be better in some cases to just have no interaction at all and let the moves themselves and their effects be more distinctive, but on the whole you carry off the execution well. I was not a big fan of how much you reused the gimmick of making bombs, on almost every move, and that was a big negative. I'd hope you'd do some more creative things like have the Villager fsmash, kick a bomb, make more out of the bomb as a direct hitbox, it was bordering on being one of those old "manipulate thing by hitting it around" only making the thing on the same input. But I guess in the end, it's done just about good enough I can forgive it for that.