TL;DR
If you want a fun smash bros clone without paywalls, just buy Slap City or Rivals of Aether or ♥♥♥♥ it, Brawlout.


Introduction
I really love super smash bros and I've been taking a look at some super smash bros clone games to see what other developers had in mind or what interesting gameplay they that makes them exceptional to what smash bros. had. When I took a look at Icons: Combat Arena, I was in for a treat.... or that's what I thought I was in for. This game is what happens when Super Smash Bros: Melee and Overwatch have a bastard baby, let's delve in...

Characters
I'll start off by saying that the character roster is weak and even the characters themselves are not great. They're mostly just carbon copies of what melee fans main as, but with fan made overwatch skins thrown onto them. For example zhurong (or as I like to call her "sword girl #1), is just marth but with some of the special moves changed. Or what about Kidd who is just a fox clone and his voice sounds like as if he's Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank... in fact, he almost kinda does reminds me so much of Ratchet. For those other characters that aren't carbon melee clones, They're alright, mediocre good. The only character (well actually characters) that I find interesting is Afi and Galu, it's two characters in one sorta like how zelda and sheik were two playable characters in one, I also love their character design and the fact that one of them controls fire and the other controls water, their moveset isn't interesting though. Unfortunately that's the only character out of them all that I think is unique. Every other character is an unoriginal melee clones or mediocre. The animation is sometimes either good or clunky.

Why this game shouldn't be free to play (aka ♥♥♥♥ing microtransactions)
When I say overwatch and super smash bros: melee had a baby, I should mention that this game also has lootboxes.... yeah, freakin' lootboxes. Remember when Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) came out and people were angry over the fact that most of this stuff had to be unlocked by lootboxes? Yeah, I sure do. You thought that developers and publishers would learn that lootboxes are NOT good. Well apparently not for some of the developers that gave us the mod, Super Smash Bros: Brawl: Project M. It's not just lootboxes, there's also stuff you can unlock through in-game currency. This includes: taunts, victory poses, avatars and most importantly... characters. I remembered how obsessed I was in unlocking characters in super smash bros. melee and how I did was just playing the game... not spending my hard earn case. If you're going to make a proper smash clone, make sure the characters you can unlock are not through money but through an actually sense of pride and accomplishment. I really hope they make this game pay to play and get rid of all these in game purchase ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t. If you want to put lootboxes in a game, put them on a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ iphone clone game, not on a smash bros clone.

Controls
The controls are sometimes finicky. When I'm trying to do a sidestep, it doesn't do it but instead it gives me a shield. When I want to use a forward attack move it sometimes gives me neutral attack move. It really doesn't feel like smash bros at most times when I play with these controls.

Soundtrack, Sound Design, voice acting
The sound design is really bad, every time I hear the hit sound effects (and I may not be the only one) I feel like I'm hearing legos falling like in one of those lego games i would play when I was a kid. Some of the sounds are fine but most of them are bad. The voice acting doesn't help either sometimes. Every time I execute a special smash move, they sometimes make the same sound over and over. Why not just get at least 3 different voice clips for these attacks? The soundtrack also feels like overwatch, just like what this game feels like

The Lore
Every time I load up a game, there's all this lore in the loading screen. It sounds interesting, but only problem is that there isn't that much detail on who these characters are, what this combat arena is and that sort of stuff. I'm kinda interested in this stuff.


Conclusion
This game had so much potential, I gave this game a shot, I gave it chances but in the end it's yet another game filled with paywalls. I don't know what went wrong with the development and why they chose to put paywalls even though people are fed up with this crap. Although this is in early access, there's probably going to be more added into the game and hopefully they'll get rid of this paywall garbage, fix up the controls, make the voice acting better, fix up the ugly sound design, add more details on the world build of this game, add more original characters (NOT melee clones) and hopefully this game will have my attention more and I'll probably change the review. For now, I wish the best of luck to the developers, Wave Dash Studios and what they have created, I hope that they're listening to not just my review but other reviewers.