Original review of open beta, for posterity:


I've played smash competitively since Melee. I love melee, but after I moved away from it for a few years, returning felt impossible. I enjoyed smash 4, but really hit my stride with ultimate - it actually felt balanced pretty well, and the community was strong and it was just generally an excellent experience, but I never excelled.

Sitting down with multiverse was like the clouds parting. For the first time ever, release to cancel fast fall, KBI that just works, intuitive cancelling and attack stringing - Every single character feels great. Never in 20 years of platform fighters have I ever legitimately thought I could main random and have fun with it.

Now don't get me wrong - Finn, Jake and Iron Giant are my favorites to play as so far. I absolutely hate game of thrones and but aria is plenty of fun to play and just, all these characters that I don't like their source, they still feel deeply fluid to play.

While the movement is generally pretty consistent, with some exceptions - iron giant sticks out - those exceptions are a ton of functional fun, and the actual inputs, the behaviors of each character vary wildly, from what attacks are chargable, autocombo, or cancellable into other attacks in extremely smooth ways that just all feels super natural. Everything I want to have happen in smash just... happens here. Do I miss shielding? Sure, but not as much as I love the crazy wavedash jump that feels lifted right out of celeste.

The netcode is also crazy solid. I was playing on low quality public wifi, very slow, on steamdeck to test out, and it does an excellent job compensating, and is just a ton of fun.

This might be relevant, too - I was beating one of my main smash buds who is usually a bit better than me, almost constantly, and even online I'm easily getting 60%+ win rate, it feels like the matchmaking is really good and generally is keeping the skill levels close. I'm super excited to see how the meta in this game evolves, and it's AWESOME how much money was poured into it for EVO, that's sure to help keep the community alive, which is wonderful.

The last thing I should talk about in what turned into a long, gushing review 9 people will read - the microtransactions and monetizations are extremely ethical. You can unlock all characters via playing, they are all playable offline so you can play couch co op forever, for free! with the whole roster! which also makes it great for feeling out each character. You can spend 40 bucks and unlock the whole roster and like, 10 more characters when they come out so that seems to beat smash on paper, but you can spend nothing and unlock them by playing, although I caved and bought a founders pack because I wanted everyone online immediately.

TL:DR I friggin love multiverse. it really feels like a smash game designed with a deep love for fluid, high flow gameplay. It's floating, but it's an asset you will probably come to love. Space animal mains, I'm not sorry - go play melee.