It honestly feels unnecessary to write a review for a Super Smash Bros game. Every time a new entry in series comes out, it’s basically a worldwide event. Like, at this point, Smash Bros is essentially the biggest game franchise of all time. Almost no one needs my opinion to decide if they’re going to buy this one; most people’s minds were made up the moment they saw the first teaser.

That said, it’s been a year since the game dropped and I’ve played like 100 hours of it—with much of that in single-player modes, so not exactly the main event—and I have a few thoughts I’d like to share. Feel free to disregard if you’re not into it.

First off, before this game was released there was much discussion over whether it should be considered a port of Super Smash Bros for WiiU/3DS (aka Smash 4), or a true sequel. Due to the many similarities in characters, stages, and gameplay, a sizable contingent of players had called it “Smash 4.5”, an upgraded version of the last game. At this point though, we can put that argument to bed. Honestly, Smash 4 had been so solid that merely an updated version of that game would’ve been fine by me, but they’ve added so, so much to Ultimate. And real gameplay changes too—not just new fighters, stages, and such. For my money, this definitely feels like a brand new entry in the Smash series. The inclusion of Spirits and a whole new story/adventure mode are big differentiators too.

As crazy as Smash has always been, the sheer number of characters included this time around—including every fighter that’s ever been playable previously—is legitimately staggering. With the likes of Little Mac, the Hero from Dragon Quest, Mega Man, Pit, and Simon Belmont now all playable fighters—plus Bomberman and Excitebike appearing as Assist Trophies—it really feels like the NES era is fully represented in all its 8-bit glory. For those of us who grew up watching schlocky cartoons like Captain N: The Game Master, this is a dream come true. I mean, Jesus, they even have the Duck Hunt dog and R.O.B. the Robot as fighters. This is madness!

As a diehard Street Fighter fan, I was ridiculously pumped when Ryu was included as a DLC fighter in Smash 4. In fact, buying Ryu in Smash 4 marked the first time I’ve ever spent money on added downloadable content. Then Nintendo went one step further and included Ken as an echo fighter in Ultimate, and he’s way looks better in this game than he does in SFV! Hell, even more recently they even added SNK’s all-star Terry Bogard. Shut up and take my money!

On the gameplay side, Smash Ultimate makes a very strong case for deserving its grandiose title. Most competitive players will cite Melee as the single best Smash Bros game; it’s considered the pinnacle of Smash. Melee’s gameplay is certainly the fastest and it’s still played competitively to this day. While Brawl disappointed, and even Smash 4 was somehow not good enough, I think Ultimate may finally have a claim for the throne.

Now, I’m a super casual Smash player so take this with a grain of salt, but the gameplay in Ultimate feels downright perfect to me. The action is fast and furious, yet the speed doesn’t feel overclocked. The big hits from basically every character feel substantial and heavy, so connecting each blow feels satisfying. And that goes a long way in making a fighting game fun to play.

Oh, and the critical hits, oh my gawd! Critical hits are so freaking sweet, it cannot be overstated how much this little effect improves the feel of the game. I can’t believe we didn’t have these before.

Smash

Obviously you will be spending most of your time with Smash in this mode, it’s where the multiplayer is.

Ultimate allows you to make custom rule sets and save them for quick selection, which is handy for a game with this many options. There’s Time vs Stock, Percentage vs Stamina, Smash Ball vs Super Meters, Items vs No Items vs Some Items (with some disabled)—commence decision paralysis!

Ironically, while the game already presents the player with way too many choices, there are two options that I wish we got as well. Just like you can decide which specific items to include/exclude, I wish they had included the same level of fine-grain to control their Assist Trophies and Pokemon.

Assist Trophies are some of my favorite items in the game, summoning classic characters to back you up on the battlefield. Utilizing a trophy to reveal the likes of Guile, Bomberman, Grey Fox (from Metal Gear Solid), or Shovel Knight is indisputably awesome. But not all assists are equal, and the variety of Assist Trophies in the game runs quite the spectrum—some of them are just plain annoying. The Devil (from Devil World) moves the screen around, inconveniencing everyone. The Nintendogs simply obstruct your view of the screen, which is truly unnecessary in a game already notorious for being hard to follow. Similar to this, there are also Pokemon that flip your view of the screen and/or reverse your controls, which is terrible. The option to enable/disable every single Assist Trophy and Pokemon in the game would be welcome.

For the first time in the series, you select your stage before you select your fighters, and that makes a lot of sense. There are, after all, over 100 stages in Ultimate, and you have the option to change any one of them in a stripped down Battlefield or Final Destination-style layout. So the variety in stages is already overwhelming, and then you can design your own custom stages too. Hey, just wait until you see that character select screen, good Lord!

Classic Mode

The Smash Bros take on a traditional arcade mode returns, and this time it’s pretty awesome. I enjoyed Classic Mode so much, I dare to say that it’s far superior to most arcade/story modes I’ve played in recent traditional 1-on-1 fighting games. (Cough, cough) SFV! Tekken! (Cough, cough) There’s a lot of creativity on display here in the kind of setups they devise for individual fighter’s journeys.

Somewhat like the Spirit fights to be discussed later, each fighter’s matchups in Classic Mode follow a theme. Dr. Mario, for example, always faces a trio of the same opponent, one red, one blue, and one yellow; an homage to the viruses he fights in his puzzle game. Every matchup in Ryu’s Classic Mode is a stamina battle, emulating how the fights play out in Street Fighter. And poor Luigi is pitted against the scariest, most fearsome opponents possible in his Classic Mode, referencing the cowardly persona he’s adopted since headlining his own series, Luigi’s Mansion.

Classic Mode always has the same basic structure: six fights, a gold-collecting bonus round, and a final boss fight. (And after that, a space shoot’em up credits sequence!) While most characters will face Master Hand (and Crazy Hand) in the end, some characters take on a different boss in their final round. Marth and Hero (from Dragon Quest) end up facing Monster Hunter dragon Rathalos in their final round, and a couple other fighters face Galleom, a big purple robot from Brawl. But my favorite end boss has to be Dracula, a meticulous Smash recreation of his appearance in classic Castlevania games.

While the World of Light Adventure mode is clearly the bigger/broader single-player experience, I must say that I enjoyed Classic Mode so much, I have completed it with every character. In fact, when first trying to unlock the massive roster, this was my preferred method of do so. Sometimes you just can’t beat a simple, old-school arcade mode.

Adventure Mode: World of Light

World of Light is actually pretty cool; a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. And literally HUGE! Like probably too big, too long, too much, to be honest. But I definitely had a good time playing through it.

Ok, this might be a controversial option, but Subspace Emissary—the story mode in Brawl—kind of sucked. It seemed like it would be this grand, epic narrative, but I don’t remember it being that much fun. Yes, the CG cutscenes were very cool at the time, and seeing the next video was your main motivation for playing through. (Or you could look them up on YouTube.) But there was zero spoken dialogue and the story was just complete non-sense. Plus the actual gameplay ended up being rather dull. Some environments felt bland or repetitive (or both!), though the game-specific stages could be fun to traverse. My biggest criticism of Subspace Emissary though is that all the original enemies they introduced were utterly generic and boring—like rejected designs from a Kingdom Hearts game. But I digress; we’re here to talk about Ultimate not Brawl.

Creepy little man floating by on balloons? Perfect.

As a collectable, spirits take the place of the trophies you had in Melee onward. There’s one to represent a specific character (or group of characters), item, vehicle, or other element from video game history. Unlike the trophies of old—which were meticulously rendered 3D models you could examine closely from any angle—spirits are a single 2D image, often using art directly from the original game. (The classic art is a nice touch too, as some characters’ looks have evolved over time and their spirit image can be a bit surprising.) While it’s kind of sad to see the 3D trophies go, the fact that spirits are 2D means that the developers can add WAY MORE of them to Ultimate. There are 1300+ in the game, plus more to be added in the future through DLC.

It addition to being collectable, spirits can also be equipped to your fighter and act as stat modifiers. And this is where Spirits becomes it own game mode in Smash. Spirit modifiers are are a legitimately cool way to pay homage to tons and tons and tons of games. The devs have very cleverly set up spirit fights using fighters from their deep roster (plus Assist Trophies!), in combination with carefully chosen color options, plus item and stage selection, to create an homage to the spirit character—who you are supposedly fighting in the match. Some of these set ups are straightforward, some are quite funny, some a crazy challenging, and some are sheer brilliance. The amount of love and care that went into so, so many customized matchups is very impressive.

Doc from Punch-Out! is training up my Street Fighters.

The world map in World of Light opts for a playful, hand-painted mural look—which I thought was maybe just a copout at first, but actually comes to feel quite warm and charming. (I imagine this painted map look will age much better than a 3D rendered environment too.) While some areas make the world feel like a general mashed up Nintendo Universe, some sections are very clearly worlds from specific games. For example, there is a Donkey Kong area that is literally the world map from the first area in Donkey Kong Country. Another area is straight-up Dracula’s castle from Castlevania. And the spirits you fight in each of these sections is usually thematically appropriate; i.e., you encounter Death in Dracula’s castle and Waddle Dee in a Kirby-theme area. The world map even extends into space, where you get into some Star Fox fights and the like.

As I mentioned before, WoL is huge. In fact, just when you think you’ve reached the end of the adventure, the world map completely changes and you discover you’ll only halfway through! The challenge of individual fights really varies quite a bit, especially depending on the level of the Primary Spirit you’re using. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that part…

So spirits are a lot more complicated than I’ve explained so far. The main one you equip to your fighter is a Primary Spirit, and it has a) an elemental attribute (Red, Blue, or Green) which acts as a kind of Rock-Paper-Scissors game with your opponent, and b) experience points/a level of 1-99. Yes, your Primary Spirits can level up—and they kind of need to be leveled up if you’re going to have a shot and winning some of the tougher fights. Luckily Spirits mode has gyms and other activities where you can leave your Primaries at to level up, so you don’t have grind it all yourself. Plus, once you have some strong (Legend) Primaries that you’ve beefed up to level 99, pretty much all fights in WoL become a lot more winnable. (Except that Pauline one, that fight is pure bullshit.)

Outside of the WoL adventure, Spirits mode offers a steady stream of smaller challenges in its Spirit Board. These are one-off spirit fights, exactly like you encounter in WoL, but only a handful are presented to you at a time, each one with a timer counting down to its disappearance. Annoyingly though, when you win a Spirit Board fight, you aren’t given the spirit immediately, instead you have to win this weird carnival-style shooting game. And depending on how difficult the fight was, the shield you’re trying to shoot around will move faster and faster. Fail to hit your target and you don’t get the spirit. It’s not the worst thing in the world, necessarily, but it annoys me.

There are also a couple of ways you can unlock new sprits, outside of WoL and the Spirit Board. There are primary spirits will transform into a new one when they reach Level 99. (Yes, between that and the gyms it’s very much like Pokemon…and of course some of the spirits literally are Pokemon!) Additionally, specific spirits can be combined—sacrificed, essentially—to summon a new spirit. The whole thing is way more complicated than it needed to be, but it’s really cool that they put so much effort into this stuff.

Online

I’ll be honest, I’ve barely played Smash online. In my limited experience, it actually plays OK, though I don’t think I’ve ever seen a match without at least some very obvious lag. As usual with the Switch, it’s very hit or miss.

Part of the problem here is likely Nintendo’s lackluster online service, sure, but I'd venture to guess that a bigger issue is just the hybrid nature of the Switch. Because the system is both a home console and a handheld, I believe far more users are playing online using wifi instead of a direct, wired connection. Now I certainly could be wrong here—and maybe I’m just projecting because I still haven’t bought a LAN adapter myself—but I think it’s safe to assume that the majority of Switch players going online are using wifi. And the connection is just never going to be good enough that way.

That said, connections could probably be worse, I haven’t really been disappointed with online play in Ultimate. It’s just that, you know, local multiplayer is where the fun really is anyway. So why bother?

Let’s wrap this up…

Super Smash Bros has always been a celebration of gaming history, and Ultimate is no exception. This game’s roster is titanic, the number of stages is overwhelming, even the amount of Spirits included and all the game modes surrounding them is just freaking crazy. And yet it’s the little details that make every Smash game a masterpiece. Like when Link is at 100% health (at least in Stamina mode), his side smash attacks cause the Master Sword to fire projectiles (along with the appropriate sound effect), just like it did in the original Zelda. They certainly didn’t need to include little touches like that, but they did.

Delivering an overabundance of content, continued support with updates scheduled long after the game’s launch, and already sporting the biggest roster of any fighting game in history, this one really sticks the landing. Super Smash Bros Ultimate is an unstoppable juggernaut that we’re sure to be playing for years to come.