Smash Ultimate: A CRITICAL Retrospective

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a pretty big deal, yeah? Critically acclaimed, has sold like crazy, widely held up as a pillar of platform fighters in a series that remains at the forefront of its style of fighting game. With so many new and returning characters that the Internet practically obsessed over it for nearly four years of speculating over newcomers!

It's also...flawed. No video game is perfect, and this one, too, has its share of blemishes. Including some that've taken until recently to truly stick out.

So in the interest of learning from the past, let's look through the parts of Ultimate that haven't aged so well. My hope here is to analyze its faults constructively, so fans and future developers alike can learn from where things went wrong in order to make Smash 6 (or whatever its name becomes) even better. Hopefully it comes off that way.
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Support via Patreon at:   / delzethin  
Graphic design by Voyager:   / fire_voyager  
Post-production assistance by Neoxon:   / neoxon619  

Additional Sources:
Article – IGN on Nintendo Statement About Smash DLC: https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/12/...
Article – Screen Rant on Smash Ultimate Sales Record: https://screenrant.com/super-smash-br...
Misc. – Smash 64 Hitbox Visualizations: https://nickthename.github.io/ssbfram...
Misc. – Smash Ultimate Metacritic Scores: https://www.metacritic.com/game/super...
Misc. – Smash Wiki Entry on Sephiroth’s Winged Form: https://www.ssbwiki.com/Winged_Form

(For video sources, check the pinned comment! Wasn't enough room to put them all here.)