The Clones of Super Smash Bros Ultimate - A Review and Analysis

"The sake of everyone's sanity"
Wow that doesn't even make any sense, please stop throwing outdated mental health-related words like it's confetti

is that a fucking rivals of aether character backair in your intro

I think while many of the FE characters have a slight variance the big issue is that all the "Marths" share attacks.

Marth and Roy are basically old Mario and Doctor Mario. Marth is almost 1:1 with Lucina. Ike was unique then Chrom came and shares stuff between Marth/Ike. Out of these 4 characters they all massively share moves. These characters do not exclusively use swords in their games.

I don't think any reps have the same level of overlap which is what helps make FE so hated but also the fact if you used the Smash FE team as a team in an FE game you'll lose miserably for ignoring the weapon triangle so it doesn't even represent the games well. You'd have to not know FE to even think these characters remotely represent the game in more then visuals which makes them absolutely abysmal reps on par with Ganondorf. Imagine having 4 Ganondorfs.


The closest possible comparison for this is Mario, Dr. Mario and Luigi.
...and they all have at least 1 completely unique special move.
And if Gooigi is added they will be the Chrom of these characters.

I'm sad that there was never an echo fighters pass. It'd add alot more characters, they're easier to make, they'd probably be cheaper DLC, and people wouldn't have as high of expectations compared to actual DLC characters.

I honestly wish ALL the echo fighters had some notable difference. Like, all their hitboxes and stats should be tweaked, but use the same animations (which is the only really hard part of making their movesets, I know from my experience modding Brawl). The echo fighters should be like Marth compared to Lucina, Ken compared to Ryu, or in Daisy's case, Mario vs. Dr. Mario level differences.

And honestly Doc should be considered an echo fighter. It doesn't matter if his moves are slightly different he still has the same animations and he's literally Mario. Pichu should be considered an echo too.

The fact that neither toon link nor young link have a music based attack is a sin I don’t care how hard it would be to implement it would work

Lucina/Chrom who voted for you again?

Um, Dark Samus and Samus are visually identical to me. I am at a total loss as to why Dark Samus is here at all.

Haven't watched the video yet, but Peach is obviously the clone. Not Daisy. Right?

As happy as I am with Daisy's inclusion in the game, the outcome was definitely underwhelming. I also thought about the idea of giving Daisy some of Peach's moves from Melee (resurrecting the explosion from Peach Bomber, the beautifully broken down smash, or the forward throw bitch slap that actually KO'd)
While I definitely have so much respect for the amount of resource that goes into development animations for video games, I do think Daisy (and Richter) still got the short end of the stick

Richter's status as an echo is disappointing to say the least, but it's also the one I wholeheartedly understand the inclusion of from a design standpoint alone. To explain what I mean, consider if the devs only pulled from Simon's games for his Smash design. You're losing the up special, down tilt, dash attack, down air, and Final Smash and what realistically could they replace those with? But at the same time they couldn't make Richter the actual fighter because let's face it, Simon is the Castlevania poster boy. He's been in the most games and is easily the most recognizable character from the whole series. The reaction of the majority of people to their reveal trailer is proof enough of that. Even non-Castlevania fans who watched the trailer recognized Simon but when Richter appeared they responded with "Who is this guy"?

I love having Richter in Ultimate, he was my main before Sora showed up (and that's primarily just because I like Rondo of Blood more than Super Castlevania IV), but to make a competent fighter the devs had to pull from more than just Simon's source material so it would've been disingenuous to leave Richter out. Even if I do wish they had done more to differentiate him from Simon, like making his down special operate like it does in Rondo of Blood or Dracula X as just one example, he's the only Echo Fighter that I legitimately would be disappointed if he wasn't there. I agree in that there's clear reason to prefer the FE echoes over their base fighters or either one of the shotos, but if Lucina, Chrom, or Ken were never included I wouldn't feel like anything was missing. This might just be my bias as a Castlevania fan, I acknowledge that, but since a majority of the Belmonts' unique moves comes from Richter it just makes me believe he should've been the base fighter to begin with. But of course, there's no way the devs could leave Simon out given his status as the face of the franchise.

falcondorf is the biggest dissverice to any character and the only clone who is from a different franchise. doctor mario was the laziest clone especially when luigi existed as a semi clone in melee.

Love ur cids

Dark Samus had unique attacks with ingame properties from her role as an assist trophy in Smash 4, so they could have stolen those animations and programmed them onto a playable character.

I feel if they were to change Ganondorf, they'd have to replace him with someone to take that role. Perhaps Black Shadow?

Bro if daisy was melee peach she would be top tier 💀

Would it be so hard for them to make daisies aerials deal more damage but she can’t float cancel ( if peach can’t float cancel than vice versa)

To me a good clone is a character with similar moveset, but their attributes and stats makes for different playstyles. Mario is lighter and more fast paced, allowing to chain combos and juggle more easily. Dr Mario is more heavy but more powerful, making his game more about punishing players and better spacing.

personally i think they should remove echo fighters so people stop making videos like this

I hate Daisy in ultimate. I would actually rather not have her in the game. I thought it was cool that they finally added her, only to be disappointed by a character who is a complete clone. It does not even make sense. SImon and Richter at least have similar weapons in their home series and these distinction are probably only noticed by fans of the series. However, even a casual gamer knows daisy has no relation with toads. Seeing. They could have at the very least, took toad out of her grabs and gave her a unique neutral B. I don't know why I hate it so much, I just do.

I don't actually know much about smash and competitive viability (i haven't played it in years) but dark pit is my favorite character in kid icarus uprising just because of his arc throughout the game, and I'd love to see him have more difference from light pit.

Well rip

“We could boost the damage of charge shot and missiles”

45% from 2 projectiles

daisy should've been a costume instead if a fighter,also she suck's and shoud've not got in smash ultimate

Seems like he just wanted to have his main buffed when he talked about Dark Pit.

February, 2022…

Not a single echo fighter was added.

Patches stopped.

Daisy will forever remain a glorified skin with her own slot. The only echo fighter who is 100% exactly the same as their source and gives NO reason to pick one over the other…

They cheated dark samus so hard that they didn't even have her theme.

I still wish chrom was his own character and lucina was an echo of him since in awakening she literally uses his up special and shared a ton of stuff with chrom as well

I get why they didn’t but I’m still not sure why they added her first

I want to say that what you said at the beginning needs to be heard by everyone. "Why do we have to have a clone instead of an original character?" Like you said the choices isn't between a character like dark pit or Geno, It's dark pit or no dark pit

MockRock referring to Dark Samus as “It” made me feel very satisfied. People often forget Metroids don’t have genders.

Jeanne is like the perfect Echo character from Bayonetta to include, but they didn't :(

What's a clone? I've never heard of that. Are they like echos or something?

You wont like the final smash patch

For most clones they are diffrent enough as to where you can prefer say, roy to marth or Toon Link to Young Link which I think is the best way to do them

Isn't Richter also slightly faster than Simon?

Still pissed dark pit doesn't use his Staff more

Whenever I wanna see what a character could have been I just play rivals of aether workshop, like WS kirby is amazing

Suprised Pikachu and Pichu wasnt mentioned

Fire Emblem bois still winning even with clones. Anime swordsmen rise up!

Pichu: Perfect how he is (could use a buff because although they are very different he is just basically a worse pikachu)

Dr Mario (also perfect how he is but could go with a buff because he is also just a worse Mario) also I’d give him a tether grab/ Zair as a stethoscope, because 1 it would separate him more from Mario, fit his doctor appearance and help his bad recovery by giving him more options off stage with a zair recovery.

Ganon (Fine how he is however we would like an overhaul, he doesn’t play anything like Falcon but that we would still like a new moveset for him)

Roy (Roy is completely fine and is really different from marth now)

Young link (fine how he is, he plays nothing like link does, however he is really similar to toon link, and I would love to see his masks in his final smash)

Toon link (he feels to similar to young link and although there are some differences he is just a worse young link and needs some more differences)

Ken (completely fine how he is shouldn’t even be an echo fighter)

Chrom (completely perfect how he is, similar to Roy but not too similar, this is what all echo fighters should be)

Dark pit (his neutral b and side b have differences so why not make his up and down b have differences from pit as well?) (I know people want him to have his staff but echo fighters are supposed to be easy to make and he already has it in his final smash, hopefully they nerf final smashes next smash game and they can finally be legal.) but dark pit overall is almost perfect, but he is above average for an echo fighter.

Lucina (Lucina plays nothing like marth but that’s not really a good thing, she just is a better marth and can slam while marth can’t, they need to either buff Marths tippers or give Lucina more differences to allow people to prefer marth over Lucina competitively. They should be like Roy and Chrom, they have one aspect of their sword different and should also have one special different. (I believe all echos should have at least two major differences, Roy, Chrom, pit and dark pit all do but Lucina and marth only have one.

Now we get into people with 0 major differences

Daisy/Dark Samus/ Richter. Change them please. Give daisy less air mobility and less float but faster on ground a higher jump and side b travels farther. Also give her different items from her down b which wouldn’t be a major difference as it’s quite rare to get them but is super easy to do because the items are already in game assets.

Dark Samus, I’ve never played a Metroid game, idk what dark samus does. Maybe make her like dark pit where her charge shot charges up faster and travels faster and does more damage but has way less knock back. And make her rockets more controllable, but deal less damage. Or vice versa make her have less control but more damage. Idk. Make her up b deal more damage but travel less distance etc etc.

Richter, I’ve never played castlevania either but maybe make his whip stronger than Simon but simons b moves are better. Or vice versa, maybe give ricther a better recovery but make his projectiles slightly worse. Maybe make one faster than the other maybe make one heavier than the other idk.

If I’m forgetting anyone pls let me know

imma comment on a 1 year old lmao.











Lord Fredrick would be King K Rool's echo

Echo fighter are just a good marketed way of saying lazy clones.

I’m just impressed you had that insight into game design as a child to be disappointed by character clones…

Hot take: I kinda think it’s cool that there are two characters that are the exact same but with different looks, honestly it’s just fanservice and I really enjoy it. What gets ME is that there’s no Shadow when there was a PERFECT OPPORTUNITY FOR ANOTHER SONIC REP, ARGGGGH!!!!