A Comprehensive Defense of Swordfighters

In this post, I will be taking a critical look at the claims “there are too many swordfighters in Smash”, “all of the swordfighters play the same”, and “Fire Emblem in Smash is overrepresented”. If such a nerdy topic offends you, you don’t care for ultimately inconsequential arguments, or you want to continue to endlessly hate swordfighters in Smash, I recommend skipping this one.

Either way, I’m pretty tired of hearing all of it, and I need to finally get my thoughts down on the subject.

But Why?

Like I said, I’m just really tired of hearing it. As someone who plays Smash competitively and has a large part of their internet presence Smash-focused, it’s difficult to go a day without reading a tweet or Discord message complaining or joking about the prevalence of swordfighters, anime, or Fire Emblem. Even if it’s a joke, one that is repeated every day gets old. It’s been old for years, and it’s still prevalent… really prevalent. For example, the first article I read about the latest fighter, Sora, brought this up three times in only seven paragraphs.

Sora is the latest in a long line of blade-based fighters in Smash Bros.

Finally, he has a counter, in case you didn’t have enough of those from all the Fire Emblem fighters.

Mostly, Ultimate features heroes from Fire Emblem, but some non-Nintendo stars are also included.

https://kotaku.com/and-the-final-super-smash-bros-ultimate-character-is-1847800144

Like, holy shit. We get it. This article demonstrates this attitude well, I think. This isn’t a cherry-picked example – this is genuinely the first one I read for Sora, and several other sites mention it multiple times in their respective articles. Jesus Christ, get over it.

I think it’s worth it to take an objective look at just how real this notion is.

Roster Breakdown

The idea that all of the swordfighters play the same (or even similarly for that matter) is nonsense. Let’s take a look at how every character with any bladed weapon uses it. For the record, I don’t think that anyone literally thinks that these characters all play identically, but for the sake of completeness, this breakdown is going to be exhaustive. If you’re already familiar with every character’s moveset, then you can skip this part.

I really didn’t need to break every single one of these down, but my point was that no, not every character with a bladed weapon has a similar moveset.

A Tangent on Clones and “Derivativeness”

Fighting Game developers sometimes make Clone characters, because it’s easier to create a character based on another instead of from scratch.

Some characters are more similar to their source than others, and this is why terms like “semi-clone” exist.

However, this quickly approaches a Ship of Theseus kind of problem. If you switch the parts out, is it still the same character? How many attribute changes, moveset differences, and visual distinctions do you need to make before a character is a semi-clone, and until a character is de-cloned completely? You could perhaps quantify these, but really what’s considered a clone and semi-clone at all is mostly just based on feel. (Or, in Smash Ultimate’s case, the Echo Fighter label.) At which point exactly does a derived character become a semi-clone or de-cloned completely isn’t an exact science, and it doesn’t really need to be, but since we’re going deep into the issue for this post, we might as well explore the idea.

Back in Smash 4, there was evidence in the game’s code/assets to suggest that Cloud was based on Ike, and Bayonetta was based on Zero Suit Samus. In Ultimate, there’s evidence that Piranha Plant was based on Bowser Jr., and there’s even a hint (although it could be a mistake) that Min Min is based on Captain Falcon. Also, we know for certain that Ridley in SSBU is derived from Charizard, but practically no one would call this pair of characters cloned. I could construe the movesets of the two to be similar – exact same dash speed, both have a frame 8 neutral air that spins their tails, fire projectile neutral special, frame 9 down tilt. This is an intentional abstraction to exaggerate similarities between them. My point is, if you really wanted to, you could call any characters “derivatives” if you really looked for similarities.

Deriving a character from another isn’t necessarily lazy. I have no idea what it’s like to develop a fighting game, but I imagine it’s significantly easier to have a basis for all of the relevant data and moves, than to start a character from absolutely nothing. The following is a bit of an abstraction, but it gets the point across.

Consider the following Minecraft recipe:

Minecraft stores its recipes as JSON, and the first recipe looks like this:

{
  "type": "minecraft:crafting_shaped",
  "pattern": [
    "###",
    "#X#",
    "###"
  ],
  "key": {
    "#": {
      "item": "minecraft:obsidian"
    },
    "X": {
      "item": "minecraft:ender_eye"
    }
  },
  "result": {
    "item": "minecraft:ender_chest"
  }
}

Let’s say I’m a developer and I want to add a new recipe, for the Golden Carrot, to the game. I know in my head what I want the recipe to look like. I also know there’s a recipe with a similar pattern to what I want that’s already in the game. I want the pattern to be the same, because that’s the design decision I have made. So I copy-paste the previous recipe, and change only three values:

{
  "type": "minecraft:crafting_shaped",
  "pattern": [
    "###",
    "#X#",
    "###"
  ],
  "key": {
    "#": {
      "item": "minecraft:gold_nugget"
    },
    "X": {
      "item": "minecraft:carrot"
    }
  },
  "result": {
    "item": "minecraft:golden_carrot"
  }
}

And the resulting recipe in-game:

This doesn’t make me a lazy developer. This makes me an efficient developer. ^{I am aware that Minecraft developers used data generators instead of writing out JSON, but this gets my idea across.}

Thinking that something is lazy only because it’s derivative, is, more often than not, an overly cynical way to look at it – especially for a Triple-A title. If something looks similar, it’s because it was intentionally designed to be similar. In the case of the Golden Carrot, it’s intuitive and easy-to-remember for recipes to look like this, so it’s a good design choice to use the same pattern. Something being derivative does not necessarily indicate a developer was lazy.

With all that said, I’m not going to kid you. The four swordfighters that are complained about the most as far as their sameness goes – Marth, Lucina, Roy, and Chrom – have obviously and objectively derivative movesets. But you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. The differences between all four of them are meaningful. It’s probably a lot harder to notice this in casual play, but at the end of the day competitive players are bound to how characters are designed. That is to say, the characters have meaningful differences regardless of how you play the game.

Regarding Similarities

It’s often brought up that a lot of swordfighters have identical down specials, and I’d like to bring up that a lot of characters across the cast have similar moves in general. Even still, there is obvious differences between “similar” moves. For instance, Mario’s neutral special bounces on the ground, while Luigi’s neutral special just flies in a straight line and is unaffected by gravity. Both Link and Palutena’s side specials act differently depending on whether or not the control stick was tilted or smashed, but Link’s boomerang returns to him. Lucario, Mewtwo, and Samus all have charged projectiles neutral specials. Mario, Captain Falcon, and Zero Suit Samus all have up aerials where they do a flip and send the opponent upwards. I can go on…

Hell, at least a tenth of characters in this game share a “lingering kick” neutral aerial, but it would be ridiculous to call Fox derivative of Mario. There is just types of moves in Smash – they are the same general idea, but have obvious differences in their properties. This does not mean they are derivative, they just work or look similarly. For every single hitbox, damage, knockback angle, startup, active frames, recovery frames, are all different design choices that effect how the move works. Regarding counters, Marth’s counter is drastically different from, say, Shulk’s; Marth stays in place and hits the opponent, while Shulk’s moves back or forward (which may result in him not hitting the opponent that he countered). Not to mention, counters have wildly different “activation” frames and damage multipliers.

There’s a ton of certainly intentional differences like this between moves that are thought of as “literally the same” across the whole cast. For example, Richter’s down special Holy Water is not considered a fire hitbox, and will not set off Link’s remote bomb or other explosive items, unlike Simon’s Holy Water. This is a meaningful difference that I feel like casual players are more likely to notice; that is to say, these differences aren’t all extremely specific – these differences are designed this way, and they are meaningful.

Different moves can be visually similar and have drastically different function. Characters have a lot of different moves that can fit into different categories. Moves that are similar still have meaningful differences between them. That’s just how Smash, and by extension fighting games, work.

No, There Isn’t Four Marths

I touched on this earlier, but here’s a more verbose description of the differences between the so-called “Marth Clones”.

• Marth is a slightly floaty (fall speed is tied for 41st fastest) zoner who keeps opponents out with his sword, combos them, then edgeguards. At the end of his sword on all of his attacks is a sweetspot often called the “tipper”. Hitting the sweetspot does more damage and knockback. Marth rewards spacing and precision.
• Lucina is an Echo of Marth. Her blade is equalized; she has no tipper, but in return she can’t deal quite as much damage or score KOs quite as early. However, she’s much easier to play as a result.
• Roy is very fast and rushes opponents down. Unlike Marth and Lucina, he’s a fastfaller (tied for 11th fastest fall speed). Instead of a sweetspot at the tip of his sword, there’s a very weak sourspot. His sweetspot is at the hilt of his sword. In all of his attacks, he swings closer to his body to reflect this. His sword has a fire hitbox on several moves
• Chrom is an Echo of Roy. Unlike Roy, he doesn’t have a sourspot – his whole sword is quite strong. To balance this out, he has a different, weak, linear (intercept-able) up special, Aether, like Ike’s. He doesn’t have any fire hitboxes.

Calling Roy a clone of Marth would be correct if you were talking about Melee. In Ultimate, Marth and Roy have been differentiated to the point of fulfilling different character archetypes, and as such can hardly be considered clones.

If we really want to get into it, there is a high degree of attention to detail in all four’s movesets. Roy and Chrom always swing with their upper body and upper arm, while Marth and Lucina swing with their forearm. This obviously reflects the location of the sweetspots in their moves. Take a look at Marth and Roy’s forward aerial:

You can plainly see that Marth swings his sword a lot more elegantly than Roy. You can also see here that theses attacks have different launch angles, which determine where the opponent gets knocked back to and what moves Marth/Roy can follow up with. The following is Lucina and Chrom’s jab:

Once again, Lucina swings more elegantly with her forearm while Chrom swings with his upper body and upper arm. And once again, these moves have different follow-up options. In fact, Lucina has a second hit of Jab, while Chrom only has one.

I could go through every single move between Marth and Roy and explain how each is different, but I think I’ve gotten the point across: knowing how to play Marth is a very different from knowing how to play Roy. Not only do the pairs fill very distinct character archetypes, but the echos have obviously meaningful differences between them as well. In fact, I’d like to highlight an extremely specific difference between Roy and Chrom. Here’s part of the move script (the Lua script that defines hitboxes – thanks to Rubendal’s Data Viewer) for both Roy and Chrom’s neutral aerial:

frame(Frame=15)
if(is_excute){
ATTACK(ID=0, Part=0, Bone=hash40("armr"), Damage=8.5, Angle=50, KBG=105, FKB=0, BKB=50, Size=5.6, X=0.0, Y=0.0, Z=-1.5, X2=LUA_VOID, Y2=LUA_VOID, Z2=LUA_VOID, Hitlag=1.3, SDI=1.0, Clang_Rebound=ATTACK_SETOFF_KIND_ON, FacingRestrict=ATTACK_LR_CHECK_POS, SetWeight=true, ShieldDamage=0, Trip=0.0, Rehit=0, Reflectable=false, Absorbable=false, Flinchless=false, DisableHitlag=false, Direct_Hitbox=true, Ground_or_Air=COLLISION_SITUATION_MASK_GA, Hitbits=COLLISION_CATEGORY_MASK_ALL, CollisionPart=COLLISION_PART_MASK_ALL, FriendlyFire=false, Effect=hash40("collision_attr_cutup"), SFXLevel=ATTACK_SOUND_LEVEL_M, SFXType=COLLISION_SOUND_ATTR_ROY_HIT, Type=ATTACK_REGION_SWORD)

frame(Frame=15)
if(is_excute){
ATTACK(ID=0, Part=0, Bone=hash40("armr"), Damage=6.65, Angle=50, KBG=105, FKB=0, BKB=50, Size=5.6, X=0.0, Y=0.0, Z=-1.5, X2=LUA_VOID, Y2=LUA_VOID, Z2=LUA_VOID, Hitlag=1.0, SDI=1.0, Clang_Rebound=ATTACK_SETOFF_KIND_ON, FacingRestrict=ATTACK_LR_CHECK_POS, SetWeight=false, ShieldDamage=0, Trip=0.0, Rehit=0, Reflectable=false, Absorbable=false, Flinchless=false, DisableHitlag=false, Direct_Hitbox=true, Ground_or_Air=COLLISION_SITUATION_MASK_GA, Hitbits=COLLISION_CATEGORY_MASK_ALL, CollisionPart=COLLISION_PART_MASK_ALL, FriendlyFire=false, Effect=hash40("collision_attr_cutup"), SFXLevel=ATTACK_SOUND_LEVEL_M, SFXType=COLLISION_SOUND_ATTR_CHROM_HIT, Type=ATTACK_REGION_SWORD)

That’s right – the second hit of Roy’s neutral aerial deals the same knockback regardless of the opponent’s weight, while Chrom’s does not. I’m confident this is intentional, as this is defined in three distinct hitboxes. This is swapped with the first hit for Chrom, which effects the combo routes for both characters. Not only may dragdown combos differ, but Roy has a much harder time killing with neutral aerial than Chrom.

Dissecting the Hate

Really, there’s multiple arguments at play here. One is “the characters that use swords in their movesets are too similar”, and another is “My preferred choice for DLC didn’t get in because <insert swordfighter here> took their slot.” The former is an opinion, and although it’s one I disagree with, I can understand why people see it that way. The latter is actually just irrational. I would argue these two separate arguments often come together to form irrational swordfighter hate, and that if we look closely they are contradictory when used this way. The fact of the matter is that clone characters do not take as much development time as fully original characters, and can’t be considered as taking up development time for potential fully-unique DLC fighters.

Just look at Chrom – his model is literally lower quality than the rest of the cast (because it’s actually copy-pasted from Robin’s Final Smash and rigged to Roy’s skeleton), and he is, of course, an echo of Roy. He really can’t be said to be taking up a “slot”. This is exactly why the developers of Smash Ultimate created the “Echo Fighter” notation – to demonstrate that these characters did not take significant development time, and as such did not take up a “slot” in the roster.

An entirely separate argument, that is also for some reason lumped into swordfighter hate, is that the Fire Emblem series specifically is overrepresented in Smash. There is truth to this; this argument is more based in numbers than in feeling. The Fire Emblem series has not enjoyed as much sales worldwide as similarly-represented franchises. That said, this is still an overblown argument. For starters, the nature of Fire Emblem – having a different cast for every entry – and the nature of Smash Ultimate – bringing every single character that has ever been in the Smash to this new entry – necessitates that there are more Fire Emblem characters than there perhaps would be if this was just another entry in the Smash Bros. series. I really do not see how this is a downside at all. The game has more content. Someone out there is extremely happy Corrin (for instance) wasn’t cut, and there’s absolutely no reason you should be upset that (unproblematic) content wasn’t removed from a game.

If we’re arguing about “slots”, we have to consider development time of each character, and like I mentioned earlier Echo Fighters simply do not take up as much time as fully unique characters. With this in mind, there is only six numbered Fire Emblem characters, out of a cast of more than eighty characters. Even if you count echoes as half a character, then the number is only seven. The widespread outrage of Fire Emblem’s presence is unjustified and much more of a meme or hate-circlejerk than it is an actual problem with the design of the game. Realistically, most if not all of Fire Emblem’s presence in Smash is just a consequence of both game’s natures. Similarly, the large presence of the Pokémon series is representative of its nature – having an entirely new cast of monsters for every generation. The reason there’s so many Fire Emblem: Awakening characters in Smash Ultimate is the same as the reason there’s so many Generation 1 Pokémon: both are the most prolific and influential entries.

(sidenote: Ken is barely an Echo Fighter of Ryu and I don’t understand why they classified him as such. Every one of his attacks is different, he has different base stats, and different motion input moves as well.)

Re: Byleth

I’m biased. I won’t deny it. I like Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and enjoy playing Byleth in Smash. That said, I can’t wrap my head around the sheer amount of outrage from this character’s inclusion.

Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the 6th DLC character for Smash Ultimate. This statement alone infuriated countless people, and disappointed countless more. Of course, anyone is welcome to their own opinion, but a lot of the justification for the widespread negative reaction to this character was poor at best.

Firstly, it’s often claimed that this inclusion was purely a marketing move by Nintendo, and that “no one wanted this character”. It would be ignorant to deny that Nintendo does put characters in Smash to promote the upcoming game. We know they do this, and it makes sense, from a business perspective. Smash is much larger than a lot of the series that it consists of. However, at the time of Byleth’s release, the game had already been out for several months and was very well received. It had mostly exited Nintendo’s marketing sphere. Actually, at this point Nintendo was trying to sell Fire Emblem: Three Houses DLC, which could obviously only be bought be customers who already own the base game. Byleth’s announcement was often directly compared to Corrin’s, “to advertise a game that hadn’t even been released yet”, which was observably false for Byleth’s case.

As for the part about nobody wanting Byleth, me and plenty others are a living example to the contrary. I adore Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and I did very much want to see representation of it in Smash. However, I feared they would add Edelgard, the game’s villain, who represents only one of the titular three houses. I could not have asked for better representation of the whole game in Byleth’s moveset.

A significant amount of the outrage was the idea that “Nintendo lied to us” regarding the content of Smash’s first DLC pass. This originates from a quote from Reggie Fils-Aimé that was, for some reason, interpreted to mean that all of the DLC characters would be from series that do not already have fighters in Smash. What he actually said was “These are going to be characters that are new to the series, just like Joker from Persona 5” (video embedded below). Nowhere did he or anyone from Nintendo ever state that the Fighter’s Pass would not contain first-party character(s), or characters from already-represented series. The Fighter’s Pass characters prior to Byleth happening to all be third-party only reinforced this false idea.

Furthermore, as described near the top of this post, the only similarity Byleth has to the rest of the Fire Emblem characters is that they use a sword in some of their moves. Byleth uses the three different weapons of the titular houses, and collectively those weapons are more present in the moveset than the sword. This was obvious even in the initial trailer, but even still people claimed the new character will be identical to the other Fire Emblem characters.

You can be disappointed. You can wish it would have been your preferred DLC pick. You don’t have to like Fire Emblem. But to continue to be up in arms about Byleth’s inclusion being disappointing is beating a dead horse of your own unreasonable expectations.