Ranking EVERY Forward Smash Animation in Smash Ultimate

forward smashes there are a lot of them at this point and i've talked about their power levels recently but i haven't had any kind of animation discussion for a while so today we're gonna rank the animation of every single forward smash and ultimate absolutely everything is on the table here we're talking about creativity technical execution how memorable it is any kind of references thrown in there and this may be somewhat controversial but when appropriate i'm also going to be factoring in sound design that's because the sound of an animation absolutely changes how you perceive it for example look at these two animations back to back [Music] very similar concepts for the move but you feel them very differently i'm looking forward to making this video going to be honest though it's a complete experiment i have no idea what the demand for it's going to be if you find yourself liking this video and would like to see more episodes please consider leaving a like and comment on it youtube's algorithm uses those as a huge factor to decide whether it should be passed around to more people but don't do it now judge after you've actually watched some of the video okay let's do it [Applause] [Music] mario is about as bare bones and simple as you can get but you know bare bones and simple doesn't mean bad for this archetype of character mario didn't necessarily stay a pick up and play beginner friendly character he's kind of turned into a combo machine but that's certainly at least how he was envisioned originally and this attack actually complements that pretty well not a particularly concrete reference to the mario series but you know he is obviously heavily associated with fire so there you go there's some fire makes sense to me oh by the way sometimes i'm going to be doing slow motion footage of the character smash attacks as well just keep in mind you don't judge animations in slow motion you kind of could make a bit of an argument for that in smash just because there are slow motion modes and slow motion items that enable it and stuff like that but generally speaking the only thing you really care about is what the animation looks like at full speed because that's obviously how it's actually going to be perceived in game but sometimes you can learn some interesting stuff doing slow motion another thing that i like about mario's forward smash is it's really good in part because of the animation so i'm gonna show what i mean look here so i'm gonna put his toe you can see on the line there look at his front toe here's the charge up look how far he leans back like you can dodge so many attacks with that so mario actually has one of the best forward smashes in the game largely as a result of this charge up which again supposed to be a simple character and the animation for his attack is contributing to his simplicity and effectiveness i love that that's a great detail and then the sense of impact as a result [Music] is really good the fact that he leans back so far means he's got a lot of space to really hurl himself forward into the attack and you can see he's putting his full body behind that pose so mario is the first entry of the video is gonna go in a tier it's not a particularly memorable attack but you know that's almost the point of it and it's animated in a way that perfectly synergizes with everything the character is going for along with having a cool little reference in it you could say beat here right it's kind of supposed to be the simple one but in this case i think simplicity is its virtue get the other plumbers out of the way here dr mario and luigi so dr mario is obviously using mario's animation verbatim including that really long pullback except for having the electrical property rather than the fire property and i think it actually works decently well obviously it's a reference to a defibrillator which is brilliant but even outside of that dr mario has a different sweet spot than mario where mario the sweet spot was on the flame dr mario the sweet spot is on his hand and i think the animation does a pretty decent job portraying that you can see that the after effects there don't look particularly substantive there so if we go frame by frame you can see like here's the point of impact and it's clearly on his hand and then if you run it through after that the sort of after effects are not really looking like there should have been a sweet spot there at any point so it's animated to match its functionality well and yeah hitting someone hard with this thing feels so good like this is an incredibly satisfying forward smash to connect so another good case of form matching function dr mario is going to join mario up in a tier so luigi luigi is the wackier mario brother so he doesn't get the same functionality on his forward smash that mario and dr mario do you can see that he doesn't lean back to the same degree like at all i'm gonna put his toe on the shadow you can see the edge of his frontal is in line with the shadow and it more or less stays there but the trade-off for that is that he gets a much funnier animation it's like this two-finger stooge's poke thing you can angle it up to get a bit more of that effect i love that just just like that super bit of slapstick element to his design hold on [Music] so [Music] this is not a three stooges poke that's just a spear hand i'm just learning this now oh [Music] oh that's disappointing oh that's really disappointing i wish i didn't know that oh oh no i've spent like my entire smash playing life up to this point thinking this was the funniest forward smash in the game ah well sense of impact is pretty decent i guess ah you you've hurt me luigi and you're gonna suffer the consequences for that let's pick some momentum back up here bayonetta this is a fantastic forward smash and not only is it a great tie into her home series and you know a perfect fit for the move and a great choice overall and has that little gun flourish animation afterwards with a strong pose because bayonetta is nothing but strong poses but one other detail i really like about it is the despawning animation for the fist like that's so smooth let's look at that in slow motion yeah you can see like the hand just kind of poofs out of existence but it's covered so well by the really smooth hair animation and again you don't judge this at slow motion you judge it at speed and at speed the fact that the hand just kind of vanishes like that doesn't really get perceived the same way all you see is that really really smoothly animated hair the hair does have a bit of a consequence on her suit though because if you don't know canonically the suit is becoming the arm so watch your legs there [Music] like that looks a little gross right it comes down black then just in a single frame sort of pops into the correct color and that's not something that you necessarily need to be watching in slow motion to pick up on yeah i noticed that long before i made this video and it does look a little weird does it happen with the custom skin yeah so with this one she has custom white wicked weave particle effect instead of the black one the rest of them get yeah it still happens yeah you can see it still flows down white then just kind of pops back into it that could have been red from the beginning that's you know that's not great it's a little bit of a miss but honestly i'm really nitpicking super hard right now sense of impact on this one feels fantastic it's a giant fist what are you expecting so yeah they could have handled that transition a little bit better but i still think that bayonetta is going to get the first test here of the video i really like that forward smash let's do the fire emblem gang marth lucina roy fromm robin corrin ike and biola marth kind of a bit of a similar boat as mario right he was the first proper sword fighter in the game link was obviously more of a hybrid character between a sword fighter and his owner so he's kind of supposed to represent how sword fighters function in smash so this is very simple and very clean which is not a bad thing at all to this day it still kind of works as a template you can compare other sword attacks against you can see this in the chamber animation too righty like he pulled himself back actually fairly far into it okay the vibrating animation gets a little bit wonky at quarter speed but he's actually hurling himself into it a lot more than it even necessarily reads and i like the flow of his cape too it follows the arc of the sword perfectly my favorite part of this entire thing though so that's what it's normally like when you hit someone with it nothing particularly special but if you get the tipper god that feels good to connect with putting the critical hit sound from fire emblem in as mars tipper sound effect was just a stroke of genius lucina obviously using the same animation as mars but she doesn't have that tipper mechanic like it doesn't matter how you space obviously that's the entire point of the character to differentiate her from marth she's never gonna get that tipper and she also doesn't get mars tipper like visual effect which i think does a really good job making it a little bit more of a distinct attack hers looks a little bit more generic as a result still a perfectly functional sword animation so she is going to go in b tier and marth with his extra little bit of spice on top with the nice sound effects and the better trails he's going to get a tier roy and krom i like the distinction that roy was given from marth when he was brought back for smash 4 and which obviously crom carries on as well look at his chamber animation marth always holds the sword in one hand roy puts two hands on it and then that's carried all the way through the entire attack it's a sort of you know less refined more brutish attack which makes sense for not necessarily roy's character and fire emblem originally but certainly the way that marth or certainly the way that roy was interpreted in fire emblem by sakurai when he was adding him to melee which has sort of gone on to almost inform how roy appears in fire emblem now so this feels very appropriate for the context still a smooth arc all things considered though the cape doesn't have nearly the same nice flow to it that marth and lucinas do but like what are you gonna do roy's sound design is interesting because there are three potential levels you can get depending on what part of the story you connect with the sour spot tipper that actually still feels kind of beefy even though it's a sour spot like it sounds like a sour spot but it still sounds like it's doing something which makes sense because for some of uh roy's other moves the sour spot actually plays a pretty important role and then the regular middle level one [Music] the final sweet spot hit that feels good from similar story not all of his animations are exactly the same as roy's but this one in particular is but like lucina he does not have any kind of sweet spot sour spot mechanic which means that he doesn't have nearly the same impact with the sour spot versus sweet spot hits but the trails i'm gonna say are not nearly as big a deal like that's not as big a knock against him as it is with marth where i really like that tipper mechanic roy like it doesn't really convey it the same way at all even if you slow it down right you can kind of see it there here's where i guess the sweet spot's supposed to be implied doesn't really read all that well at full speed though is only on screen for a single frame and marth to me just feels better overall he's rewarding you for spacing perfectly and his animation helps reflect that roy is rewarding you for being a brute and getting in your opponent's face which is a perfectly fine play style but it doesn't have nearly the same satisfaction behind the spacing element of it and his animation reflects that i like roy's a little better than i like krom's but in this case i think they're both going to be in b tier i'm going to put roy ahead of chrom for symbolic reasons but just for the record these tier lists are obviously not ordered within tears corin there's a lot that i like about this animation and there are a couple cool details i'll point out i'm gonna point out the thing i hate about it immediately though that stupid stupid helmet or head i i've always hated the way this looks i know that's not really the developer's fault you got that in fire emblem fates as well but like i just think it's ugly as sin it completely ruins her silhouette it has weird spikes wrists randomly sticking off all over the place not a fan like really not a fan details that i like much more though look at the lamps that is not just her arm turning into a random spike you can see a thumb and you can see fingers they actually animated the hand to extend out and back in as the lance in like fairly faithful detail there's the lance here it comes uh uh that's gross grows in kind of a cool way though and it's not really something that you read all that much at speed anyways you can see like zoomed out to normal levels running at normal speed you would basically never ever notice that it's just kind of a cool detail they put in there another thing i really like about this animation the chamber at least the second half of it still has a bit of a dynamic element to it because the saw blade needs to spin because obviously the saw blade actually has gameplay function in ultimate basically no smash attacks work this way i like the decision and ultimate to let you extend the chamber times much longer but rather than just looping the animation they do an awkward freeze coryn does that apart from the chainsaw but the fact that she gets at least a little bit of something automatically gives her a step above basically every other character it's also a really creative concept for a forward smash and actually her entire move set is pretty creative sakurai took what was a relatively limited aspect of her design in fire emblem fates and turned that into the bases for the entire character the dragon extensions and transformations and i'm gonna say the team did a great job coren was not a very popular pick for smash but for what it's worth she's certainly one of the more creative fire emblem characters it's a creative forward smash really well animated i love the chainsaw element it's not nearly the most hefty feeling forward smash in the world like i think the comparison between how strong it is at the tip versus how good the tip actually feels to connect is not the best in the game but overall really well done that's going to be an a tier for me i love this so much this is one of the most powerful feeling attacks in smash he is just wailing on you with the sword this is a two-handed sword ike doesn't usually use it two-handed he normally holds it in a single hand so the few attacks he has where he's putting it in both his hands that's when you know that you're screwed love the chamber animation as well he's reeling back so far with it and that arc that it creates as it hits the ground and just slams with that nice vibration like that just feels good to hit the ground with it really feels like it's ricocheting off hard impact he does have the swishy fire emblem sword i'm never going to stop complaining about how he sounded better in brawl i get the brawl sound design isn't anywhere near as timeless but it felt like you were being run over by a bus every time he hit you i loved it but you know what i'm okay with the swishy sword i've made my piece with it and like that still feels incredible yeah i guessed here i think i gave him honorable mention when i did my best of every smash animation video and i would absolutely do it again robin so with the bronze sword this forward smash looks a little bit weird honestly there's a reason for that because once you actually get the 11 sword out suddenly it starts making a lot more sense because that electricity pulsing around robin's sword there that is actually a lingering hitbox yeah you can see it there so it's actually got a sour spot associated with it and when you look at it through that lens it's like here's a forward smash where i'm putting in the bare minimum amount of effort needed and the sword itself is going to do the rest for me and considering robin is like a sword fighter but also a mage and a tactician that actually seems pretty fitting saying that though the sword animation itself has kind of an easiness to it but the chamber like he's really putting his whole body behind that so it's still being done with a lot of effort but then just stopping at exactly the right point and letting the sword do the work simple little refinement but it says a decent amount about the character looks cool too thanks to the electrical particle effects and you know robin doesn't really get credit for that in particular that's just more the stock particle effects and ultimate being so good but he's using them so i think he's going to get another atr i honestly like a lot of what they did with this animation and then finally biolift so this was the first character in the game to use a spear in any capacity which people have been asking for a very long time and for fire emblem in particular there was a lot riding on biles shoulders and i gotta say this is one of the most satisfying forward smashes in the entire game to land in my opinion look at how much weight is being thrown into that chamber animation and then just almost instant transition into the spear being out feels super heavy and hefty love the pose the pilot makes at the very end of the move too it stays out for a while so you get to really linger on the fact that you just clobbered your opponent with a spear hitting this on like a ledge get up or a tech or something along those lines just feels immensely satisfying violet's another easy steer this is absolutely one of my favorite attacks to land in the entire game terry i wanna like this one it's a really like big powerful kick but there's something about it that just like feels a little awkward to me i'm not totally sure what it is i think it's a hook kick right [Music] oh no it's a back kick wait no if it's a back kick he would be attacking with his heel so there's the action pose like if sakurai was sending his um little toy models that he at least used to use to tell the animators how to design the moves this is probably what he'd be sending them so yeah that is a hook kick using the ball of his foot rather than the heel so it doesn't have nearly the same weight to it it looks no it does look a little bit weird i think what's going on here is his body is torqued in the wrong direction compared to the momentum his leg has and it doesn't catch up nearly fast enough okay i also found out what might be the issue here so this is the last frame of his lead in and then literally one frame later [Music] here he is within the span of a single frame that is a lot of distance to cover and it's not nearly enough time to convey the arc that he's taking there so it reads at least on that single frame to me like a straight motion like i just praised byla spear for having so little in between you know between the wind up and immediately full extension but i don't think that works quite the same way with a circular motion especially when the rest of it is so clearly circular and he even like lingers sort of exaggeratedly long at the end to make sure you know yeah no this is absolutely a horizontal arc that the foot is taking yeah you can see it quarter speed like there's almost a little bit of a weird pop there right and this is why you watch stuff at slow motion not because the animation itself needs to be judged in slow motion but because something about it felt a little bit weird to me and looking at it in quarter speed i think this is why and again it's a shame because everything else is great i love how much of himself he's putting into it watch how he catches himself at the end of the animation is like wow i threw so much of my body weight behind that that i really need to compensate so it should feel really heavy and satisfying but it's just that one weird little like pop frame right there that is causing an issue for me feels great to connect with that extended follow-through that he does really helps sell the impact and i yeah i mean he's using king of fighters sound effects which are amazing in their own right so yeah i really want to like this one but as far as i'm concerned it's got a technical flub in it which very few animations in smash do for all i know could have been ripped directly out of king of fighters it might not even be the animator's fault but something about it felt a little bit off to me i've investigated why and i think if most animations in the game don't have this issue i can't put it higher than c let's do the pokemon trainer ivysaur charizard so squirtles i'm actually not really in love with this it doesn't help that in brawl he had his shell bash as his forward smack and i thought that one you know felt really good and it felt like a squirtle move this one it seems like you give it to anything vaguely associated with water as an element wait how do the hitboxes match up with the animation that is not very good this isn't really a technical review in that sense and squirtle's forward smash is far from the only smash move with that problem but the water particle effects themselves are great for sure i'll definitely give it props for that but even then it's just kind of standard water someone like greninja who has the water sword that is something i can give a lot more of a pass to this feels too generic impact impact feels like all right but again the action he's doing is so disconnected from it like his body he's hurling himself into the animation perfectly well but what's connecting is not him it's the water and it's again not solid water something like your ninja shuriken so it kind of loses a bit there and the sound design like it's not awful but it's using one of the stock sound effects and not one of the most impactful ones i'd have really been happy to hear like you know some custom splash sound design here something deeper and heavier and thicker [Music] the base water sounds fine but it's not really translated over to hitting wario ivysaur this is fun i like the concept behind this one using the vines to push yourself off chamber animation is okay i'm gonna say the only issue with it is it doesn't really feel like the vines are planted into the ground that much some you know rooting animation would have gone a long way towards fixing that but not bad and again the concept's really inventive oh i've never noticed that what is that like a somersault she does at the end oh that's a really cool flourish yeah that's neat charizard it's it's okay i get the content like he is imparting a lot of momentum behind it i will say that he really winds up into it really throws it out but you know he's using his head and neck to attack i get using those in the move set but i mean you're talking about a character with wings you're talking about a character with a flaming tail this feels like not the most inspired choice there's not even is there even flame on it anymore no that used to have fire on it i'm pretty sure impact feel is good like i will say it's a very very generic attack but it's been executed well i like charizard's yell they are using the proper impact sound there but i'm just not that inspired by it squirtle i think is going to get seat here this move just bores me and i think it was much better in an older game which doesn't help pyvysor gets a i honestly think this is a really inventive cool way to do a forward smash the obvious way would just be to extend the vines out for an attack but they decided to do something a bit more impactful and memorable with it which i'm a big fan of and it's animated pretty well charizard beat here now charizard's going down in c tier as well mainly for missed potential the execution on this move is pretty good but there was so much more room to do an interesting one you know what they should have done they should have done rock smash yeah rock smash from smash 4 which needed to be removed from charizard's kit because his down special was replaced with pokemon switch obviously this would have fit in perfectly as a new forward smash is that enough to make me move it down to f tier now you know what i don't think i'm gonna penalize missed potential that hard but it's kind of tempting while we're on the triple track let's do the space animals here you got your fox you got your falco and you got your wolf this is okay i appreciate that it's kind of an exaggerated version of a much simpler attack that he originally got back in melee so they've kind of kept fox intact more to hold down the fort while the other space animals have gone off to do more of their own thing let's take a closer look at what he's actually doing actually i'm not 100 sure yeah it's kind of an almost backflip where he sort of somersaults into it i will say this attack looks a little bit better in slow motion it's kind of hard to tell exactly what he's going for at full speed kind of hard to pick up on that nuance of him really hurling himself in it doesn't feel that weighty is maybe my only real criticism with it like it should right he's hurling his entire body into it but maybe it's just i think it's just because he doesn't land particularly hard that aside this move actually does have a decent sense of impact behind it fox gonna go beat here no major complaints nothing huge to praise falco [Music] this is all right i guess i'm not in love with it like it does kind of match the other changes that he was given when he was distinguished from fox back in brawl like a lot of his other moves were given this like really nice arc and sense of flow to them and forward smash i guess kind of continues that on but it's not the most interesting attack either he just kind of swings his wings at you chamber animation is strong he's hurling his whole body behind it but it doesn't really feel that impactful like if you do the impact test they're not using one of the punch sound effects for them they're using what i think might be the blade attack which i guess makes a certain amount of sense considering he's using his wings rather than his fists but it still loses something here's what really bothers me about this attack though so i'm gonna do just the regular attack [Music] gate 19.2 now i'm going to attack with the tip of the wing [Music] that's a sour spot but the particle effect looks like a tipper animation right like this looks very similar to marth you may disagree but like in my eyes this here looks like i should be getting rewarded for spacing better that's my first initial gut instinct is everyone gonna perceive it that way not necessarily but the fact that i do means that other people do as well i'm certainly not the only person on the planet who thought this thing should have a tipper and when you combine that with the fact that it's a pretty lackluster animation anyways this is going to be the first ft of the video for me it's an animation that actively harms the gameplay element of the character that's a pretty big deal and then wolf so wolf is kind of in an interesting spot for me where a lot of his animations that use the particle effects for the claw they're often some of my favorite animations in their categories period but then a lot of his animations that don't do that are kind of you know on the weaker side for me i don't love them but one of the major exceptions is definitely this forward smash i love this forward smash it's a palm strike or a claw strike just a straight up typical classic martial arts move and look at how he just holds his hand right out there after it connects like he is going through you that is what he's aiming for there's no elasticity in this move at all it's one of my favorite forward smashes from a sound design perspective to throw out even before it connects with anything [Music] love that grunt i love the whooshing sound like his hand is cutting the air it's more than just a open hand strike right his claws are still curved forward so he's like digging them into you man this is kind of a brutal move i love it and i was talking about how good it felt to throat even before it hit an opponent but of course after you do hit an opponent like man that feels nice yeah i'm gonna say it's kind of hard to make just standard martial arts punches and kicks like this feel memorable this is one of the few where it really really is and it again just feels so fantastic to use cons donkey kong diddy kong this is pretty fun i like the hand clap it's a cool choice also a very angry monkey while he's throwing it out look at that when ultimate was first being revealed dk was one of the characters they used to showcase the new facial animations which was an incredibly natural choice because they look so good yeah you are the world's most irritating fly and he is gonna squish you now what i was talking about with the chamber animations earlier dk was the character that first put me on notice about that like if you look at this here he's winding up this looks weird like i think that looks super stiff and awkward some characters get away with that more dk i really wish that the second half of this chamber animation had even a little bit of animation behind it because as is i think that looks pretty goofy sense of impact it's good it's honestly not nearly as impactful as you might necessarily expect from a heavyweight but then again this animation doesn't really look like the world's heaviest attack right i'm okay with that it's funny funny where it's appropriate compensates for a lot dk i'm gonna give an aid here too diddy this is honestly just really boring like if i were gonna forget a forward smash this would be near the top of the list what is he even doing so it's like a slap into a back fist which kind of is readable in slow motion even then it's a little bit messy but if you go at speed like it doesn't read like that at all the trails are overlapping with each other the arcs are kind of all over the place it's really hard to tell what's going on it just looks like a kind of random flurry which diddy is a character i could see giving a random flurry to but not like this impact is not amazing honestly that's kind of a common problem with multi-hit moves and diddy's animation feels particularly weak yeah honestly i kind of hate this one f-tier it leaves like no impression whatsoever samus and dark samus so samus is a character that is not symmetrical and some of the characters that are symmetrical in smash will do a like sort of shuffle to one side or the other rather than a full pivot when they turn around she's not in that camp so it does read actually fairly differently from each side why is that okay so what's going on is when she uses her hit to the right her head disappears whereas if she does the same thing to the left you still see her head really exaggerated poses as you can see here like in isolation this looks pretty bizarre but i'm going to emphasize again this is why you don't actually judge animations in slow motion because if you look at it at speed it just makes things feel a bit more impactful you don't really notice how contorted her body is look at this they took the time to animate her cannon opening up and closing when she fires the blasto they didn't need to do that that's a little bit of attention to detail because again in the middle of an actual fight you're never ever going to notice that like you see the tiniest tiniest little hint of the cannon closing but like if that little flourish at the end of the animation wasn't there would anyone be complaining about it no chamber animation is actually pretty cool here too look so she's actually holding the cannon with her other arm so she can like use it to help throw the cannon out sense of impact for the sour spot honestly feels a bit too weak sour spots are allowed to sound like sour spots but it's not really that sour right it's still a very killing forward smash for the sweet spot though like that does feel pretty hefty switching rolls to dark samus definitely not doing the same pose dark samus tends to have a lot of sort of wilder more out of control animations which makes sense considering the context um let's take a closer look so the chamber it's not doing that cannon throwing thing and then its arm just kind of flings behind it uncontrollably oh oh cool detail there look at the tendrils on the cannon as it comes back into position oh i've never noticed that before that's a really neat detail i think both of these get some solid b tier placements they're cool there's some nice little detail hidden in there but at speed you don't really notice it so much and like the concept behind them it's a punch with an explosion behind it it is not the most creative thing in the entire world do zero suit samus while we're here yeah this is [Music] this is not a whole lot of anything it's like two kicks what exactly is she doing with those kicks so this is actually way clearer now she's doing like a roundhouse kick and then plants that foot and does like a back kick or a side kick with the other foot this is kind of an issue i've noticed with multiple of zeros and samus's animations they look way better in slow motion than they do at full speed here that's pretty reasonable you speed it up and it's like uh it's kind of hard to tell what's going on like it's clearly a double kick but maybe just a little bit on the messy side and again like it's a multi-hit so connecting with it that one honestly doesn't feel that good which makes sense considering this is one of the worst forward smashes in the entire game but i'm not giving it credit for that the rocket high heels thing i remember that being like a bit of a source of controversy when she got this in smash 4. she has never worn high heels in the metroid games and it's like yeah you know honestly i kind of get it this is what you needed to add them for really this is the best you could come up with it's a shame too because i thought our forward smash and brawl was also pretty underwhelming and there was definitely a lot of room to improve but what they went with here is just kind of lame she's had a rough go in this category ridley ridley's honestly feels pretty nasty the entire thing has a really great sense of weight behind it yeah there's the wind up and look how quickly that comes out chamber animation is strong it's got a good pose and then just bam kind of generic honestly and in a lot of ways actually feels less visceral than many of his other attacks despite this being the most powerful tool in his kit in terms of impact it's helped out so much by that scream that ripley does that makes a big difference for me ridley's gonna go and beat here zelda squad link young link toonlink zelda chic ganondorf link is unique in that he gets the projectile when he's at zero percent sort of a nod to the classic delta games that's a cool detail animation itself isn't really impacted that much by it does make him the only character i need to boost the percent on though this looks like a sword move the fact that you can delay the second hit or even not do the second hit at all that's kind of cool from what i remember that's the first time we saw this kind of thing with a forward smash but the actual attack itself is really generic and has stuck around for a really long time i feel like there's got to be more that you could do with this twilight princess in particular there are some sword techniques i think could fit in this spot really well you could use some kind of other weapon or item i get that he's supposed to sort of be a bit more of a straightforward character but i've ranted on the missed potential of the links many times now but this does not impress me at all feels pretty good for what it's worth though and i think this is the only attack that link has where he puts both hands on the sword which does help distinguish it as the strongest one in his arsenal more feels good to connect with [Music] i'm not gonna say at least for me it necessarily feels like anything crazy though young link is the same thing except he doesn't even get the beam attack and also because he's a smaller guy with a smaller sword it feels less impactful and even if you wanted to make an argument that adult link should be like the warrior of them so she'd really be using his sword which actually has some parallels right in ocarina of time you see that young link you can't really make that same kind of argument for and then for connecting [Music] yeah it feels a bit worse of course it does it's a smaller character with a smaller sword toon link like i appreciate that at the very least they decided to make his distinctive from the other links so it is one of the more interesting generic sword forward smashes but it is still very much a generic sword forward smash doesn't feel nearly as heavy as younglings though probably because he's only putting one hand on the sword stops and maybe like a little bit of an awkward pose too it's strong at the same time though his arm looks like it's breaking a little bit and you do feel that to some degree in the full speed animation for feel god i really hate the sound effects they gave to link's sword in this game and forward smash is maybe the most egregious example for me i can handle a certain amount of cartoonish or swishiness but for two link in particular they went way too far with it it's actually ear piercing so he's gonna get an f tier for me i don't really like anything about this tune link in particular coming into ultimate this was the one animation of his they decided to entirely redo from scratch and that's what they came up with seriously they said yeah we're doing a completely new move with completely new properties the world's our oyster let's do a slightly different sword hit link i will put in b tier just because it fits him a decent amount at least although god is there's some wasted potential here and then even more wasted potential for young link where the attack also doesn't feel as good and doesn't have the flourish of the bonus attack zelda so at a glance this looks like a you know pretty straightforward magical burst attack and honestly for the most part it is but one thing i will say i like about many of zelda's animations is that even though she's not attacking you directly her magic is what's actually causing damage she really puts her entire weight behind it anyways like look at this right she's going into a full-on hadoken pose into it just a massive push forward this is not her sitting back and snapping her fingers and let the magic do the work she's getting into it gives it a little bit more of a sense of heaviness than it would normally have now truth be told heaviness is still kind of lacking a little bit here [Music] like you know it's a multi-hit it's using happy sparkly magical sound effects it's never going to sound as heavy as a big closed fist but it does the job decently well better than it has any right to be doing i don't know how i'm going to put it higher than bt or honestly at the end of the day it's a pretty straightforward move but the animators did do a good job with it this kind of feels like a whole heap of nothing honestly like it's not really supposed to be an incredibly impactful forward smash it's one of the weaker ones in the game which is totally in line with sheik's archetype design i'm fine with that but it really just doesn't feel particularly fun even to throw out just walking around the stage if you look at in slow motion they've done some really aggressive body breaking on her body breaking is when you move a character's proportions around or move their limbs around or their joints around more than they would actually be able to do naturally but it looks smoother in the animation so if we go frame by frame here you can see like her torso is just twisting for a couple frames they're like oh that looks painful but it creates a smoother animation at least in theory i'm bringing it up because it's kind of weird it looks like they're doing everything right but when i actually watch this in motion it still feels just okay i like the chamber animation feels very ninja-y but once you actually let it go i'm not in love with it and then when you actually connect with it [Music] like it feels all right it's not supposed to be the most satisfying forward smash in the world to land as i acknowledged earlier that's okay but am i supposed to praise it for doing a good job feeling limp also considering that this is supposed to be one of her you know big acrobatic moves that shows off how agile she is i don't think it's anything particularly impressive so cetera ganondorf love that he's finally using the sword love the sense of impact that this thing has love the arc of the sword love the particle effects love basically everything about it don't love that it's an eye grip off that is my one major criticism of this move you know like the chamber animation is essentially identical he does have even a little bit more heft behind it because he stomps his foot at the same time that's kind of cool connecting with it like of course it feels fantastic this thing immediately became a fan favorite i will say this might be a heavy enough hit to deserve like a stronger sound effect than the generic blade sound but still pretty close to everything about this move works really well for me except for the fact that it's a rip-off of an existing one that i've already put nest here so i don't think it can join it up a nest here this honestly makes me a little bit sad to have to do it i love ganondorf's forward smash but it's a knock against it pac-man pac-man was always gonna have like a little bit of a grab bag move set using the ghosts one of his most iconic elements for his smash attacks that was a really good call i like this a lot they don't rotate through because he uses a different ghost for each smash dock and it's a dedicated one i'm not up to snuff on my pac-man lore maybe there's some reason particular ghosts were chosen for particular attacks but in any case the forward smash the most aggressive one is the red one which intentional or not i think works well forwards matches tend to be you know the most hail mary just go for it kind of move in a character's kit a lot of the time notably though that's not especially true for pac-man as forward smash is kind of busted i like the animation as well with that little flourish behind it like you've activated my trap card pac-man goes a nest here for me this was a great way to use the characters pit and dark pit the pits have this interesting property where their idol stance actually changes a bit depending on the last move they used so here you can see he's got the split swords but if i use his neutral air where he treats it as a saw blade you can see that it works like a saw blade and then if i fire his bow now it works like a bow so all their animations need to account for that i don't know if they really do too much with it but he mostly just snaps into position anyways but it's local detail forward smash in particular starts off with the bow split and then it ends with the bokeh joint again so you can see here the first flash has them apart and then for the second hit he conjoins the bow in honestly a very smooth motion for the second more impactful hit where the bow has more mass behind it you can see it pretty clearly in the chamber animation i feel like he could be reeling back a little bit more in this one but it does need to be very very fast so i kind of get it and the final hit actually feels pretty impactful for a multi-hit in terms of impact it's not the most impactful forward smash in the entire world but considering it's a multi-hit and it's also tied for the fastest forward smash in the game so they need to cram a lot of information into very few frames i think it comes across pretty well i don't love the kid across uprising sound design they're using here but it is what it is so i'll say these attacks actually have some interesting details behind them if you're looking at them closer from a more just general gameplay sense though they're not especially memorable more memorable than some sword moves because of the multi-hit nature with a double sword sword staff design which is a concept i really like even if i honestly wish that sometimes it was taken a little bit further on them so be tier for pitt and dark pit wind down kid icarus with palutena the wing attack is kind of a cool concept for this sort of character and it also ties into her giving pit the ability to fly and i like this extra bit of visual continuity she's got all across her design where her attacks that are more standard don't have any extra flourishes on them but then everything that i guess is a little bit more goddessy has that additional payload thing behind her that's neat has a good flow to it and if you look at those feather particle effects those are really nice i like those one big issue i have with this though look at the stubby almost wings in this chamber animation that is hideous they look like little mutated stubs sticking out of her back i think they should just be made out of like the blue magical energy before they fully materialize that would completely solve this impact feels pretty good and i like the punchy sound effect they used for the wings so they didn't use the like blade slash effect here for palatine i think this one's pretty cool incineroar incineroar in general is really well animated and this forward smash like it's no exception it doesn't really feel like it should work with his tiny stubby little legs which still freak me out but this is one of the moves that does pull it off not all of his moves do but his forward smash yeah i'm completely on board with this one thing that i really like about it as well is just how long he lingers in the air after he does this it's almost like a cartoon character look at this there's the big powerful kick that comes out almost immediately and then he stays up for so long before he just plummets to earth in true wrestler fashion then of course after he hits someone he's got the built-in taunt mechanic as well which serves no functional purpose but is awesome and i love it impact yeah it feels so good it's staying up in the air for that long and then dropping down after your attack really helps sell it i think incineroar is one of the better animated characters in ultimate this isn't my all-time favorite animation of his i think he has better ones but it's still really solidly done considering the core behind it is just a basic kick ness and i guess we'll do lucas while we're here yes like he's swinging a baseball bat sure looks like he's swinging a baseball bat good form on the window very strong i say as if i know like anything about baseball whatsoever i'm canadian and at least in our part of the country there's no baseball culture at all and second thought i'm pretty sure that looks closer to a pitcher stance though gives it more impact for a fighting game which is what we're looking for i'm not actually seriously holding that against it there is something very satisfying about that realistic baseball sound i'm gonna do that again i don't ever really play nest yeah i think that sound effect is honestly enough to move a bog standard beater move up into a tier i love that so much and this is why i use sound design as a consideration on these moves if it used a regular hit effect i'd feel that entire move very differently lucas similar thing except all he has is a stick he's actually putting his body even more into it than necessary but again same sort of deal except now it's a stick for impact he still gets that pretty satisfying sound effect i'm not sure it's nearly as satisfying if it's not a proper baseball pat though is that fair i don't think that sounds particularly fair but still how i feel yet you know with a more grounded analysis these moves are basically the same but ness it feels like i'm playing baseball with your face lucas it feels like i'm hitting a guy with a stick we're almost done with the original 12. i'll wrap them up here kirby yoshi pikachu captain falcon jigglypuff and i guess pichu gets honorary status there kirby's kind of boring honestly like very standard cake i get that it's a reference to the fighter ability from the kirby series it's not pulled out of nowhere but it's not the most inspired choice that could have gone with this should be the hammer copy ability i think that seems to be the general consensus that i fully agree with now there is certainly something to be said for kirby being a really simple pick up and play character but even so i've praised some other characters for that this is so basic and simple though like the hammer ability being moved from side special into the forward smash slot would still totally convey what the character is supposed to be doing could totally convey the concept of forward smashes but would also just be a more interesting and more functional animation that aside i do like that kirby is absolutely hurling himself into it the chamber animation looks great about the angriest you're ever going to see kirby look to when a character is this simple and pliable you can really distort them as much as you want to get it through you do see a decent amount of that with kirby some squash and stretch some body breaking i want to say honestly they could even do a little bit more of it pretty boring move and depending on your perspective it pays a bit of a missed opportunity cost i get there are some people who would argue kirby should have ridiculously simple moves but i'm not one of them i think you can do a little bit more with them yoshi pretty straightforward headbutt he does the same thing that uh mario does where he pulls himself back really far so it's actually surprisingly good once again and the animation's contributing to that you know yoshi unlike mario isn't the character i wouldn't necessarily look at and go oh yeah i know he needs to have a really deceptively good forward smash but that's what he's got anyways i like how happy he looks there's no fierceness that ever comes up on that face he's perfectly happy to be just bashing you with his skull he's having a great time still a fairly typical melee attack at the end of the day but the execution on this one's good pikachu concept is fine like it makes sense electricity out of the cheeks and i do like that you can really clearly directly see it's coming out of the cheeks even at a default speed slow it down for a better view anyways actually looks nice at slow speed it's got a sweet spot and i like that the shape of the electricity shows off the sweet spot so a sour spot there sweet spot there at the tip of the electricity chamber animation has at least a tiny bit of dynamicism behind it because you can see that his cheeks are continuing to flash they at least don't just freeze in place impact honestly feels pretty good it's got the electrical lingering effect going again i like the electrical sound effect even before i hit someone too [Music] pichu i don't entirely know what it is but i want to say this one doesn't have nearly the same charm behind it as pikachu's does i think it's honestly just biased because i'm expecting pichu to look a little bit like i don't know cuter when it's doing the attack than pikachu is and it's not really doing that at all it's not necessarily fair to hold that against it but for example one thing that would be really fun is if right at the end of the attack you know pg's most powerful attack that hurts it the most it does a little bit of the spiral eyed thing like you see it on this up taunt here where you are bristling with electricity and then oops a little bit too much which is the entire concept of pichu's design again i'm not necessarily sure that's fair to hold against pichu but if that's the first thing i think of when i see this animation it's like you know maybe that was a little bit of a ball dropped by the animators there in terms of how it feels to hit so to me this actually doesn't feel nearly as good as pikachu's because it's much more of a lingering multi-hit although i will say electricity tends to work decently well with the multi-hits to begin with because you're expecting opponents to be stuck for longer anyways not a huge deal i think pikachu is alright kind of on the obvious side but it works well enough pichu is slightly worse but i don't think it's a tear down worse captain falcon with his backhand as opposed to the elbow that he had for the last i think three games weird choice to make i'm not entirely sure why i have all the animations that we're gonna change on they went with this one it works though i honestly like this new one i like at the end after he throws it out he like lets it hang there for a moment as sort of an action hero pose like yeah again very textbook action hero on the chamber pose so it fits what they're going for with them captain falcon obviously has an almost entirely fabricated move set but this does mesh in pretty well connecting it feels actually quite good the flame effect helps a lot with that still just kind of a punch at the end of the day though like a nicely done punch but a punch jigglypuff so this is a holdover from when jigglypuff was a bonus character built on top of kirby's framework all the way back in the original n64 smash and it's still here jigglypuff i guess is supposed to have kind of uninspired bad ground moves because she's an aerial focused character so i guess if you were really stretching for something nice to say about this one you could say that it's an outer place clone of what was already a pretty boring move simon and richter these kind of whips and tethers are tricky things to animate and i'm gonna say this animation looks really good it doesn't look realistic at all that thing lingers in the air way longer than it has any right to but that's kind of the point right it makes it feel snappier at the end they did a good job with these chamber animation what a great solution i love the way he's holding that before he throws it out so you can see he's holding in his hand there and then he just kind of slips it off chucks it out the auto curl is a little bit weird but at full speed you don't really notice that it fits in on yeah like that's totally fine another tipper mechanic hitting with the sour spot hitting with a sweet spot they both feel great the custom whip strikes for simon and richter like i think those sound amazing those are legitimately some of my favorite sound effects in the game ester honestly these moves are very well animated and feel incredibly satisfying and have custom sound design that's among my favorite kazia sakurai said that one of the main reasons that kazia was chosen to represent tekken was because of the devil gene so he can do stuff like this i think that's a great call because this is a sick forward smash let's look at the transformation in slow motion oh real smooth yeah i really like the way that's handled a little bit of purple lightning crackling on him too devil model itself is really nicely done and i love that like ominous wing placement it's a pretty stiff punch but that's actually in line with kazia's feel and tech and i think some of these animations might actually be ripped directly out of tekken if i remember right impact like it feels pretty good the animation itself is nice but the properties of kazia's moves he has the tekken hit leg aka very little hit leg so it is faithful but it's faithful in a way that means that outside of his home series this doesn't connect nearly as hard as some of his competitors do it's a cool detail to be willing to bring over don't get me wrong but it does have some impact on him guess the blue zoom in effect on the sweet spot which i guess kind of fixes that honestly it's a bit of a weird thing to give the blue zoom to though we'll go a tier for this one i do like it i do like the devil form although i will say it's not the most creative use of the devil form in his toolkit you know it's just a punch tekken is a game about punching people so fair enough but between that and the hit leg being a little bit of a downgrade compared to other characters this seems fair we fit trainer we fit trainer had some weird decisions made with her animations i'm not talking about the yoga pose as the basis of a moveset thing i'm talking about she has like no squash or stretch or body breaking or particle effects of any kind as far as i know she may be the only character on the roster who can say that there you go completely clean and it's supposed to be like she's a realistic character maybe but i mean we have other fairly realistic looking humans too even more realistic humans and they at least get particle effects like there are no motion smears there's no nothing the actual animation looks a little bit stiff too and i don't think it's just entirely because of the lack of motion smears so looking strong looking strong looking strong decently leaning into it oh that's actually a good lean oh but the second she touches the ground she actually starts reeling back so she's not really following through even here giving it another look she's actually not leaning back as far as some characters do it's just because she's supposed to be you know a fitness instructor she's supposed to be really balanced i guess but that balance kind of comes at a bit of a cost because here it looks like she's throwing herself into it but the pose can't have her do that and the yoga pose gimmick thing like i guess it's kind of interesting but at the same time how else were you possibly gonna make her work and as soon as you decided to do that this was like the pretty obvious candidate to go for so i don't necessarily want to give a ton of credit for that one thing i will say about it though is that the yoga pose does come through very strongly on hit that is one consequence of these decisions that i like i think it's the net negative still but that does do something the lack of motion smears makes the pose very clear even so there's less response to the impact so while the pose still comes across as pretty strong the actual hit itself is weaker in comparison yeah this one's going on ftr for me there are some parts of a move site where i think the yoga pose gimmick like plays out a lot better forward smash i think is a pretty bad example sonic so this is a reference to the wind-up punch from sonic fighters and i think when you wind it up it looks fantastic it reminds me of like an old looney dunes cartoon which feels so at home sonic when you don't take the time to wind it up though it looks pretty normal i don't really see a whole lot to write home about here other notable thing i would guess is just how ridiculously far his hand stretches out this is one of the most body breaking moves that i can think of in smash look at how just ridiculously over the top huge his hand is right now it's bigger than his head at speed though it's one of these things you feel more than you see it's got a really nice sense of snap to it about the snap though i talked about characters like wolf and captain falcon and how holding the punch out makes it feel really powerful the snap is a completely different thing it's very elastic which could be cool in its own right if you were gonna take that approach though i wish they'd committed to him snapping his fist back just a little bit faster you see what i mean like just it goes out then instantly returns right back to that chamber position whereas instead there's a little bit of a gap if you watch it at speed it feels pretty elastic but if you shaved even like two three four frames off of that retraction animation it would feel even more so it would feel super super snappy more than almost any other character on the roster i also hate that he doesn't keep winding the punch up because this is such a cool chamber animation you know most of the time the chamber animations even before they started being holdable for much longer they were kind of functional at best right you they just kind of struck a pose and largely stayed there sonic was different it was something that really made his forward smash stand out now i mean you're gonna be doing this a lot because it's a very good like two framing tool if you angle it down and it's just man it loses so much once he stops spinning sonic i think gets a tier it's got way more personality than most punches and frankly more personality than most of sonic's moves but there are just some nagging issues with it and it's pretty hard for a basic punch to go higher than this anyways if one of them was going to though sonic with the changes that i was talking about would be one of the candidates for sure mewtwo and we'll get lucario in there too why not kind of a bit of a clone slash replacement at least greninja's floating off on the side there too and i think that's the end of the pokemon is a pretty by the numbers this kind of energy blast of attack i like the particle effects they've given them they look really cool even if they don't necessarily actually have much to do with mewtwo at all they're kind of a staple of his smash iteration now i'm not necessarily saying they should be i'd personally find it cooler if they gave him a bit more of a faithful moveset i'm not even necessarily going to say this is an amazing generic move anyways but at least it's got cool particle effects pretty standard like energy manipulator kind of pose he does look like he's committing to it kind of like zelda so that's nice this one does have a fairly prominent sweet spot sour spot mechanic so there's the sour spot and the sweet spot is actually at the tip of the move i don't think the animation really shows that basically at all it honestly kind of looks like the sweet spot should be closer to his hand that's where the brightest spot of the particle effects are feels [Music] good i like the sound effect of the rushing of the energy [Music] pretty standard all things considered though lucario's similar concept i think his aura particle effects look about as good as the ones that mewtwo has but one thing i do like about them is that they're actually integrated into the character more but this doesn't really apply to forward smash like here's what it looks like at zero percent here's what it looks like at 999 right like maybe a little bit of a missed opportunity there at least with the visual effect the animation for this one is interesting very aggressive push forward and i love that little recovery there lucario like he's clearly based on anubis but he almost maybe seems to have some kind of like shaolin monk inspiration or something along those lines too he's got some very nice like smooth flowing movements you don't get the crazy elasticity on this one that you get from some other moves of his we're gonna have to save that for another video i guess but some of them like he seems just like he's made a rubber chamber animation similar to mewtwo but a little bit more animated which makes sense considering that lucario is much more of a physical fighter feel feels really good honestly slightly weird sound effect it's not really a physical hit sound as much as it is an energy sound or maybe even like an old school like fighting game punch kind of sound but i think it works in this case lucario gonna get beatier honestly i think if they'd done a bit more with the aura manipulation i'd be willing to consider a tier for this but he has some other very stylish moves i think forward smash is one of the more straightforward ones the story of greninja is interesting the smash team had very little to work with they got like some preview info about greninja but largely had to invent his moveset i think they honestly kind of killed it this water-based kunai idea like it's so simple and obvious for a water-based ninja right but like it was handled so well i love this animation great chamber pose fits the ninja archetype perfectly but still looks really strong the kunai actually showed up in smash before they showed up in pokemon now the two games smash 4 and pokemon xy were being developed alongside each other so it's not really clear if smash necessarily invented this concept i'm recording this back to back with a video that went out a week before about smash moves that became canon and that's why i kept it off because it just was a little bit too unclear who got it from who i haven't been able to find any kind of definitive answer on that but smash still got there first and you know it suits him really well greninja a tier it's a sword slash but it's a very interesting sword slash speaking of sword slashes meta knight mennonite's forward smash is a very simple one but it's always been one of my all-time favorites to use in my game it feels so satisfying to connect with basically the entire animation is front loaded into the chambering the actual sword draw takes almost no time at all so it's probably based on aya jitsu the martial art of sword drawing and considering that meta knight i think probably has a little bit of samurai inspiration in him it would make sense this feels amazing to connect with yeah out of all the more standard sword attacks in the game this is i think the most memorable for me and it's also my favorite of them to use piranha plant so full credit to the team for making this weird character into a full move set and actually squeezing in a decent amount of references there too this is a reference as well which is fun and i like the prickly form i gotta say the attack feels a little bit lacking considering how heavy piranha plant is and how much of that weight is focused around the head i think the arc needed just like one or two frames shaved off it really not much i like the really mean pose but after it comes out like yeah there's a lot of wind up into it she's leaned way back but the actual hit doesn't really feel that strong in reality it is a very strong forward smash but like considering you're basically swinging a wrecking ball at your opponent it doesn't quite feel like that to me it feels okay but this concept i'd like to feel immense this is kind of a case of me liking the concept more than the execution so we'll balance it out with b tier cloud and sephiroth clouds is pretty cool and they did something really interesting with this move in particular so cloud in final fantasy 7 is fast and strong which sakurai felt was going to be difficult to properly put into smash so he still wanted to convey that sense of strength and speed so forward smash seems to kind of be the main way they did that by showing him wind up and then immediately go into the flurry of slashes so you get the strength and then you get the speed and that's really smartly done in my opinion and results in a cool animation i feel like he could have been leaning back ever so slightly farther if they really wanted to sell it but considering it turns into a really fast moving multi-hit i get it needed to stay at least a little bit under control and here's the multi-hitting question comes out really really fast but it's still pretty readable nicely done i will say that when you actually hit someone with it this is one of the very rare instances where some extra hit lag is actually a bit of a detriment in my opinion the first two hits i would have still liked them to feel a bit faster and then maybe even get a bit of extra hit lag to the very final one because as is it loses a bit of that sense of speed into power so when you hit someone with it at speed right there's that very clear like duh duh duh rhythm uh duh thing would have felt a little bit more true to the intention of the move to me in the grand scheme of things i know this is an incredibly minor detail and it's the standard way they handle multi-hit moves but for this one in particular if they wanted to preserve a bit more of that flurry feel and they wanted to go just that tiny extra little step that would have worked for me the impact is also harmed a little bit by the classic final fantasy sword sounds which they don't sound particularly impactful they sound very like swishy and mid-rangey not really that much punch to them but i mean of course he was gonna have the classic final fantasy sound effects so that's not really something i can hold against it out of all the sword moves i find myself remembering this one more than most sephiroth pretty standard sword swing i like the fact that he has the extra long sword so he's really winding up into it the animation is pretty well done like if you look at it he is really hurling himself into that and he looks very controlled and poised at the very end so if it's the character technical execution is great but the concept itself is pretty routine does one wing form change anything now oh he has some feathers falling off them though that's pretty cool i like that impact i like the impact heavy sword blow feels good nicely done just not a particularly exciting move but i mean like a big swing from the big sword what else were you gonna put there joker i love the custom red and white particle effects that joker was given for his motion trails and this is one of the moves that really showcases them well other than that though the attack is fairly tame and it's kind of weird that it seems to have sort of been lifted from falco joker actually has a bunch of moves like that where they sort of seem to be almost exact transplants from similar moves on other characters a little bit more of a theatrical chamber but like the actual move itself it's pretty close even without the rip-off thing it's still not that interesting though it is nice that at the very least it doesn't have falco's issue with the trails being misleading because obviously the dagger is where you want to be hitting people and the hit feels pretty good it's a dagger joker has some interesting animations this is not one of them as far as i'm concerned and our scene isn't exactly doing anything particularly interesting either apart from the trails it's completely uninteresting and then you add on the fact that it was lifted from another character ryu and ken ryu pretty standard heavy kick comes from street fighter 3 has a bit of a sweet spot sour spot thing going on there's the sour spot there's the sweet spot not much of a difference he is hurling his entire weight behind it though which is nice you know it comes from a street fighter animation so you'd expect it to be pretty good and it's also helped out a lot by having those crunchy street fighter sound effects yeah like those feel fantastic i'm not necessarily going to say they're like better sound design than smash ultimate but they're very stylish and still feel great and then canon's reuse echo fighter but they're possibly the least similar of the remaining echo fighters this is one of the moves that was changed between them this is from street fighter 2 turbo his roundhouse kick and again using those really nice street fighter sound effects their kicks these were some of the most obvious choices in the world when these characters were introduced into smash well done i mean you'd expect them to be well done they're fighting game characters bowser let's get his kick in here this is a cool move that they added back in smash for it's become kind of a fan favorite i like it maybe a bit of a controversial take i don't think i like it nearly as much as the brawl one and the melee one that one felt a bit more i don't know bowser to me but at the same time smash 4 onwards there was clearly a goal of sort of reinventing bowser a little bit specifically for smash and this one does feel very distinct definitely one of the heaviest feeling forward smashes which is you know completely in line with how you want bowser to feel look at this he's not even trying to catch himself here he's just putting his all into it and picking out the pieces later and it feels just phenomenal to hit someone with bowser even if i preferred his old version a bit this is still getting nest here it's an incredibly memorable forward smash and it was done really well mr game watch grand total of three frames of animation on this one which is actually completely fine considering the source material i like that his arm actually separates just like in the original sprite that's a cool touch that original sprite needed to be censored a little bit because it used to have a feather sticking out of his head that caused a bit of a stir when the game was young that was fun what do you seriously want me to say about this one though like the fire effect is cool they didn't technically need to add that but because it's a torch that's kind of a neat touch it's three frames of animation it's about as right as they could have gotten it rub i've never really loved this one the concept behind it is fine hey he's a robot so let's give him a laser like okay sensible enough but nothing more and this one has always felt pretty weak to me got one hell of a sour spot on it in comparison to the much better sweet spot so at least the animation does portray that well but it's just missing something another one of these chambering animations where the head spin is cool and then he has to stop it because the animation has to freeze it's honestly kind of hard to articulate ultimately though there's just something about this that i don't really like and it doesn't really feel that great to connect with partially because that sour spot and also the other like middle spot are both pretty prominent the sweet spot is actually really short shorter than it really looks like it should be based on the animation like the tipper sour spot is fine but the middle one feels a bit too prominent this is not the one i'm most articulate about though there is just there's something about it that i don't like and since brawl i haven't really liked concepts not that creative feels pretty limp actually i mean i can't really give an argument for why i dislike it as much as the other ones below it here but this is one of my least favorite forward smash animations in the game so why am i putting it in c tier hero it's a fairly typical sword attack kind of maybe a sped up version of ike's would be the best thing to compare it to honestly still hits pretty hard though despite the smaller sword and faster animation yeah he's doing like the ganondorf foot stomp too so maybe that'd actually be the better comparison chamber is good oh man he is pissed in that chamber animation that is a deranged man who has had enough come get some feels good to connect in isolation if you get the critical hit though was really hoping i was gonna get it first try [Music] hey look a critical hit and it sounds fantastic and feels really satisfying to connect with now admittedly there's only one in eight times where it's actually going to feel that good but even the bass version i'm gonna say is one of the better sword attacks so i think this one actually gets into atr i was kind of planning to do b before i started evaluating it but it's actually pretty fun to use let's do one that's not fun to use olimar at least not fun for your opponent i've previously called this the worst forward smash animation in the game and i've also called olimar one of the most poorly designed smash ultimate characters and it's largely because of his animations especially because of this one the sense of weight behind it is terrible it doesn't accurately convey how powerful the attack is going to be at all and it also blends in horribly with a lot of his other animations i'll spare you the lecture i've gone into pretty meticulous detail about this on my main channel before but like it sucks in my opinion this is still the worst forward smash animation in the game because it has a terrible impact on gameplay ice climbers now this is actually like a very simple move but a really nice feeling one it's got a great sense of impact to it even before you hit anything yeah look at this like they actually hit the hammer into the ground so hard that they lift themselves up starts off as a bit of a hop their feet do leave the ground before the hammer hits but as soon as it connects it's like driving them upwards that's a cool detail i like that a lot ice climbers have a bit of a lag up on many characters for a lot of their animations just because the dsync thing automatically makes their moves feel a bit more interesting if there's two of them that feels amazing to connect with if there's one [Music] it doesn't feel nearly as good but honestly it still doesn't feel bad and the entire point of the ice climbers is they're not supposed to feel as good if there's only one left i think i can honestly go eat here for this one the technical execution is really good and it's a lot of fun to use and while we're doing hammer forward smash does can give these forward smash is fun and like yeah it was always going to be bad as soon as they decided this is what the animation was going to be but this is just a good time to use he spends a long time really emphasizing the weight of that hammer and then slams it down really quickly afterwards the arc is great chamber animation doesn't really work that well that's my biggest complaint about it it works okay on this side you can at least see his face on this side like that's not great and even then here i'd rather be able to see like his entire mouth it would have been cool if there was a solution that let you see more of his expressiveness because ddd has some great facial expressions do i need to tell you it feels fun to hit people with this thing yeah the sound effect of the hammer is so good too [Music] test here it's big and dumb in all the right ways let's do something a bit different here the me's me brawler it was always gonna be a basic puncher kick but i gotta say they put a little more effort into it than you might necessarily expect if you look at the flourish he does at the end there bringing himself back into a neutral position but doing it with some gusto that's actually a pretty cool detail electrical effect on his hand is actually another surprisingly fun little touch for such a simple character sword fighter i'm pretty sure this is just blatantly the first hit of lynx forward smash that seems to be pretty clearly what it's based on especially because so much of the rest of his kit also tends to come from link which is not the best source material to pull from honestly i get that he's a template character but the other two manage to be more interesting than this chamber animation is at least pretty good but it doesn't have any of the kind of flourishes that they gave me brawler and you don't get any of the originality that me gunner brings to the table me gunner by far the most original out of all of them so i will give it that the chamber animation actually has you know a decent little bit of personality behind it as well and the gun actually feels pretty powerful it's animated nicely when you shoot it without hitting a target it's got some nice satisfying sound design to it as well and when you hit an opponent with it it slows down so it sounds a little less machine gunny but it still pulls it off i'm gonna say it still feels like effective gunfire i do think it sounds just a little bit better before you hit someone with it though so gunner is my favorite of these but i don't actually think it's really enough to slip out of b tier brawler i'm also going to give a b tier 2 surprisingly personality rich punch but ultimately it's a punch it's a very simple punch it's supposed to be swordfighter f tier honestly this is one of the lamest forward smash animations in the entire game snake i suspect i'm probably in the minority with this one but i have never liked this animation very much it's like the team decided they wanted to use an rpg in his moveset and this is the only way they could think to shoehorn it in i'm sorry i just don't think this is particularly imaginative or interesting or sensible okay i know the game we're playing i understand that they really don't need to follow real world logic at all with these move sets but this rpg is a real world weapon just firing it at your own feet like this it kind of makes you ask wait a minute how is snake not hurting himself it's just too grounded you know what i mean i never find myself having that thought with say lynx bombs a because they're just way less realistic and b yeah of course moves like that are going to appear in a character's kit they didn't really need to give snake an rpg in fact the concept feels pretty awkward technical execution is well done the chambering animation you know it's about as solid as you could expect for this type of move and then you release it and there is quite a bit of recoil so it looks appropriately powerful and then it is powerful if you hit someone with it it's an intensely strong forward smash so that's fine the animation matches it so everything is right here except that i just i don't like the concept i never have metal gear has a lot more going for it than pseudo-realistic weapons too like this is probably gonna be one of my least popular placements throughout the video i'm expecting that but sorry i don't like it peach and daisy i'm gonna say the only particularly noteworthy thing about this is the triple aspect it has to use the same arc for everything so if you look at the chamber animation she brings her arms back here and then the item materializes and they all need to materialize from that same chamber pose which is why the frying pan i think works perfectly fine same thing with the tennis racket tennis racket needs to come out here but that works okay as a pretty exaggerated shot too golf club though golf club looks a little bit weird it's a pretty reasonable trade-off to make for being able to fit three different implements into one smash attack though sound design is pretty good on some of these too the frying pan i love hitting someone with that that sounds great golf club [Music] not nearly as impactful but you know it's a golf sound there's only so heavy you can make it and the tennis racket actually really like that one too that shows up in a lot of tennis related stuff it's kind of what i imagine your hearing point of view a point of hearing i guess being like if you're the ball being hit that rush and that ping that's kind of what i always envision that being and they make the move fun to use the triple aspect and the fun sound design make these like pretty memorable forward smashes any of them in isolation would be okay but when you put them together i think they earn a pretty solid eightier steve gonna make a comment that might sound a little bit weird this animation feels a bit stiff it's clearly steve a lot of his stuff is gonna feel stiff i know i know but even by his standards this one feels just ever so slightly awkward do i necessarily mind it being awkward i'm not really sure that i do but this still isn't my favorite steve animation doesn't help that it's made up as far as i'm aware it's not a clear reference to anything you know what i think it might actually just be more than anything else is the double trail you got the brown more conventional smash motion trail but you've also got the completely separate pixelated minecraft one looks just a little weird this final posey ends up in two it looks a little goofy yeah the angle he swings that doesn't look nearly as strong as the beast of a move that this is like his other um sword-based attacks look way more appropriate for their power level this even just with wood is quite a strong forward smash but then he had a diamond into the mix they just disintegrate and the animation doesn't really portray that's gonna happen now i'm not gonna penalize steve as harshly as i would for essentially any other character but i actually do think that's a bit of a knock against the move it's not a particularly inspiring animation but their hands were kind of tied there because the mechanics of steve the way he harvests materials there needed to be payoff for collecting those materials and his forward smash is a very natural choice to do that with so that means he needs to keep the sword so it does what it's supposed to do but as an actual attack animation don't think that much of it villager and isabel this is a cool concept for a forward smash it lets you do some unique stuff with it like drop it off the edge and stuff like that you can absolutely hit someone without it it's an active hitbox the entire way down villager is not a powerful character they needed to come up with a way to make him powerful and dropping a bowling ball on someone that's a good way to do it honestly as good a way as any i can think of you can even see that he's not really supposed to come across as that powerful it's hard for him to lift the bowling ball up like he's really putting some effort into it chamber animation does have him already lifting the ball maybe a little bit too easily but it has to match functionality because once you let go he needs to be able to get the hitbox out quickly so i'm not going to penalize it for that sense of impact yeah it feels pretty good it's got that happy little sound of him pulling the ball out of his uh inventory and then it just drops like a ton of bricks and this opponent goes flying i like what they did with isabelle too it's the concept of well she's not a very strong character but we need a strong move for her so she's almost put off by just how powerful what she's throwing out is and what she's throwing out isn't even that powerful by like you know human standards but she's a tiny dog so this makes complete sense to me shuts your eyes in anticipation of the explosion and then is completely just taken aback by it anyways it's a great animation chamber pose too there she is waiting for it to fire ah and then hitting someone with it that feels good to do i like the fireworks sound effect alongside it that adds a little bit of extra impact i'm a big fan of both of these villager is the more creative of the two so it's going to get estier but even isabel really well animated mega man it's a more interesting concept than a lot of forward smashes get the chargeable projectile and it's very faithful to the mega man franchise mega man in general does a lot of service to his home series but that faithfulness comes at a bit of a cost because he does not react to the projectile being launched essentially at all which is fine in his home games but here it does make the projectile look kind of anemic there's not really much recoil caused by it you can see here like full charge gun barely even kicks and that makes it feel less fun to hit people with i think the concept is memorable enough to save them from lower than middle of the pack but the actual animation itself what they did with the concept i'm not in love with rosalina rosalina alone i like the galaxy swirl concept that was a really inspired idea for her particle effects with luma included i love luma forming its little arm into a fist there for some extra impact it could have just kind of hurled itself forward but they decided to go the extra mile and i appreciate that in tandem they honestly do look pretty great attacking together you've even got the luma with the galaxy behind it so it kind of looks like it's coming right out of space to beat you up i feel like that was probably intentionally composed chamber animations for both of them are pretty good and if you look at luma luma actually keeps moving throughout the entire chamber rosalina doesn't but her chamber animation is still solid luma looks great though in terms of impact gotta test a couple out here so luma by itself surprisingly punchy rosalina and luma together feels great and then rosalina by herself you know that one feels a bit more standard it's the same kind of generic magical particle sound effect but it's okay it's clearly supposed to feel at its best when it's done in tandem with luma this one's fun and luma is the thing that pushes it over the top for me so i'm gonna give this one an a tier let's get shulk this is a cool move i like the concept behind this one internet tells me it's a reference to slit edge from xenoblade i've never played xenoblade so that doesn't really mean anything to me but as a just standalone move this is honestly one of my favorite sword attacks yeah look at the nice recoil that comes up as soon as the blade gets extended it looks really powerful animation on the monado itself is cool too very simple but does the job chamber animation hasn't reeling back pretty well but it's definitely the recoil that sells the power of this one for me on hit yeah i like that and it's cool that the monado doesn't really lose power from the multi-hit like a lot of multi-hits tend to do because just you know the fundamental way that the move works doesn't really lend itself to that a lot of the power is coming from the recoil of the second hit anyways the monado sound effect in isolation it's well done too obviously reminiscent of a lightsaber but just a little heavier shulker was kind of debating between a and s but i'm feeling generous ester i've always really liked this one get pyromithra in there pyra this one feels really crunchy and satisfying to use tons of fire effects all over the place has a great sense of momentum she's the power character of the duo and often the rule of thumb tends to be the power characters your heavyweights and the like tend to have pretty fun moves so yeah you can see there is a little bit of sword animation here when it opens up and closes again it's not a particularly dramatic one and i'm going to say it's not nearly like refined shulks i like shark's really nice simple clean split but it does the job mithra faster version of the same animation and i actually really like this one too it still has that same kind of commitment and satisfying arc of the heavyweight variant except now it's a little bit snappier i like the particle effect of the blade too especially if we slow it down here the way it jets out the side in that three prong design that looks really cool yeah same deal here where the chamber animation is good but she's just hurling herself into it afterwards which sort of overcompensates this one sounds more interesting with a custom design on hit of course it doesn't feel nearly as good as pyro's massive explosion but she's not supposed to be the heavy hitter of the duo it's still for what it is feels pretty good like it feels a lot better than sheik's and mithra is very much the sheik of when zelda and sheik were still linked together pyra gets s-tier from me i think that one's really fun to use and mithra gets a very high eight here like she's sort of on the border between a and s for me but i think a bit closer today bowser jr this one's pretty inventive they could have gone with a lot of different stuff for the cart obviously you can squeeze basically anything in there that you want drill bits some pretty nasty feeling drill bits these do the job for me this is an intimidating looking chamber pose and when you let it go he like pumps this fist in celebration of just putting a drill bit through someone yeah the drills themselves feel great to connect with but this is definitely a move where the multi-hits don't properly convey the power it's actually a pretty jarring example of that there's nothing really indicating why the character is being flung out of the drills at the end maybe a bit of an explosion from the cart's mouth or something at the very end of the animation would have gone a long way to fixing that i think we can still give it a tear though that aside this move is a lot of fun to use and the concept is great king k rool this one like in practice it's fine there's not really anything wrong with it he's sticking his fist and leaving it out there so he's kind of doing the same thing i praised wolf or with really feel like he's following through but it actually feels less impactful than a lot of his other less powerful moves a lot of his attacks use his gut or his jaws or his claws and a boxing glove just doesn't really have nearly the same ironically punch to me and i get that it's a reference but i still think even then is not nearly as committal as they could have gone with the reference of course it hits hard he's one of the heaviest characters in the game but i feel like it could hit harder like this does work of course but i honestly find hitting stuff like his dash attack or his down tilt or his down smash like i find all of those way more fun to use than his forward smash even though this is the strongest tool in his arsenal so like in a vacuum there's nothing wrong with it but in context of his kit where a lot of his animations are so good and feels so chunky it's a bit underwhelming to me i'm a little let down by it inkling inkling like this is a perfectly functional weapon for its match a couple of things that i'm going to praise that are sort of universal across inklings kit you can actually see the tank on his back depleting there as i throw the move that uses ink out that's a fantastic bit of visual detail probably not something you're gonna be referencing in game you're gonna be using the meter but it's still cool to include and then obviously you ink your opponent which probably took a decent amount of technical work to get done the ink effect itself is very simple you know the texture is just replaced with a flat color for the most part but you can see it gradually fading away that's actually done really smoothly other than that the animation is pretty basic and it's even a little bit unimpactful you can see that inkling isn't really following through all that much with the hit be tier little mac they struck a great balance here between needing to look like somewhat realistic boxing technique but still exaggerated enough to read as a character's heavy attack in a fighting game like obviously a boxer would never ever commit this much to a move but you look at it and you still come away with the impression that this is the carefully controlled boxing action somehow yeah the wind-up is insane but the delivery is quick and snappy he doesn't leave himself that vulnerable but he still follows through convincingly and then the big thing about it of course is they needed to fit three animations into one so you've got the upwards angled variant neutral and downwards downward variant in particular i find really satisfying to use hitting with the upwards version that one feels good it's probably my least favorite of the three neutral that one i find really good because little mac just feels like he's driving right through you and then down [Applause] that's like the below the belt attack so it's sort of your tactical sneaky version 8 here for mac they're just punches but they're really well done punches and they needed to fit three different moves into a single animation and they did all of them justice is looking really scattered let's line these up a bit wario it's a big punch we've seen plenty of big punches the most notable thing about wario in particular though is that he has some of the most ridiculous body breaking across a large chunk of his moveset right like look at this fist it's basically as big as the rest of him and then he's really leaning into it which looks kind of hilarious on his stubby little feet and then hurls himself into it pretty well and then you can see the weight of it he actually needs to compensate by lifting his back foot off the ground so he can swing himself back down yeah his foot comes up to get himself back into position with a bit of a celebratory yes as well forward smash used to be the way more iconic shoulder bash back in the day now that one actually looked a little bit awkward in that position i think his new placement as his dash attack is way more sensible but replacing it with just a generic punch didn't exactly do a lot to improve the personality of wario's kit the big hand is funny that's the only thing it's got going that might make me want to elevate it a little bit but i mean it's a punch sora it's a sword hit but it's a sword hit that has like a little bit of that disney flair to it i don't entirely know how you describe it but a little bit whimsical happy particle effects are kind of cool the motion trail itself is nothing particularly special but you can see some like magical sparks coming out of it ties into the whimsical feel sora is supposed to be pretty cartoonish and you can absolutely feel it in this animation he really winds himself up and he follows through super hard and then on hit it feels okay i don't like the kingdom hearts impact sound effect itself i kind of alluded to that in the intro a little bit but he's got some magical sizzle on top of it which i think kind of ties the move together a little bit more than some other moves in his kit get it doesn't sound particularly heavy but it sounds almost like a little bit searing sora b tier it's got more personality than some of the sword moves but not so much more that i feel like putting it higher min min this is gonna be a weird one to evaluate so first thing i can say about it is they need to take some extra steps here right there are two different animations she can throw the second one out at any time and this can have different arms on it and it can be done with different timings and different anglings all of which needed to be accounted for and they did a good job the morse feel really organic it never feels like the animation is jerky or weird kind of a weird chamber pose that's just the nature of how the arm mechanic works but you know it looks pretty good you can see her arm's drawn back a decent amount but you can still generate a ton of momentum because obviously there's a spring behind it it's not nearly as much commitment as some forward smashes get but it didn't need to be and then same deal with her other side and i also like that it very much looks like a martial arts pose at the same time you can see it with the other arms too obviously the main thing that makes the arms memorable is the range though a big part of the criteria here is just how much are you gonna remember the forward smashes and you're certainly not gonna forget min mins and it's got some good technical execution behind it as well duck hunt kind of a fun idea that's used across all their smash attacks the targeting ridicule and one detail that i do like about all of them as well they're clearly completely taken aback by it you can see there's like that little moment of curiosity so here's a perfectly normal chamber and then the duck and the dog are both like wait what's that whoa no and then cover their eyes and hide and then they get back up again really well animated this move has a ton of personality in it the hit like it's got a bit of that multi-hit thing going on again where okay there's three identical shots and the last one is way stronger and it doesn't necessarily feel like it should be the charm of the characters is enough that i think i can put this in a tier though and then that just leaves banjo and kazooie the character i considered to have the best forward smash animation back when i did my best of every smash ultimate animation for the main channel i've had a lot of requests to update those videos similar to how i did for the best and worst of every smash ultimate move but those haven't really been changed at all apart from you know introducing a couple of new characters to the game so i figured this would probably be a bit more of an elegant way to reintroduce animation review banjo is just so into this look at him he does not care at all kazooie on the other hand look at the juxtaposition and expressions between them first banjo watch banjo's face throughout the entire animation here and then watch kazooie it's great and the entire thing has so much heft behind it as well that's a great wind-up and then just boom lifts his back leg off the ground really committing one cool detail that i really love though is this frame here like banjo is swinging her around with reckless abandon but he still checks in on her before she goes back in the backpack that's not really the kind of thing you're ever gonna notice that speed but something an animator took the time to program in it is such a cool touch and then the feel the feel is really good they went with one of the punchiest sound effects which is appropriate and then they've got those just insane banjo-kazooie line deliveries on top of it so between that and the concept of the move it's extremely forceful but still has a great sense of playfulness to it which describes a lot of their kit banjo kazooie has some of the most hilarious animations in the entire game so we are ending on an emphatic s tier here my favorite forward smash animation one of my favorite animations in smash period thanks for watching everyone and let me know your thoughts on the list this video took more effort than i typically put into the second channel so if you'd like to see more like it please consider leaving a like and comment to help it in youtube's algorithm top 10 smash moves that became canon above main channel video below and patreons youtube members and twitch subscript perks like early videos and discord access later people

Channel: MockRockTalk

Views: 265,186

Keywords: Smash Ultimate, alpharad, Nintendo, little z, super smash bros ultimate, smash bros ultimate, tier list, esam, hungrybox, ssbu, alpharad deluxe, Nintendo Switch, nairo smash, nintendo memes, nintendo, smash ultimate tier list, smash ultimate best attacks, smash ultimate best moves, super smash bros ultimate best moves, kirby, mockrock, worst of every smash move, smash ultimate worst moves, animation tier list, smash animation tier list, smash animations, smash ultimate animation

Id: FluosDmT29s

Length: 86min 13sec (5173 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022