Why NO ONE Plays: Sora | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

I'm certain that for many of us we have a love-hate relationship with DLC characters and special ultimate on one hand it simultaneously insane and hilarious so there to be such a vast array of cast members from all genres and franchises coalesced into one title I for one was beyond ecstatic to see Joker sephiroth pirate Mithra brought into smash on the other hand Fighters pass one established a growing concern over DLC Fighters intentionally being made broken or overloaded for the sake of recording more sales at the expense of the protein's competitive Spirit sadly Fighters passed two would solidify those concerns fortunately though it would end on a high note everyone more or less knew the final one was certainly possible to be added but with all the intellectual property and trademark bureaucracy the team would have to tread through it was a pipe dream I think that by now we can safely ascertain that Sakura is just built different and can give virtually anyone who wants to dismash interestingly however unlike the other five members of Fighters Pass 2 sora's debut in the competitive scene was nothing short of underwhelming and there isn't as much widespread adoption of him into player's character pools across all levels of play so for today we're gonna dive into why no one plays Sora and if there's a possibility he could see more representation in the future a good number of you might think it's a little premature to make an episode on a fighter who's only been out for just under a year but that's actually why I wanted to make an episode on this prior to writing this I was having a conversation with debussansora who I know is going to make a reaction to this Hi Sam good to see you again anyways I was motivated to make an episode on Sora mainly due to how different his experience has been so far compared to the rest of his Katra minmin Steve sephiroth the Aegis and kazuya wasted no time making a name for themselves in Pro play sora's results were a stark contrast though becoming Infamous just like his peers but in a totally different way perhaps even worse there were several instances where Sora was fielded by top players and everyone's immediate reaction to it is that they either gave up or it's a copium last-ditch effort to match up check their opponent stuff like that the meme status of sora's viability escalated to a point where everyone was cheering on Meister to win a single game on him at smashcon and at wager it wasn't out of genuine support for him not to be cynical but I think everyone already accepted that Onan was gonna win the whole thing they just wanted some last minute amusement wait he told me I looked sad and I was but not because of the confetti it's because I'm pretty sure I'm the first person to lose some meister's Sora in top eight yeah that's what you're always sad about that's that's that's the only reason I was against the Steve so thank God I remember I don't want to be remembered like that that actually brings us to the first reason behind his lack of representation or at least resistance in finding representation for some odd reason there's a growing abundance of negative sentiment labeling Sora as a troll pick potentially influencing prospective players into believing he's a bad character it may seem silly for that to be one of the core problems but if you think about it smash ultimate is a game of influence we've all experienced this before whenever you're watching someone use a fighter you have this urge to want to try them out yourself especially if their playstyle speaks to you that applies more sewing competitive prior to Steve Rob was one of the most prevalent characters in tournaments so much so that you would frequently see five or more in top 64 at Majors considering there are almost 90 characters occupying even 10 of the top 64 lends an enormous amount of credibility to that fighter performance the inverse applies just as well repeated failures give off a negative impression when you see someone getting destroyed over and over again it doesn't exactly make you want to dedicate lots of time and effort into using them not unless you're only playing them for fun what's intriguing is that Zachary managed to linkage B5 a super major with over 500 entrants using exclusively Sora who at the time was out for less than two weeks some may attribute his brief Victory to Zachary as a player and not soars on merits but at the same time it speaks to his potential and that lets me segue into the parts of his gameplay that make tapping into that potential far more difficult than initially anticipated by many fighters Pass 2 consisted of entries of very unorthodox play Styles and Mechanics minmin for example completely lacks your traditional specials instead they make use of her other arm Steve offers a near Limitless amount of possibility with this Mining and block mechanics pyro and Mithra while straightforward are effectively two entities built into one character and kazuya has almost double the number of attacks out of any standard cast member but in sakurai's own words he describes someone's controls as relatively straightforward and that's true surface level the bulk of his moveset is rather easy to understand with the majority of his attacks involving swinging his keyblade around and unlike Seth Roth whose overwhelming effective range is accompanied by varying hitboxes the need for spacing your attacks isn't as crucial on Sora at least that's how it appears in actuality Sora may be even more difficult to play than sephiroth or pyrometra than everyone once thought Sora suffers from a huge amount of inconsistency within his kit there's a lot of nuance to his gameplay that causes him to feel surprisingly in conquerous compared to what is expected from a sword fighter his personal gimmick is the multi-input attacks that make up several parts of its kit jab four tilt neutral air for their neutral B and side B to better understand how this can be an obstacle for him let's look at his neutral air the first hit has in some assaulting forwards with the keyblade following a circular pattern which then transitions into an upward strike followed by a downward strike for the third hit like other multi-inputs such as Roy's double-edged dance or snake's forward tilt you can decide whether to continue the full string or not on paper this works to sora's Advantage opening up the door to a wide stretch of combos that other swords could only dream of but it also leads to a game plan that's somewhat counterintuitive to why most players opt into using a sortie to account for the need to string together multiple hits in quick succession combo relying characters generally excel in close quarters combat as long as they're right next to their opponent they more or less can take care of everything sword fighters their usage of a weapon for their attacks instead of punches or kicks prefer to focus on mid-range combat spacing themselves just far enough to where they can successfully deal damage to their opponent without exposing themselves to counter-attack in exchange to their greater effective range so it is compromised their ability to perform long combo strings either due to lower hit stun across the board higher knockback scaling less Mobility to keep up with their target slower Frame data or a combination of them not to say that somebody's aren't capable of Performing combos but they're not as extensive or all-encompassing in a way Sora is a sword fighter with a mindset of a combo fighter while still having the base properties of a sword fighter thus leading to summing consistencies in this gameplay without getting too technical saurus hitboxes aren't very conducive towards each other if we go back to the neutral example taking into consideration the differences in position of his disjointed hitboxes each one has varying levels of hit stunt on screen I have an image that's one of the most egregious visual offenses I've ever witnessed in my entire life who the uses comic stance in this day and age but I'll put up with that for the sake of explanation just getting Zach you're awesome anyways each of Swords near one hand boxes has different amounts of hits done let's set the hilt and more the tip depending on which one you land you either gain access to some combos or lose access to others more importantly depending on where Sora is when that strikes or which active frame actually hits your attacks can straight up fail to connect into each other it's not that sora's attacks are broken in the sense that they don't work but there's a lot more total area his attacks cover than your usual combo Fighters and there's not enough margin for error in all the different areas where his opponent will get hit relative to where he is or what active frame landed the attack ironically one of his best traits is the abundance of lingering hitboxes giving off the impression that he's easy to play granted he is swords are very low skill floor but he also has an incredibly High skill ceiling the difference between him and other difficult characters though is that he's is missing the other ancillary properties to take full advantage of his strengths so it's a very multi-step character but like I've explained in previous episodes multiple steps mean multiple chances to make a mistake or unforced error fortunately combo heavy Fighters have ways to either physically or psychologically pressure their opponent to open instead of those combos so that if they fail once they can just open a new one again Mario has viable to condition you into shielding Captain Falcon runs extremely fast Terry can pressure your Shield like there's no tomorrow what does Sora have well nothing really in fact sores missing the entire other half of the equation that is needed for a satisfying and effective combo character to start his slow and floaty air physics make the game uncomfortable for that kind of playstyle the two ways you can apply pressure are speed and range neither of which he excels at so has Mobility on the ground is subpar and he doesn't have the best moveset to contest the majority of the cast on the ground his aerial game is excellent but only when he hits a positional or situational Advantage otherwise he is deceptively poor air to ground combat where swordy's dominated ultimate his Aerials are average in speed Nares frame made Ford airspray in 10 backyards frame 13 up airs 10 down air is 15. not bad but not great either in air-to-air combat unless he spaces while he's outmatched speaking of range that's another issue by and large he's a sortie but his attack range doesn't extend adequately enough in relation to his Frame data he is roughly the same coverage as Roy even though Roy's Aerials are significantly faster and stronger the exception to this is batgear his main spacing tool in neutral but it's too slow and too unsafe on Shield compared to similar several it's back here has two more frames of startup but overshadow swords back here in reach by wide margin and its unsafety on Shield is made irrelevant on the basis of hardly anyone having the range to punish it if spaced correctly there's also another element that detracts from his pressure since he doesn't move very fast in the air you have more time to see him coming and therefore mentally prepare for a response against him than you do other sorties one of the arguments in defense of Mithra is that her attacks are unsafe on Shield that is a valve statement to making concept however methods on parallelog mobility and fast Frame data allow her to get away with it because she can rush you down very quickly so even if she hits you with downtill which is -11 on Shield enough to be punished by a lot of things not many people have the reaction speed to realize I just blocked it down till let's do another smash out of shield and by the time they realize it it's already too late so basically Sora has a fantastic combo game and can achieve a lot more mileage out of a successful neutral interaction than other sorties but he doesn't have the means nor the right attributes to create those scenarios he's not fast on the ground so you can abuse Dash grab like say captain Falcon he doesn't have the Frame data to mash either on the ground or in the air he's floaty and slow weakening the pressure of his Landing Aerials and that's a parallel importance for sorties and his attack range is barely sufficient enough to space while in neutral the way I see it he's in a limbo Zone Source range is better than melee characters but worse than most other stories his combo game is better than swordy's but worse than melee characters and his physics don't fit too well into either close or mid-range combat ultimately this forces Sora into an uncompromisingly defensive with punished gameplay relying on his lingering hitboxes in an effort to punish Reckless approaches in neutral or frame trap enemies while in disadvantage in a general format that wouldn't be ground slow representation Steve has also give or take an uncompromisingly defensive with punished character most of his success is attributed to him taking 40 miles out of an inchu give him and through mining he can pressures his opponent into approaching and punish them for doing so to his credit Sora is not without options to force approaches his neutral special contains three separate attacks with their own distinct functions two of which can be used at a relatively safe distance and if we combine his floaty nature with long lasting hitboxes he can and artificial extended spacing game by drifting back with Aerials and it makes for a decently enjoyable experience to those who have the patience to wait for their opponent to make a mistake that said the people who espouse that kind of playstyle are in the minority and so competition is spread extremely thin but the video will be 30 minutes long if I went on that tension this type of playstyle is very good at not losing but in gaining that sort of Defense you lose some offense meaning you're not the best at winning either winning the old-fashioned way that is smash ultimate naturally favors going second after all in a game of rock paper scissors if your opponent chooses their option first you can just choose the option that beats them in order to do that however you have to make your opponent play Rock Paper Scissors usually against their will that's what advantage and disadvantages in a nutshell you coerce your opponent or your opponent coerces you into playing rock paper scissors even with swords on impressive endurance his amazing recovery and defensive play bison the time he needs to find those openings what he lacks is the faculty to bait that aggression he has all the tools to be successful and just to lay all doubts to rest Sora is a good character but a piece of every puzzle within him is missing and the smash Community doesn't really care to find them at this point Sora came out too late worse yet he's arguably the most balanced Fighters past 2 character after being inundated with meta-shattering units like Joker Terry minmin Steve sephirothy Aegis kelsia who all have very threatening mechanics in contrast Sora feels ordinary and by no means implying that only Fighters are broken or DLC mechanics get played but Sora was the last of the DLC Fighters at the time he was released three years have elapsed for a special ultimate and while many of us were no doubt very pleased to see one of smash's most heavily requested characters to finally arrive there needed to be a practical incentive for players to drop their current means who they've likely spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on by then and pick him up the meta has undergone a ton of development during these four years and for 99 of us we've either come to terms with the merits and limitations of our existing means and are determined to work hard at bringing them to as optimal of a level as humanly possible such as light spots spargo's Cloud plutony's Wario or we decided our memes are booty cheeks and one for someone closer to talk to you Cosmos retired inkling and corn for pyra and Metro riddles used to play Richter and Ken but now runs Terry and Katsuya and Mars has been entertaining the thought of replacing zero Susanna's with Joker as much as it pains me to say this for Sora to have had as breakthrough of an entrance as his fellow DLC Fighters he had one or two options being insanely overtuned like the Aegis and Steve or an expert at a certain Niche like sephiroth Sora was a victim of poor timing and Circumstance if they wanted to release him as is it would have been more beneficial if he was in Fighters passed one back when a lot of players were still figuring out who they wanted to meet better yet if he was part of the initial wave of newcomers next to Ridley inkling and so on things would have been way better for him during my conversation with the boss I think he said it the best Sora is a character who required ample amounts of experimentation and grinding his inherent unforgiving margin for Eric deceptively High skill ceiling and defensive playstyle makes him a late bloomer someone whose True Value can only be ascertained after a long period of time you guys remember when regalo was upsetting people left and right as smashcon this past August right or how big D got second at get on my level with Ice Climbers or how sumosuto got murdered at misuma Top 9 with Dr Mario we're seeing a lot of players Fielding obscure mid and low tiers and taking sets off of top players but they had way more time to limit test and theorycraft with those three Sora needs that same amount of time I understand it may have been out of Sakura's hands heaven knows how difficult copyright and trademark negotiations must have been with Disney but Sora should not have been the last DLC fighter to be added it might take months or years before soar collects enough empirical data to be optimized but people don't want to wait that long especially without the other DLC Fighters can be made tournament usable only a few weeks after being picked up yes Zachary took a major with only Sora despite being out for less than two weeks but that's one instance and besides the kid is cracked I like to see soar perform better in competitive play though but it's gonna take a lot of damn work but hopefully not too long anyways that's it for today if you guys enjoyed the video it would be awesome if you gave it a like and subscribed consider following me on Twitter at Forest verm joining my Discord server and checking out my other Wynonna plays episodes if you haven't yet but till next time thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music]

Channel: Vars III

Views: 308,726

Keywords: smash, super smash bros, smash ultimate, super smash bros ultimate, vars smash bros, vars smash, smash bros ultimate, ssbu, sora, sora kingdom hearts, why no one plays, why no one plays sora, wnop sora, sora smash ultimate, sora fighters pass, why no one plays sora ssbu, smash ultimate sora, DLC fighters, smash ultimate sora trailer, smash ultimate sora debut

Id: 55hb2oIoZt4

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022