Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: The Joys of Unlocking Characters

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has one of, if not the biggest character roster in a fighting game. Not counting the DLC characters and Piranha Plant, there are 74 fighters in Ultimate. That is nothing short of mind blowing. To get that big, beefy roster, however, you're gonna have to unlock them.

Your starting Roster in Ultimate.

Your starting roster in Smash 64.

When you first start playing Ultimate, your roster is small. Very small. You only have eight fighters to start with, the exact same characters from the original N64 gane that started it all. Seeing those eight fighters staring back at me, hit me with a little wave of nostalgia. This also presented me something of a dilemma: none of my Smash 4 mains were available to me. There were (are) dozens of videos and articles on the net, detailing how to unlock characters quickly, even telling you how to unlock a specific character you were looking for but I opted against using those methods.

One of the greatest pleasures to come out of playing Melee and Brawl was completing a match or mode, hearing a warning siren go off, accompanied by a screen sorta like this one.

AHHHHITSTHEMOMGAHHHHHH!!!!

That right there, sends tingles to my tummy, especially when it's a character I've really been wanting to see. That rush hit me so many times during my first two days/nights playing Ultimate.

Smash 4's roster wasn't as big as Ultimate's, but it was still quite large but a great deal of fun from unlocking characters in that game was deflated because most of the roster was there out of the box, including some of the newcomers. I've read some posts from players saying all 74 fighters should have been there from the get go and that just seems wrong to me. I didn't feel like I earned much of anything in terms of character unlocks in Smash 4 because more than half the cast was already given to me. It is the exact opposite for Ultimate. I had a ton of fun unlocking characters in this game without rushing.

Since I didn't have my mains from the get go, I got to try out other characters, and I have to say, I really like a lot of the characters in this game. With a roster this huge, it almost feels criminal to play the same characters all the time. Link's remotely detonated bombs introduce all kinds of new strategies. Bowser's down air can now spike and Gannondorf is finally making use of that sword he's been carrying around. With faster speed of Ultimate, a lot of characters are better than ever. The game isn't Melee fast, but Ultimate is a faster game than Smash 4.

Some of you won't be getting Ultimate until Christmas and if I were to offer you any advice, unpopular as it may be, it is simply this: take your time playing Ultimate. Don't look up who you need to use to unlock what character, just enjoy the ride. I was surprised the whole way through and I loved it. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows unlocking everyone, though. Those of us that unlocked the characters before the latest patch all have horror stories about which character clapped those cheeks (Duck Hunt and Lucina really gave me the work). However, we got some really good videos out of unlocking characters before the patch like this one from Keef Crew. You'd think a tournament level player was controlling those CPU fighters.