I'm really glad that the challenges are no longer super specific and obscure.

In Smash 4, a challenge could be "finish 100-man-melee within 4 minutes with Ness". So you had to become good with Ness if you wanted to clear it. Even finding the correct mini-game was sometimes confusing.

Now it's just "finish Century Smash within 4 minutes." That's with any character, yay! So much better. I'm now looking forward to clearing them all.

The first board is where almost all the character specific ones are. I remember one outside of it, but there might be more.

I know people blame Sakurai of being biased because of all the FE characters, but if you think about it, every character has a reason to be here. And a good one to be honest.

We got Roy and Marth in Melee. I'm sure everyone agrees that this is fine. Ike replaced Roy in Brawl in an attempt to create a more unique character from a more recent, more popular game. I'm sure everyone agrees that this is fine.

Wii U/3DS comes. We get a newcomer in the form of Robin with a playstyle that's unlike anything in Smash. Plus, Awakening pretty saved the FE series, so they'd have to be crazy not to include a character from it. With Marth and Ike being back, we're at three characters. Except we're not, because why don't we take Marth's animations and put them on Lucina? Four characters is fine. One didn't take as much work. It doesn't matter. I'd say three characters plus a clone was pretty much the sweetspot for a series like this.

But hey. People miss Roy. No, they actually do. He never would've returned if it wasn't for the fact that people actually wanted him. He shows up in fan polls and shit. So they brought him back through DLC, which is basically the best way to do a bit of fan-service-y stuff.

The thing that actually got people angry was Corrin, but when you hear the reasoning can you really say it doesn't make sense? Of all currently announced games that were going to be released, like, really soon (already released in Japan), FE Fates was pretty much the only one from a big franchise that also featured a completely new character as the protagonist. They wanted a new character from a new game. Who would've been a better choice? Splatoon was kind of an unproven series, and Xenoblade is even more of a niche series than Fire Emblem.

So that's a lot of characters. But if you think about all of then as individual picks instead of "how many characters does that series have?!" there's ultimately nothing out of place here. Also Chrom is an Echo due to fan demand. Don't be mad at Echoes guys. They all make sense I swear.

Work like a charm.

So... I love the pokemon you can summon in this game. A match with nothing but pokeballs is always fun.

Either that, or no items. My preferences anyway.

Inkling's path is about colours. Marx is the most colorful boss, and he can grant Kirby the Painter ability in the games

I honest to goodness would like nothing more than seeing all the Marth clones just being nuked at this point, they always look like wasted space as a Marth main even if they took less time to develop. Plus Lucina and Chrom not having their own playstlyle being echoes of each other like the Arena Ferox cutscene in Awakening just pisses me off.

But hey, since the game's deal is "everyone is here!" I'll just group echoes together in character selection and pretend they're deluxe skins or something.

I can see how Roy (and by extention Chrom) could arguably be called clones of Marth, as they still have a similar moveset despite having significant changes made since Roy first debuted in Melee, but it's just flat out wrong to say that Lucina and Chrom are echoes of each other, and it's equally wrong to say that they don't have their own playstyles. In a game like Smash, if you change even something as minor as whether the tip of the sword deals more damage or not, you've already completely altered the way the character will be played, hence why Lucina was made into a separate character to begin with. That's not even getting into what happens when you change a character's recovery move, which is what happened to Chrom.

I'm not a big fan of clones, echo fighters included, but I do enjoy it when their movesets are differentiated from the characters they derived from. Ganondorf is a good example of this. Falco as well. When Roy was brought back in Smash 4, I really liked how his moveset had changed. Chrom being made an echo fighter of him was a good fit as well, with a more aggressive moveset compared to Marth/Lucina but still being similar enough to draw direct comparison, just like we saw in Awakening when Chrom and Lucina fought each other in Arena Ferox. Smash characters being consistent with the games they hail from is a plus in my view.

I got Pichu. Hurray for characters I'll never use. And I finally beat King Dedede. Oh, and I have Richter now as well.

Isabelle has replaced Yoshi as my main.

I honestly can't believe it.

Now I'm not sure what Jackos meant. Referring to the cutscene of Awakening, you'd think he wants Lucine and Chrom to be echoes of each other. They're supposed to have the same fighting style. So he's annoyed that they're not echoes of each other, the only two characters that are supposed to be?

Anyway, I don't mind the FE characters. I'm glad that Robin and Corrin are both very different. And Ike is one of my favorite characters.

Oh right, that does make a lot more sense. I'm sorry, I got confused there.

Although I do still think that Lucina being an echo of Marth and Chrom being an echo of Roy is still a pretty reasonable way of doing it. You retain the similarities between Lucina and Chrom while allowing for the latter to have a moveset that seems more in line with how he fights in Awakening, while the former retains her similarity to Marth (a reference to her initial role in the game).

But alas, the one who was wrong was me.

Dang son.

I can't play Isabelle to save me. Simon Belmont is really becoming a main tho.

Look. I made a thing!

Dude, Grima should've been Robin's final smash

I still say Marth should be like Bowser Jr, with each alternate 'costume' actually being a different swordsman/lord from the series.

Also, while I don't have the game yet, I watched a recent GameXplain video about some of the spirit battles, and giant green Alph being Charlie from Pikmin is fantastic and I love it. As long as you don't get a good view of his face, it really looks like Charlie. I'm not sure if there's a spirit that can make you giant, but if there is, I plan to make good use of it.

In response to the last bit:

The Great Zapfish is a support spirit with the effect. Found to the west of the starting location. (Takes two slots)
Medusa is a primary spirit with the effect. I don't remember where she's found, but definitely somewhere. (Legendary; has two slots available. No it doesn't stack)
Metal Face is a primary spirit with both Giant and Metal, found in an unenhanced form very late in the game. (Legendary; has one slot available.)

Keep in mind that this doesn't last forever.

Thank you muchly. So it's like starting out with a mushroom, and it wears off after the same amount of time? Eh, that's not ideal, but it's still pretty cool. That just means I have to end the battles quickly.