Ugh.
I'm really not feeling the difficulty here.
I mean, maybe its because I suck [parasitic bomb] at the game but I feel as if the game has some sort of nasty adaptive AI, where I can get through the first match or two of All-Star on Hard with no problems because the AI just lets me win and then the third completely wrecks me, and then when I go to try again the same tactic I used last time doesn't work because now the AI just dodges/shields all the [tornado fang]ing time (Everybody is Shulk apparently, except for Shulk) or cherrytaps me when I'm trying to attack (As Ike, so large windups) and then just gang up and pummel me to death. They anticipate people waiting at the edge of a stage to kill them, air dodge constantly or wait until they get to the point where their final jump will get them perfectly on the ledge without any trouble. I try to adapt but the game doesn't give me the opportunity (I'll try to dodge or shield only to be anticipated by one of the other AIs and get attacked the second I get out of the invincibility frames, or I get shoved off the stage.) I think they were trying to make it feel like I was fighting real opponents and honestly I don't like it. If I wanted to fight real people I'd play online, I just want to not have to be completely in the dark as to how the AI is going to act in a particular match (sometimes they're dumb and die easily, other times they avoid almost all of my attacks and shield and dodge a whole lot and its frustrating which leads to me [tornado fang]ing up.)
Also, [tornado fang] being unable to break whatever boxes I want in the challenge mode! Brawl did that too and that was stupid, and then in the PAL version they made it so you could break whatever ones you wanted. Maybe I want to break that 9.0 without losing a stock one because I'm not savvy to perfect run [parasitic bomb] at all, but nope gotta break that one the legit way.
Also Smash Tour, its stupid. Lots of challenges revolve around it, and its a lot of random events, one challenge revolves around letting a Metroid steal stat boosts and getting them back, only problem is the Metroid moves when the other characters move so if you have everybody move one at a time (sort of the only way to do it if you're doing a 4player run by yourself to get rid of the [Bumpity-Boom!] AI) the metroid can run into somebody else and trigger them getting your stat boosts. The spinner is [parasitic bomb] too, I either have incredibly bad timing or poor luck but I have severe difficulty getting any higher than 1s or 2s, sort of screws the ability to get checkpoint bonuses when I need 5 or 6 to get to a checkpoint from the previous one. You can set the amount of turns before you start but its set so its minimum is 15 and the max is 25. Maybe its more fun with others but considering its not playable online, its essentially worthless to me. At least Smash Run, with its issues included, was also a satisfying single-player experience in addition to it being fun for multiplayer.
I may sound like I'm complaining a lot, but 4 is considerably harder than Brawl ever was and even when brawl was hard (Boss Battles on Intense) you could at least work through it with practice because the boss order was randomized (save for Tabuu, but you could always face him in the great maze whenever) and they had defined patterns and didn't mix up their AI that much (save for speed of attacks and strength that increased the farther you went in). All Star was the same deal save for the randomization but here it feels like you won't know how the game will act, will they be super aggressive, ultra defensive/dodgy, or passive and easy? It doesn't matter what the difficulty is, I feel its more of a randomizer than it is anything concrete, because there's plenty of matches that gave me more trouble on normal in Event mode than other matches did on Hard.
tl;dr, game's hard, lots of questionable design choices, strange AI, Smash tour is garbage with 1 player. Frustration ahoy.
Wh-what?
You remember that event in Melee, Slippy's Invention? Where Fox and Falco are invisible on the Venom stage and you can only see them with slight glints of light, but you got to choose your character?
Same thing here, except replace Fox and Falco with Sheik and Wii Fit Trainer (Sheik I get, stealth and such, but WFT?), replace choose character with Lucario only (at 200% damage because of Aura), and replace Venom with Pokemon Stadium 2, aka a stage with a lot of bright spots where the little glints of light from the invisibility are too hard to see.
Its great fun (its not), I beat it after like 3 tries, WFT's no problem but Sheik's new special is [tornado fang]ing annoying because explosions are bad for people with lots of damage.