The Problem With Echo Fighters In Smash Ultimate

What kills me about the Dark Samus echo Fighter is that she had different moves as an assist trophy in Smash 4 but instead of developing that and adding a few Samus moves, the just made her almost an exact clone 😢

Peach and Daisy used to be slightly different. The turnip would send opponents in different angles. Sadly, this was later changed in one of the patches

I'm with you on the whole "echo fighters should get more unique moves or attributes to justify them more." Shoot, I would take a Smash bros game with a reduced roster size if every character was unique or given the "DLC treatment"

I like how Lucas is called a “clone” of Ness but they have completely different play styles

Lucina and Chrom should've been parallel to each other. It's quite baffling that the devs insist they take after Marth and Roy considering they're father and daughter literally holding the same sword.

Dark Samus in the prime games has a lot of moves unique from Samus, and even had a lot of this as an Assist Trophy. Of all the Echos , Dark Samus got robbed of its potential.

Bringing a character in as a clone or echo can lock them into an unrepresentative representation. Ganondorf is the poster child for this. Instead of being brought into a later game with a design that was actually based on his source material, he was introduced as a Captain Falcon clone just because his 3D model was a good match for Falcon's. And once he was brought in as a Captain Falcon clone, that cemented his Smash identity. Characters tend to see only minor design tweaks between games, and Smash Ultimate Ganondorf (even with his newer sword moves) is still arguably more of a Captain Falcon clone than a source material Ganondorf. And we'll likely never see an true source accurate Ganondorf, unless the devs go the route of multiple Ganondorfs similar to how they have multiple Links and Zeldas.

As a Chrom main, I find it very refreshing to hear some Chrom positivity. I think the character is broken as well and I just don't find playing around Roy's sour spots very fun. While I wouldn't mind Chrom being a bit more of a clone to Roy cough up b cough I still think he is amazing.

It breaks my heart that Daisy is just a glorified Peach skin. Especially since Peach was in Smash 4 and had custom moves. I'm not saying that any of them are perfect for Daisy, but that would have at least switched up how she plays.

I have absolutely no idea why people consider Ness and Lucas Eco fighters. None of their move sets are the same at all. It’s like calling Kirby and King Dedede echo fighters because they can both suck people up and use hammers.

I remember Sakurai using the term "Variations" in one of his videos to describe Fighters like Isabelle. It would make sense to have a Fox or Villager variant since characters in their respective series function near identically. But a variation of a Fighter doesn't constitute as an "Echo Fighter" because they would have to essentially re-create that existing Fighter to implement. So if creating a character like Wolf takes 70% of effort of a new character, it'd still be quicker to implement while offering actual gameplay differences. The Echo Fighters in Ultimate are solely just to boost series representation for casual audiences as well as to address people who complained about clones in every prior Smash game, but they still have to justify the inclusion with some gameplay attribute (competitive or not). I still think Melee had a better approach to clones because they addressed either player criticism (i.e. make a faster Link) or the differences were gameplay-focused rather than boost the # of characters. Now that Ultimate got casuals to like clone characters, I can see it being reasonable for clones to use existing movesets with tweaked properties that fit their canonical personalities in future games. Daisy being a faster, more aggressive Peach is a great example. I also wish Sakurai clearly identified variations, since it does seem baffling that Dr. Mario isn't an Echo Fighter while Ken is. Hope that adds to your points early in the video.

The choice between Echo Fighters isn't "Echo Fighter or better moveset" it's "Echo Fighter or nothing."

Ugh, the vendetta some people have against echo fighters is really dumb. Echos mean more playable characters while draining little to no resources. A character having its own moveset and playstyle obviously way more exciting, but bear in mind that such character takes at least 500 times more development time. And Ultimate is already a milestone achievement. And for those complaining that some echos are too samey, bear in mind that even the smallest changes can completely overhaul a character's balance. And that it's better to have two interchangeable characters than one character being a pathetic version of the other. The only gripe is that there could've been more echos. Like Shadow, Funky Kong and Dry Bowser. But oh well.

In my mind, Dark Pit is the ideal echo. The characters are 95% the same, but that 5% is a basically lateral question of matchup. Lucina and Dark Samus are the worst kinds. Lucina is just better Marth, while Dark Samus is literally identical. If more echoes had those mostly similar, but matchup polarizing differences, it would be much better. Not helping the Echo situation though is the entire Marth family tree kkinda coloring it. Another good option would have been to distribute some of the Smash 4 custom specials, but, those might end up as Lucina situations

10:41 I really like the handling of Bowser Jr. and Olimar/Alph. I think it makes sense to represent characters that would have the same or extremely similar movesets as reskins (with their own names representing how they have different animations), so that different characters can be obviously different and each character feels special. I dislike having a more characters that aren't distinct at a glance.

Dark Pit was made the opposite of Pit, became an anti-hero with his own character arc and having his own weapon then sakurai put him down by making him an echo fighter in smash

One thing you didn’t mention is that a lot of people complain that the Echoes label is inconsistent, mostly referencing how Lucina, Chrom, and Ken are Echoes while Dr. Mario is not. However, I think people are overlooking something in this categorization: release game. All the Echoes were introduced in Sm4sh or Ultimate, while Dr. Mario and most of his non-Echo friends were introduced in Brawl and Melee. I think release game and similar specials are the ONLY two categories that determine an Echo, the latter accounting for Isabelle not being an Echo as well. I don’t agree with it at all. But it’s consistent.

Im pretty sure the belmonts are just 1 character with 16 skins, and even then they could have put trevor and julius as skins

I think that's what happens when you promise everyone to be here. Also, while you can fix some stuff with fidelity (Like a float for Ganondorf to give him more options to use his power), as Minecraft Steve and Kazuya Mishima showed, too much fidelity can be actively detrimental for the character's health.

I would love to see a redesing of dark pit/pitoo Kid Icarus Uprising had a long list of weapons and powers to take from, maybe keep most of their normals but use different weapons to justify using different specials in its kit.