Everything You Need to Know From The Final Super Smash Bros Ultimate Direct

Ever since it was announced back in March, Super Smash Bros Ultimate has been shown off a lot, with all the new reveals pointing to it being the unrivaled champion of the Smash series. Now that we’re just over a month away from its release, the final reveals have been presented. So, what was revealed in the final Super Smash Bros Ultimate direct?

The direct opened up with the reveal of two new fighters, one original and one echo. Ken from the Street Fighter series arrives as an echo fighter of Ryu, but focused more onto kicks as opposed to punches. The new fighter revealed is Incineroar, the fully evolved fire type starter from Pokemon Sun and Moon. Incineroar’s play style is a mix of wrestling moves and fire moves, with all being very physical. One great thing about him is how, as a wrestler, he’ll pose for the audience. However, these are the last two fighters that will be included with the base Super Smash Bros Ultimate game, more on that later.

While there are already some amiibo planned for release with Super Smash Bros Ultimate, it was announced that every fighter will receive their own amiibo.

In this game, there aren’t any collectible trophies, and they have instead been replaced with Spirits. These Spirits can power up heroes, and they come from tons of different series, even those without fighters represented in the game’s roster. The Spirits are split up into four classes: novice, advanced, ace, and legend, which goes from weakest to strongest.

Each fighter can be paired with a primary spirit, which helps the fighter by boosting their stats and giving them a power. These primary spirits can be equipped with three additional support spirits, all of which have their own stat boosts and abilities. All of these are given to the fighter, making them much more powerful than before, and creating some absolutely unstoppable fighters.

The easiest way to get spirits is to win spirit battles, which each have different fighters and stipulations to win the battles. The spirits are also paired up with fighters that are similar to them, such as Mega Man being paired with Guts Man. These battles aren’t just regular fights, as all fighters will act similar to their spirit, whether that’s only using a certain type of attack, constantly taunting, or working with multiple other fighters.

The primary spirits also have a weakness chain similar to rock, paper, scissors, with the three types being attack, shield, and grab.

You can level up primary spirits by fighting with them equipped, or feeding them snacks. Some spirits have special forms they can only access by leveling up. Eventually you can send spirits back to the real world, but there core will stay behind. You can combine these cores to summon a new spirit afterwards.

While they’re not being used, spirits can train at the dojo or gym or go exploring for treasure. Certain spirits are known as masters, and by beating them you can unlock training facilities. Spirits can also be used to power up amiibo figures, but the spirits will disappear to power up the amiibo.

Spirits and fighters end up with a team power, but if you overpower a team and win, you’ll get less rewards than if you were evenly matched or under powered.

Online matchmaking has been reconfigured, so now your match ups are based on three factors. The first is preferred rules, allowing people that want a similar rule set (ex. Format, time limit, items). The next is Global Smash Power, which is effectively a ranking system. This will allow players to be paired up with people that have a similar GSP. There’s also the distance between players. This will focus on connecting players that are nearby, as to decrease latency issues.

Every player has a Smash tag, and if you win a battle online, you can collect one smash tag from each player. These tags can be exchanged for gold, which can buy things at the shop, more on that later.

There’s also the return of Spectator mode, allowing players to watch other online battles, possibly learning trick or two.

Another way to play online has two players on one console going against another team with the same set up, mixing together local and online play.

A new addition to online is battle arenas, where multiple people are in one room, and four people fight at a time. If you’re not fighting you can either spectate, or get in line so you’ll play next battle.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate will also be compatible with the Nintendo Switch Online app. While playing online people can use the app to have voice chat. However, there will also be a feature called Smash World where people can post clips and screenshots for everyone to see.

More assist trophies have been added, making the total amount 59, more than the amount of Pokemon in the game. These trophies have a range of things they can do, and come from many different games, from the world renowned to the very obscure.

For offline play, there are the returning Mob Smash modes. Century Smash is you vs 100 computers, and you have to survive until you wipe them all out. You can now choose what stage and music you want for this mode. All Star Smash returns, but now all characters will be able to be fought against, even if you haven’t unlocked them yet.

The Shop is where you can spend gold that you’ve acquired through dozens of different modes. You can spend gold on music tracks, spirits, Mii costume items, and even more.

In an effort to balance the game, there’s now a way to strengthen or weaken characters when playing locally on the same system. This will allow people to have much more even fights, even if one person is much better than the other.

A multitude of new Mii Fighter outfits have also been added, including outfits from Arms, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Splatoon 2, and more.

Even though all fighters in the base game have been revealed, there will be downloadable content. These new fighters will be made from scratch, and there will be no echo fighters. The DLC will be sold in packs that include one fighter, one stage, and a few songs. Each of these packs will be $5.99 individually, and five of them will be released. However, there’s also the fighter pack, which will get you all of these packs for $25. No DLC fighters have been revealed yet, but one unrelated DLC fighter has.

That fighter is the Piranha Plant, and that’s not a joke. It’s a weird fighter with weird moves, but it’s free for a limited time. If you pre-purchase Super Smash Bros Ultimate digitally, you’ll be fine. If you buy Super Smash Bros Ultimate physically, all you have to do is register the game for gold points on My Nintendo. Piranha Plant is expected to be released in February 2019.

The direct didn’t end there though, as one last thing was revealed. The Spirits origin and adventure mode. The whole roster of Ultimate is getting prepared to fight dozens of Master Hands and a giant glowing alien. As they prepare to fight, they get engulfed by giant beams of light and turn to dust, a la Avengers: Infinity War. The only character to make it out alive is Kirby. But not only did the roster of Ultimate turn to dust, it seems almost every video game character did. So, in the adventure mode you have rescue the characters from the roster as well as the Spirits, all in an effort to take out the beast that defeated them.

You can buy Super Smash Bros Ultimate and play it when it releases on December 7th, just over a month away from now.