Brotherhood | Aklo@NotAklo
Saw a lot of Melee vs Ultimate beef (lol) on my feed recently. I think i'm one of the most "qualified" players to speak on the topic, having won large tournaments in Melee, Project M/+, and Ultimate. Gonna try to give genuine insight, so hear me out before getting defensive.
Ultimate is a pretty fun game casually. But it's one of the least competitive games i've seen be played competitively. That's not to say you can't get good at the game — it's just that getting good at Ultimate often rewards some sort of degen jank or not interacting, whereas getting good at Melee often rewards difficult execution.
From the perspective of someone who has been around the Smash scene for a long time and has been very good at many smash titles, it begins to look silly:
In Smash Ultimate, the devs removed every advanced technique they could possibly THINK of (bar b-reversing and RAR?). It's a laundry list. There are even mechanics that were newly removed in Ultimate that had been in the series since Smash64 (shield dropping, pivoting, running through opponents).
Not only does the game lack competitive mechanics, it actually has anti-competitive mechanics. The input lag is abysmal. There is noticeably more input lag than in Sm4sh, and the game has double the input lag of Melee AT BEST. Using a gamecube controller is the most common way of playing Ult, yet not even the least laggy! I can understand enjoying buffer systems in fighting games, but Ultimate's buffer system is so bad that it's comical. Most people practice Melee on rollback netcode, whereas Ultimate online — yeah...
I realize that a lot of Ultimate players are actually new to Smash/FGC. If you became decent at a different game and came back, you would realize how silly Ult is competitively. EVEN MELEE IS A MICKEY MOUSE GAME HALF THE TIME.
Brawl players: "It's the new game, i'm done with Melee."
Sm4sh players: "This is the best game in the series by far."
Ultimate players: "How were we EVER playing tr4sh?? Can't wait for the new Smash btw."
Can you see how exhausting it might seem to hear Ultimate enthusiasts talk about it being the best competitive game?🐏🐑
People will make fun of Melee for lacking character diversity (which is less true now than ever), but it's way less common for people to have legit examples of bad gameplay in Melee. The next up and coming Ult player will be another 13-year-old "prodigy" who mains Minecraft Steve anyway.
Melee is one of the most technical fighting games with a dedicated fanbase and a captivating history. Competitive platform fighting games at the scale in which know them today would not exist without SSBM.
If Melee is fun to you, play it. If Ultimate is fun to you, play it. But let's not lie to ourselves lol.
