A Tale of Two Top Tiers

Finally a video that combines my love for smash and hatred for the britsh monarchy

I feel like a takeaway is that meta knight is a victim of the environment he was in. He was disallowed from pushing forward as he was supposed to by the mechanics of the game, and those same mechanics helped in making his neutral so oppressive

Actually outdid yourself on the visuals for this one. Incredible stuff as always

For the longest time I've held the opinion that a healthy top tier is strong by leaning into the mechanics of the game they're in as far as possible, while an unhealthy top tier is strong because they have aspects of their kit that subvert aspects of the game altogether. And this video elaborates on that idea in a super well put way!

I don't know why but hearing "There was two kings; a knight of the skies, and a fox from the stars" gives me unnecessary world building bliss.

Bro ur editing is getting CRAZY good

The editing of scenes is so slick and striking, I love the use of contrast! I’m super impressed with where your videos have gone in such short time, keep it up!

Wow Leon I didn't know you could do frame-perfect multishines like that. Inspiring display

Meta Knight, a character that is a textbook lesson in not just fighting games, but all competition games, stresses the importance of ensuring a character "Shares Neutral", because if a character is either in Advantage or Disadvantage with no Neutral to give, they are inherently a bad character.

Fox very much has those Akuma vibes. An EXCEEDINGLY powerful character but…they dance on the head of a pin. Akuma typically has among the highest damage output, speed, and great mobility. But he often has the lowest HP in the game by a notable margin. One or two mistakes can literally cost him the whole round. It’s thrilling~!

I can't think of a better way to remedy the broad misconceptions among casual smash players about Melee Fox (and to some extent Melee in general) than pointing to this video. Juxtaposing Fox and Meta Knight is such an eloquent way of demonstrating Fox's contribution to the overall health of his game, and along with the tone and writing of this video, it manages to avoid the anxious defensiveness that many melee players (myself included) have when trying to defend the game to other smashers who don't give it a fair shake because of the memes or whatever. It really conveys the fun of melee without coming off as "fanatical." Banger content, right up there with AsumSaus

If Fox and Meta Knight are kings then Bayonetta is like Hella in Thor Ragnorok. One day she just showed up, said hey Im queen now, tried to rule, they didn't like her, so she killed everybody, and then Asgard blew up. Even after they nerfed her we knew that no character was even close to the God of Death herself. Every interaction is a losing proposition for the opponent because if they guess correctly they put her in disadvantage where she's second only to brawl Meta Knight in not actually being that disadvantaged, but if BAYONETTA guesses right she gets a stock. Smash Bros is designed around percentages where riskier moves kill earlier, a character that can kill whenever off of whatever completely breaks that system. This is especially bad considering we ran tournaments with only 2 stocks and she has no losing matchups (only a couple are even. At worst Pikachu or Diddy were -1). Even if you were up by a stock and a half on her, it would probably still take Bayo less openings to win from that position so you were always losing. She's the ultimate example of why risk/reward matters to a game

This video showed me how much Smash channels are slacking, including me, and it's not even from a Smash channel. Incredible stuff!

Great vid! Will add some stuff for those interested of why Fox is more tolerated than meta knight. - One thing not mentioned in the video is because of the fact the Meta Knight is constantly in the air, that means you can't really grab him, everyone else is confined due to slow air movement, MK being the exception which means that whilst all the top tiers can chain grab mk, the more important part is being able to contest MK like with lasers or swords, or ice climbers who have the easiest chain grab because whenever MK tries to wall you out you can de-synch to punish it and kill him, this is also what contributed to brawls slow pace. - Secondly, Defensive Fox is a really good character, whilst you were talking about how is options retreating are bad, you fail to mention important how Fox can punish you for approaching badly. Lasers build chip, shine having a frame of invincibility, godlike grab game, and Nair, allow him to play a very campy game if he wants to, so I don't think that's a great example of how he exemplifies Melee. On the other hand, him being combo food is entirely true, and is what keeps Fox from being overbearing to the point of killing the game.

I absolutely love the trend of melee fans making documentary style videos on the history of their game. Such a beautiful way to etch their collective memories into stone.

Theres some nuance that couldnt fit into a video this short, but this is such an incredible way to put it for anyone who isnt already into smash, and also is versatile enough to easily be applied to other games

I know everyone’s praising the animation and visuals, but I’m glad they don’t seem to come at the cost of the points you’re making. Great work and hope that Tournament is a blast!

Seeing these videos compared to the older ones is pretty wild, your old videos got me into traditional fighting games but these new ones are just next level. all the animations you make for these are crazy and give your videos incredible charm.

GOOD MOVIE

Meta Knight is actually a really strong rushdown character if the situation calls for it. The best example would probably be the Olimar matchup. It's probably one of the most aggressive gameplan of any character in any smash game, because of Olimar's flower pikmin and pikmin farming and MK's strength in neutral. The rising Dair/ledge spam we associate with Meta Knight was because the IC matchup was the most contentious matchup at higher levels of the bracket. Timeouts are simply the most efficient way to deal with IC, but that's as much of an issue with IC as it is MK. Given the melee communities controversies regarding wobbling, it's fairly understandable that one would camp against an iteration of IC that is far, far stronger (because the devs thought the IC TOD was gone and buffed the shit out of them, but also because of the stronger shield). Which leads me to my final point: MK isn't strong because of his noob bait neutral B, but rather because he has the strongest neutral game out of the roster. His Ftilt is safe on powershield (mentioned in a SSC set a few years back), which is a godsend given how strong shield and shield SDI was. This was because there is only a 3 frame gap between the first and second hits. Many jabs also have this property, but where MK's Ftilt differs is that he is fully actionable before the 2nd hit expires. Against say, Falcon's jab combo, if you shield the first hit you can simply hold shield because if he doesn't continue the string, he gets put in endlag and can't follow up with jab2. Not with MK. He can fully recover, walk around for 6 frames, and still be able to Ftilt2 (which is one unit longer that Ftilt1 and hits on frame 2). Furthermore, Ftilt has ~14 units of disjoint at bare minimum, usually more because of MK's low and round hitbox. This is in comparison with Melee Marth's Fair, which only has ~9. Many of MK's matchups against high tiers actually has him with a worse punish game because of his awful grab release (vs Marth), poor air mobility (vs falco Dthrow), and low weight. It's just that he has an amazing ground game to more than make up for it, thanks to his Ftilt, Dtilt against small shields, and Glide attack which autocancels (3 frame endlag. lmao) and even has a better glide toss than Diddy or ZSS. All that is to say, MK is definitely the most oppressive character Smash has seen, both in relative and absolute terms. However, because very few people follow the competitive scene, most people assume pros are losing to the gameplay they experience on WiFi battles, when it's really just a coincidence that MK happens to strongest at all levels of play. Ultimately, he's more toxic than Fox because Fox isn't good if you can't JC Shine, aka at low levels of play. P.S Uair is a frame trap; you can't actually airdodge through it if the MK falls with you. It has both faster startup and less total duration than an airdodge.