<![CDATA[The Hero Might Be Smash Ultimate’s Most Polarizing Character Yet]]>

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a fantastic concoction of crossovers, one that excels at creating movesets for its characters based off of nods to their first appearances, easter eggs, and lore from the original games. Every moveset is unique (excluding echofighters), and each player’s styles and tactics clash like orange juice and toothpaste to create match-ups that can push entire crowds to the edge of their seats at tournaments like EVO.

The recent introduction of Dragon Quest’s Hero’s incredibly broad moveset has taken those already wild matches to a new level, and has polarized fans and professional Smash-ers alike. Love him or hate him (IGN thinks he’s great), this protag is shaking up the Smash Bros. scene right now.

The debate around Hero can be largely attributed to the RNG (random number generator) elements that are infused into his playstyle. His Command Selection ability brings up a menu of four randomized spells – a couple of which have the ability to instantly K.O. an opponent – one of which has the chance to fire a random effect from a pool of 21+ options (which includes buffs like invincibility and invisibility). He’s also the only character that can randomly score critical strikes on enemies with basic smash attacks – he’s a very lucky guy.

Hero is talked about with a certain buzz that we’ve rarely seen for other DLC fighters.

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The sheer breadth of options his moveset allows opens up what is, essentially, a whole new way to play SSBU. It’s almost impossible to comprehend all the information on-screen if two Heros are fighting each other, like trying to read a book that’s been thrown across the room while it’s midair. Using Command Selection, he can become invincible, 3 inches tall, or even explode himself by accident. The RNG factor makes it a bizarre, unpredictable kit, and while that’s not usually a big deal playing casually with friends, in more competitive circles it quickly became a point of contention that everyone had something to say about.

Much of the community embraced Hero after his full reveal, with tons of players making him the subject of memes and fanart, or just sharing their more ridiculous experiences with him on the field. He’s talked about with a certain buzz that we’ve rarely seen for other DLC fighters.

Every Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Fighter

But “buzz” isn’t always positive – there’s a large camp of people frustrated about the RNG elements. Pro player William “Leffen” Hjelte was an early (half jokingly) anti-Hero figure who even created a petition asking tournaments to ban his play. “Random?! RANDOM?! [Sakurai] hates us… [Sakurai] hates us!” was Leffen’s first reaction on stream to the character, and that was before finding out about Thwack, a possible instant-KO move.

Of course, this sentiment isn’t reflective of the entire professional community. Smash personality Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios maintains that Hero shouldn’t be banned just because his moveset is something new and random. “We should wait and see if this character can come out and win tournaments and do something,” said ZeRo in a recent video. “To me it looks like it’s almost impossible for someone to pull this off in a competitive setting without dying before it even happens.”

“The Smash Bros community in general is always complaining about something,” continued ZeRo. “The community tends to complain about anything that could be potentially annoying.”

Tournaments have gradually adopted stricter battle conditions over the years.

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While a lot of the pushback against Hero isn’t entirely negative, a considerable amount of people are actually frustrated right now. Smash is a game where the rules are constantly evolving as players develop new techniques – alongside updates from Nintendo – meaning how Pros approach the game has had to change with it.

While Nintendo has occasionally tweaked aspects of certain characters, they’ve never completely removed a character (and it’s unlikely that they ever will), but tournaments have gradually adopted stricter battle conditions over the years. In order to keep victories as dependent on a player’s skill as possible, tournament hosts have removed items that were considered too powerful and stages that were deemed too hazardous. It wouldn’t be too surprising to see the issue raised on a stage beyond just social media — Leffen’s petition currently stands at 2,742 signed votes, and if enough people in the scene share his sentiment over the next little while the character could be banned from competitive play.

In the short time since his reveal, Hero has already become a major figure in the Smash community, both in and out of matches. While his competitive fate is still undecided, he’ll clearly remain one of the most controversial characters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate — though so far his true Ultimate seems to be spicing up the game while making a lot of people mad.

What are your thoughts on Hero? Is he a galaxy-brain-level spell caster, or a chump that needs to get rushed down? Leave your opinions in the comments below!

Funké Joseph is a Freelance Writer for IGN please laugh at his jokes and follow him on Twitter.

Source: IGN

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