Smash 64, Melee, Brawl and now Ultimate. Through out Nintendo’s history, the Super Smash Brothers franchise has been the pinnacle of party games and cross over collaborations, even going so far as to be a genre defining title for Steam, Playstation and Xbox alike. The content has only ever gotten bigger and better, the characters and trophies have only gotten more diverse, and now we arrive at the point where most of Nintendo’s extensive history is at your finger tips. For lovers of lore, combat and adorability (it’s a word if I say it is) Smash Ultimate is simply unmatched.
Platforms and Language – 8/10
Smash Bros. Ultimate is understandable only available on Nintendo consoles. The latest version that most of you know and love is only available on the Switch however there is an earlier version with similar capabilities on the Wii U if preferable. For this review I’ll be reviewing the Switch version exclusively.
The language settings can be set through the hotbar on the right hand side in the main menu.
Glossary
Usability – 9.5/10
You wouldn’t expect a game predominantly based around combat to have much in the way of discussion or writing but playing through Smash has been surprising. Playing through the game as a standard you will find from the main menu that the writing is bright and the chosen font is clear and legible. First things first, almost all instances of kanji show furigana to help you confirm the reading, however not in a manner that is intrusive. This means you can quite easily read through without your eyes drifting to the furigana unless you absolutely need it. Each tab on the main menu also comes with a “how to play” screen that shows a few brief slides with actions and a short snippet of text. These sentences have only a handful of kanji words, again with furigana, and each of them are found repeatedly throughout the game ensuring you can familiarise yourself with the vocab.
Each game mode varies in the amount of written content you will see. Modes such as standard melee, training and tournament are relatively minimal in readable content but do show useful hints relating to characters and items between stages and transitions. The new Spirits mode, replacing the story or subspace emissary, has a new mechanic that involves having a base spirit to aid your character as well as sub-spirits, all with their own effects. These effects are explained succinctly in each of the spirits’ descriptions and contain simple cause and effect language. These will describe alterations to your characters movement, equipment or abilities based on parameters around you so it can be beneficial to read up and ensure you understand how your character will change before you go into battle.
Additionally to the descriptions you apply to yourself, each zone throughout the map comes with a quirk or objective in the bottom left of the entry screen. Again this will determine how you play and, if not understood, can be detrimental to how you play. All of this incentivizes you to learn the language in order play at your best. Along your journey you will also find stores and gyms run by historical Nintendo greats such as Doc Luis from Punch out. These points add a bit of conversational dialogue, although not much, and offer either training for your existing spirits or an opportunity to purchase more. Last but not least, as your spirits develop, you, as a protagonist, will also level up and gain skill points. These can be spent on a large web of abilities with, you guessed it, more written descriptions as to how you can make your characters stronger and faster. This is all impressive considering what you may have expected but for me it is only the tip of the Ice climbers’ iceberg!
For me, by far the best tool for fun and engaging learning comes from the “Smash knowledge” and “Skill display” menus. “Smash knowledge can be found in the collections tab and “Skill display” can be found under the help tab on the right side of the main menu. Firstly, the “Smash knowledge/スマちしき” menu will have you select a character in the usual pre-battle fashion, but instead of taking you to a stage, will take you to a comprehensive list of facts and tidbits about your favourite characters, spanning from their inception to their latest appearances. Here you can see the reason and references behind certain costumes, attacks and taunts in order to learn more about the characters you already know and love.
The Help menu is a hive for useful readable content, here you can find the tutorials and basics for regular combat abilities as well as information on all of the items and stages in the game. Under “Skill display/ワザ表”, again, you are given your roster of characters to choose from, and upon selecting them will find their special moves list with images and descriptions. I personally find this captivating as it holds a whole heap of interesting and expressive vocabulary that brief and easy to understand. Some of these moves are also ingrained into us and are a piece of our childhood. The fact I get to read the description for “Falcon Punch” in Japanese has made my year. This is all the better when you remember that there is a roster of 70 Characters in total.
All in all, Smash Ultimate is exhilarating to play, has language sprinkled throughout and encourages unlocking and finding more content. It’s easily playable in short stints and due to the inclusion of furigana you won’t need to slog over a dictionary in order to get effective use out of it. The possible down sides are the minimal levels of “daily use” language, it’s not likely you’ll be able to apply a lot of the vocab to much else other than talking or reading about games however if this topic interests you this may just be the best experience of background and lore you’ll find short of buying streetfighter magazines. I recommend this game 10 times over.
Challenges and Method – 5/10
Read and memorise – Skills
As furigana is used throughout Smash it can be easy for you to slip into the habit of reading through while not stopping to engage with the language. One method I use to ensure that the language is sticking in my head is to read through either one or multiple sentences and try to recall them from memory alone. This will ensure that you are just regurgitating words mindlessly. It also means that if you fail, you can start again and revise from the beginning. It sounds tedious at first but I promise it is a fantastic way to reiterate and strengthen the readings and the meanings of words in your mind. The Skills display in particular is handy to work through this with as it has a maximum of 8 lines for the special skills (excluding the smash) which is big enough to be a challenge but digestible enough to be beneficial.
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