How Bad Are Brawl's Low Tiers? 

If you want early content! Videos always upload there first and you get access to the Honest Content Discord! www.patreon.com/honestcontent

Brawl's low tiers are so bad, they're absolutely hilarious and a complete joy to play as. It's really fun discovering just how butchered these characters were in Brawl compared to literally every other game in the series and trying to find viable strategies for each of them.

Fun fact: every Melee veteran's jump squat (minus Bowser and Zelda) was increased by 1 frame.

Correction on the Bowser segment because he actually IS better in Brawl than he was in Melee: Bowser has a lot of janky grab release combos, setups and hard reads into kills he can do on most of the cast, so he does at least have a niche in that regard. It doesn't really do as much for him as some would want, but that does put him above his Melee incarnation IMO Plus there's the fact that Flying Slam has no landing lag and refreshes his double jump if he's already used it, so his mobility is actually...alright. Doesn't make up for his ground mobility, but at least he has that too

It’s funny to me that none of Brawl’s newcomers were in the bottom tier lol

Sakurai loves having pink puffballs as top tiers in one game and then nerfing them 6 feet under in the next

Real shame Brawl had the *rawest* sound effects of all Smash games period. Like every hit had so much OMPFH behind it.

FLUDD may have been useless but it had the coolest feature of staying on Mario’s back for a little bit making him look cooler. It’s a shame they would nerf that feature later.

Hi there, please dont take this to be mean or a hate comment cuz its definitely not intended to be, but I wanted to mention that when talking about KO power and strength of moves, it would help the viewer see the percentage of the character getting hit, so we have more context of how good or bad the KO power is. Otherwise, amazing video! ❤

I love where your content sits. Competitive history but where anybody, vet or casual can enjoy.

9:03 This jerky feeling comes from the fact that falcon dive goes less distance if you use it from the opposite direction that falcon is facing. (This limitation is also present in sm4sh while it's not in melee or ultimate.)

But the big question is this: who is worse: Brawl Ganondorf or Melee Bowser?

Even with MK & ICs removed, the distance between the top tiers and bottom tiers is so much larger in Brawl than in any other game seemingly

The thing that made Ganon unusable was his up B had ZERO hitstun. Meaning you could get him off stage, tank his up B, and mash your characters best aerial to kill him 100% of the time.

I wouldn't even call them low tiers, just call them bottom tier

You forgot to mention that bowsers side b has zero landing lag in the air and he gets his double jump back when you use it close to the ground which buffs his mobility He also has grab release follow ups on most of the cast and he can chaingrab grab release some characters

"History repeats itself" "History repeats itself" "History repeats itself"

I feel like Brawl extracted all its major buffs from veterans and gave them to newcomers. Almost all veterans either got worse (Puff, Ganon, Falcon) or stayed about the same (Bowser, Marth Falco, Zelda), with very few exceptions (Kirby, Pikachu, Ice Climbers). Most of the returning Melee cast placed similarly in tier list to how they did in Melee or dropped significantly, whereas newcomers largely dominated the higher tiers.

Ivysaur is a lucky dude! He's worse than most (if not all) characters in the video, and yet, being part of Pokemon Trainer saved him from being here.

Retired melee Ganon main, guide writer, tourney goer and tourney hoster here. Brawl Ganon ended my career almost immediately-I had time to write the first ganon guide for brawl, and that was the last guide I wrote for ganon. Sakurai just bled the character dry of anything that could be fun. Even in the current game I would trade some power for some of his old melee speed.

It's so funny to me how Nintendo's best characters are so bad in their own crossover fighting game

Reminder that sonic was seen as a bottom 5 character at the first brawl tier list.

Brawl Ganondorf is really a joke in this game

R.I.P Douglas Jay Falcon

Link also got a slightly different side special in Brawl being the Gale Boomerang from Twilight Princess. From what I remember the windbox wasn't great in this game.

Poor Twilight Princess, all three of its characters are in F tier

I feel so bad for these characters

I mean, you'd know better than me since i haven't played brawl in 10+ years. But mario's flud doesn't actually seem to have bad pushback in that clip, seems reasonable

1:01 "It doesn't push opponents far at all." Luigi: Gets pushed half the distance of Final Destination

I remember some of these characters videos. It’s almost as if history is repeating itself!

Idk what it is but is the last background song that plays during ganondorf's song zeldas lullaby from OoT remade with the FF7 soundfont? Or am i off completely?

They nerfed a lot of characters too much

Zelda may be low tier, but that wont stop me from playing her every time i play brawl and melee.

The quality improved quite a lot keep it up💯

I shall never forget when i got a double knee off stage in brawl in doubles. Good times.

I still don't know what the fuck is going on with Bowser's dash in melee and brawl. What is he doing he looks like he's bugged out

what’s the name of the song during samus’ section?

What is the song that plays when he starts talking about Link

This is the type of content we need more of tbh. Everyone always talks about who the most broken characters are, looking into why some of them are utter dog💩 is just as interesting

Poor Ganon, he has been low tier for so long 😿

OMG NEW HONEST CONTENT VIDEO

Really cool editing style with the white shadow!

The few times I had decided to return to Brawl to check the game, I can't help, but feel like the game is in slow motion, probably it doesn't help that outside of good Newcomers and Pikachu, everyone else feels back to use xD. At least I get a bit of joy using Ganondorf because Flame Choke is so funny.

The only thing this has convinced me to do was to improve with the low tiers. Not sure if it's worse dropping my mid tier main for this... Taking a look at the list I could have sworn that at least 2 characters have some sort of special techniques...guess i need to get back to studying instead of wasting time on Ultimate

I am glad this man has the tastes to use Persona 3 music absolutely slaps

Oh baby you can just sense this channel's gonna grow

Honestly, this video wasn't all that great, feel like it's the same as with your other Brawl related content in that you didn't do your research properly and are only scratching the surface on your arguments on why x move or x property/characteristic is bad, some of the explanations didn't make a lot of sense. This happens with your 64 and Ultimate content too, so my advice (at least for now) would be to stick to melee or P+ content. Open invitation to hit up our community if you ever need help in doing your Brawl research, it would at the least up the accuracy in comparison to the process you're currently following.

The Brawl Low tiers are so damn bad, that even my friends and me felt it, and we are complete casuals.

Man i loved the grittiness aesthetic brawl had i also do miss tp zelda she was so badass (even if she sucked)

Weird how Falcon is an f tier considering how good he was in all smash games.

"History repeats itself" but not as much as you do.

your videos are so well made and interesting!

Bloodyknite sure does make Ganondorf work in Brawl though. Lol.

This is excellent channel keep it up

0:53 I was today years old when I learned FLUDD can do ghost hits

I don't see the point of using Samus with her armor in this game she is sluggish and her hitting power doesn't complement her lackluster speed. I like playing Zero Suit because her speed and combo possibilities are nice due to her speed and grabs who complement the low power range as you can camp some slow characters and mid-speed builds. Her A-UP kick is probably her best move at doing K-Os from memory.

You mentioned the meme of transforming Zelda into Sheik, but I would've said the same regarding Samus into Zero Suit Samus via taunting the suit off

insane content pace!!

History repeats itself sure but not as much as you do.

it’s almost like history repeating itself with how many times i heard that phrase in this video

I think Sakurai just had a phase where he hated Zelda characters, I wish they were good, but Link, Zelda, & Ganondorf are still bad in Ultimate

Sakurai must hate ganondorf and zelda so much, perma bad characters

Brawl was MY GAME growing up and my favorite characters were...Samus, Link and Gannon 😂 I've had new smash players come over to my place bragging how good they are until I whip out Gannon/Link on the old Wii and absolutely stomp them. People think Gannon kills with smash attacks, no, forward tilt is the move to use.

take a shot after everytime double down is said

love the video!

Song at 13:20

As someone who was maining Jigglypuff in Melee by the time Brawl came out, I was very disappointed.

I played through subspace emissary And only now i find out Mario was a bad character? I should have used Wario or META KNIGHT for the rest of the campaign

Shoutouts to Cool Whip's Mario :,)

Zelda is an interesting one, since many of her moves were actually better in Brawl vs the later Smash games, despite her being terrible. Examples being... - Fsmash has 10 less frames of endlag in Brawl, and is much safer to use. However, it connects poorly - Dsmash is faster (frame 4 vs 5), has more range, is significantly stronger, and has leg intangibility - Upsmash is significantly better than all other games. It is almost twice as large, and has 7 frames less endlag. It also hits on frame 6 instead of 9, and does more damage - Dtilt is also debatably stronger in Brawl. It does more damage, has a trip chance, and can true combo into itself multiple times until the opponent SDIs away. It also combod into Dsmash, which was much stronger back then - Fair and Bair have smaller sweetspots, but have about half the endlag. Brawl was the last game that allowed Zelda to do 2 lightning kicks in one short hop (since smash 4, you can do one kick but it won't autocancel from a short hop). This nerf was felt very badly in the Zelda community when Smash 4 came out - Din's Fire had a ridiculously huge hitbox, although it was not very strong. It was also very easy to dodge with Brawl's mechanics Zelda actually received a hefty amount of nerfs going into Smash 4, which was quite funny for all of us to see. It was really the Brawl engine + meta that totally screwed her over. I will say though that Brawl Zelda's moveset still isn't very cohesive even if the individual moves are superior. Smash 4 made her flow much better, and Ultimate rounded her out some more to where she's actually an alright character now.

Jiglypuff not only is bad but is also extrimly hard to unlock

They turned Link into Mii Swordfighter lol

Take a shot whenever he says: "Doubled down"

I would say check out Mew2kings tier list video on brawl. He goes into a good amount of detail on the redeeming qualities of certain bad characters more than here.

It's like Brawl was created with a side of disgust towards smash melee xd

Can you do how pm fixed all these characters next?

Why is zelda on thos list but not ivysaur?

As a fan of Ganondorf it's really sad that he is bad in Melee and shit in Brawl, 4 and Ultimate. At least he was fun in Brawl imo, Ganon-Parties (Ganon only games) were pretty fun At least he is Top Tier in Homerun Contest - it's sth ig

The looks i get when i tell people that brawl was the game that made me a zelda main

i forgot what game this video was on and was baffled as to why jiggly was on this

Can you do this with smash 4 low tiers?

I'm stock that Kirby isn't low tier since a lot of characters managed to be in the low tier. (which hurts to say about Kirby, i'm a Kirby player not a Kirby main.)

I still wanna know exactly what brawl bowser is doing in that dash animation.

Me reads the title horrifically hopelessly horrible

Captain Falcon being a low tier in any Smash game should be a crime. The fact that there was even a period where he was considered the worst character in the game really speaks volumes on how hard Brawl fucked him over.

the worst nerf to Mario was adding the denim texture

This just shows how amazing these characters were buffed when Project M came out. 😂

P+ Samus in vBrawl video

Yall need to check out Izaw’s brawl Link though it was insane

sakurai made the whole triforce bad

Yes link has been bad across every smash game except ultimate (not a joke btw) but that hasn't stopped me from stomping my childhood friends with him.

Here's how I'd rank the low/bottom tiers 40: Ivysaur (Using Ivysaur Only) 39: Zelda (Using Zelda Only) 38: Ganondorf 37: Captain Falcon 36: Link 35: Jigglypuff 34: Charizard (Using Zard Only) 33: Mario 32: Luigi 31: Bowser 30: Yoshi 29: Samus Yoshi and Luigi are also terrible and def deserve to be here lol

the worst move in brawl is sheik's down special. it's so bad sheik herself drops 2 tiers after using it.

I feel Samus could be higher in the list, but to do so would be extremely boring

Compare the difference between MK and Ganondorf. And then remind yourself Brawl apparently had a balancing team.

My friends and I got good at Melee before Brawl came out ('01-'07), at least as far as old-school Melee went. Shffling, DI and edgeguarding/ledgehopping were second nature to us and we played competitively with each other for hours every weekend. But we mainly used low tiers, mostly because we found them a lot more fun haha. Mario, DK and Link were our go-to picks. When "moving on" to Brawl we naturally stuck with our favorites, thinking they might be a bit better...needless to say we got obliterated by high tiers at local tournaments despite any amount of fundamentals one could have lol. I played Link like it was my birthright for the first year of Brawl's release and remember a grueling match at one of my last local attendances vs a mediocre MK. The venue audibly groaned when I barely lost while people said "he was so close; MK is just so much better than Link" lol. The worst part is, besides MK everyone was constantly dealing with Snake tilt spam, ezbake gimps and stage-wide chaingrabs. It's amazing how blind people were to how miserable of a game Brawl was at the time. I was going through a bit of a rough patch then and was hoping getting good at Brawl would fix things...turns out the stigma for being good at Brawl turned out to be worse than playing it casually lol. If I went back in time I wouldn't swap characters; I just wouldn't play the game! From ample first-hand experience I can say that Brawl is one of if not the worst balanced games in fighting game history, and it isn't even because of the roster lol. Subspace was cool though! I really wish the actual game was even half as polished as SSE haha.

Persona 3 music go hard

My boy٫ Kirby is here in the game!

for some reason i kinda like jigglypuff on brawl i dont know why, maybe i can actually play as her bad that the game development was so bad and how toon link and wolf are kinda good even tho they were the last 2 i kinda prefer mr. game and watch and kirby more than puff, but eh

There's a very simple reason as to why the low tiers in Brawl would seem worse than Melee's low tiers. Brawl's high tiers are beyond godlike. Melee's high tiers are simply functional, have some neat little tricks to take advantage of and make the most out of the high speed environment. There is more to this if you look at it in another way. By far Melee's low tiers are the worst characters in all of smash history, simply because they're dysfunctional, and terrible on top of that. You gotta accept more than half of your moves won't even work right. In comparison Brawl's low tiers actually are functional, playable, but in comparison to the high tiers they have to compete with, its like rock vs polished diamond. They're simply too good. So when you really look into it, trying to play a low tier vs high tier in melee is possible, they're basically the same, one simply doesn't work well vs the other. But in Brawl's case a low tier is just a guaranteed loss at a glance. There's simply no reason to pick a low tier for how bullshit the top tiers are in Brawl. With all the above mentioned, you'll come to realize exactly why the play rate of low tiers in Brawl is significantly less than Melee's, not because the low tier are worse than Melee's low tiers, but because the high tiers are simply too good in Brawl.