What Went Wrong With All-Star Brawl? 

I feel like Nickelodeon just didn’t want to put in the budget to make the game truly great, they just saw the game as a simple cash grab unlike the devs, or at least that’s how I feel about it

Apparently, Nick did not allow the devs to write their own dialogue for the arcade mode, for whatever reason.

They ultimately focused so hard on the competitive audience that they alienated the much, MUCH larger casual one I feel. We'll see if it can pick back up.

12:06 - 12:33 God I feel that. As a zim main, after spending time learning all about good use of gir and gnome in terms of controlling movement, baiting jumps, owning platform space, learning how to juggle gir around, making perfect ledge traps, setting up strings, and figuring out the best opportunities to land your one and only good kill move (strong fair)... nothing is more disappointing than realizing literally all of it loses to a Leonardo or a Catdog pressing any button.

Biggest thing for me was the animations. There isn’t enough attention given to anticipation or follow through frames, so attacks just kind of come out, and look janky and hard to follow as a result. Everything just looks and feels cheap.

The animations come out too fast that I can’t even tell what the attacks are sometimes.

Danny's thermos should've been a grab, like Link's hook shot, not an actual attack. That would've stuck better to the show tbh

I have the opinion that the biggest reason the game didn't stick the landing, even considering possible design issues, is undoubtebly was the price point. 50 bucks is way too much for it, and it reeks of a publisher decision, alongside the strict deadlines. Like, I bought the game at launch on Ps4, and I already have nothing to do on it because there's no one playing on the platform. If the game was cheaper, at least this issue wouldn't be that extreme.

Toph’s belt is a good example of the over reliance on references. Like, it’s something that appears briefly in one episode from what I remember. It’s not something that reflective overall of her character.

Coming back to this, your criticism with the animation is more valid then ever. Sakurai made a video about the importance of Anticipation in a Gameplay Perspective. Lot of the characters in Nick move way too fast, it’s hard to understand what type of attack they’re displaying and their strength. I’m taking animation class and we just learned about timing. Seeing these choppy attacks is more painful to look at and I am 100% certain my professor will heavily criticize it to a pulp for how bad they are.

I believe Maximillian dood said it best (probably not the right words but something along the lines of): "If you focus too much on the competitiveness instead of the overall spirit and game design or just straight up...FUN, it is setup for eventual failure."

I definitely think it’s a mistake to make a game focused on trying to win over Melee fans, because Melee fans will only ever be devoted Melee, and the competitive Smash players in general are just a tiny portion of the player base. I think Multiversus could fall down the same trap, even though that’s at least more polished. Most of the people I’ve known who play Smash do so casually at gatherings or otherwise play at a pretty “low” level. It’s all about free for alls and items. You need to do something to appeal to that crowd in order to grow a player base, with some of those players potentially becoming more competitive. Like, I’m pretty sure we all started Smash as clueless kids just playing for fun.

7:25 "These attacks feel like the devs were focused more on cramming in a reference rather than making them part of a coherent whole. It's a mistake I see in a lot of fan-made Smash movesets..." Completely agree with this. I've seen way too many Smash movesets that try to cram in references where they don't belong or in places where they don't fit, making the overall movesets kind of wonky and probably not all that fun to actually play.

The lack of voice acting was the biggest sign it was gonna be forgotten. You just can not have all these iconic characters without their voices. WB Games knew that and made sure to highlight having voices. So I am very much looking towards that game instead.

My biggest problem with this game is definitely the animations. Everything feels weightless and choppy at the same time. Very few moves sell their impact, or flow smoothly. Fast frame data isn't an excuse for sub-par animations. The SF franchise has extremely quick frame data on tons of moves across multiple entries, and very, very rarely does a fast move come off as choppy, weightless, or incomplete.

This also comes with the fact that the devs' balance philosophy is to make everyone broken. That's not balance, that's just making the game more of a race to see who gets neutral first.

Personally, I felt a little disappointed by the lack of CatDog moves that revolve around synergy between the two. I think it would have been fun to have a move kinda like Luigi's Green Missile, except Cat can wind up and throw a ball, which Dog lunges for.

The animations in this game are bad across the board. Every attack that isn't so fast that you can't make out what's going on, look really unnatural, and not in a funny cartoon way, but much more uncanny valley. Leonardo is probably the biggest offender of this, with him swinging his swords like they're clubs. I watched some Leo gameplay for a bit, and I think the problem is that especially with the strong attacks, he puts way too much arm into swinging weapons as light as katanas. Ideally, the lag for these moves should've been put at the end rather than the beginning. His arms also look pretty stiff in general: the low endlag means that he doesn't really follow through (this honestly describes basically everyone everyone in this game, but its very obvious on weapon-wielders like Leo). Ren and Stimpy are quite guilty of incomplete animations too, especially their victory animation. And once again, the C-Stick in this game has weird quirks. It does heavy attacks on the ground, but light attacks in the air. I also agree with your take on functionality over reference in movesets. Off the top of my head, characters not playable in Smash Bros like Alucard or Dr. Eggman do enough things to warrent 95% of their potential movesets having some sort of reference, with all of the weaponry they have access to, but you don't need Crash Bandicoot with a back air referencing the one time in the comics where he sneezed on his dentist

Everyone, including the devs, keeps comparing this game with Melee and Ultimate, but I think a much more helpful comparison would be with Brawlhalla. It's a game that came from an indie team, without an established IP, with a very small budget initially, the game balance was initially terrible and it lacked content at release. Fast forward 6 years and now it is THE MOST PLAYED FIGHTING GAME ON PC, surpassing Tekken 7, SF5, GG Strive, FighterZ, etc. Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of things that Brawlhalla did better: 1. It was Free to Play. You can make money later on with skins and FX, but you need to put as few barriers to entry as possible. Multiverse from Warner and Project L from Riot are doing this, and I'm willing to bet it will pay off. 2. Casual appeal. I dunno how many people are aware of this, but look at the rank distribution in ANY competitive game, and you'll find that 90% of the playerbase resides in the BOTTOM THIRD of the ladder. In other words: CASUALS ARE WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE WILL BE PRIMARILY MADE OF. DON'T IGNORE THEM. 3. Easy to learn, hard to master. Most Smash entries, Brawlhalla and arguably even Tekken understand this. Guess what game doesn't? Melee and its clones. To be fair, Nick is much less intimidating than Melee, but it still demands tight execution and the tutorial it offers is extremely lacking. 4. Very little done to keep the attention of the worldwide audience (RU-vid, Twitch, Twitter, Reddit, etc). Most games retain our attention through frequent updates, large tournaments, loyal content creators and advertising. Nick has NONE of that. There hasn't been a large non-balance-related update in months, there are no large tournaments going on, it has no content creators loyal to the brand and there is virtually no advertisements. I understand most of the fault lies with Nickelodeon, not Ludosity, but the fact remains that this game was basically released and left on its own to survive. There are a lot of lessons Ludosity could've learned from it, but they and everyone around them only focused on Smash.

As much as I enjoy the game, Nick's handling of NASB really stunted things up for Ludosity. Ludo stretched a dime into a dollar and even then they're still cracking at it with the game. The gameplay landed with some but it also alienated many (including the casual audience) Here's hoping Ludo can do their best with future updates, but Nick really dealt them a bad hand.

Yeah, the Battle for the Grid analogy is pretty accurate in terms of an example of a budget game for a big property improving a lot. The developers mentioned that the game would be a completely different beast a year from now, & I hope that happens. As you said, they really should’ve had more time to work on the game & not be rushed by the higher-ups to get NASB out the door.

They tried to cater the game to the competitive melee audience, instead of the casual scene. People love to watch competitive Melee, but only a tiny percentage of people actually want to play melee competitively. As such, the casuals felt alienated. Couple that with the budget cuts, lack of voice acting, and 50 dollar price tag, and it's very clear on how this game really failed.

Here's my take on the game. One of the biggest flaws of this game is the lack of variety in playstyles. As we all know, SpongeBob is the all rounder character. Super easy and straight forward. I generally like his design (even if his playstyle is mainly spamming aerials.) But here's the problem. This game was designed around Sponge Bob. Any character that dissents them selves from the Sponge is punished by the games mechanics. This is the reason so many moves feel the same, And why there are so many rushdowns. Now lets look at one of my mains. Toph. I love Toph's design. Its one of the most unique and different designs in the game. And everything in the game go's against her playstyle. A grounded, bait and punish character in and air based rushdown game. I know they wanted this game to be like Melee. They wanted this game to be a crazy aggressive mess. Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with making a aggressive platform fighter. Just don't neglect or destroy the other archetypes. A lot of melee spiritual successors do. (debatably even melee itself) The thing about melee that made it last to this day is the player expression. How people can play the same character differently. But in Nasb, all characters just latter combo you till you die. It get's old soon. Over all, even if this game is a mess. I still had a great time with it. It made me, and guy who didn't grow up on Nickelodeon, Excited when it was first reviled and had a ton of fun playing it with his friend. And brought that fun and excitement to thousands of people all over the internet. Even with all these problems, I still don't regret my purchase.

They targeted literally the most niche audience possible competitive melee players who are tired of melee. Even as someone who like smash and fighting game’s casually the controls are so different from smash that I could never get into a flow state with nick all star brawl. it’s like when you first start driving and you’re consciously thinking about everything sure it gets better with time but the game lost it’s appeal so quickly that I never got to that point.

guys, don't worry, Multiversus is now out, free2play and really fricking fun to play; just forget about the Nickelodeon failure and come to play super sayan Shaggy

tbh my biggest issue with all star brawl was just how... non casual friendly it was. smash isn't like a pick up and go game, but it has something for both casual and competitive fans (although there is a bit of a bias towards casual if you look at some circles). nasb just felt... taxing to play, especially if you weren't really experienced with the melee style of playing. its also IMHO not fun to watch -- the moves are jerky and it becomes a messy, hard to follow experience.

Did Helga just ask Toph "what are you looking at?"

It's amazing how we can't criticize the developers for not doing a good job. Sure, the suits behind this are at fault for obviously rushing this product but the game really isn't attractive to a bigger audience outside of the small portion of the competitive smash community. Hopefully the game can be revitalized with each new update but I honestly doubt it's going to grow outside of its own little niche.

Gameplay is important, but bad presentation can be a killer. Doesn't matter how well polished and well-balanced your mechanics are if it doesn't have polished animation and sound design to match, or has strange thematic choices that break immersion

Glad I wasn't the only one who felt it was odd for Toph to use a champion's belt for an attack.

My biggest problem is that they relied to much on melee players to sell the game. See Hungrybox making clickbaity videos and calling it things like "better smash bros" or "smash killer" rubs me the wrong way. Smash works because its for everyone. But Melee player have their heads so far up their ass that they think everything should go their way when really they are at best 10% of the smash fan base. I'm looking forward to Multi verse because it's trying to be it own thing and not melee but with WB characters. A sick part of me wants NASB to fail just to show Melee players that the world doesn't revolve around them. Edit: Now a dev doesn't want it to be called a smash killer. Strange that they don't want that comparison AFTER the game came out and failed to catch on. Almost as if they admit that they were cocky about "giving fans that they want"

The problem is that there’s a very small but loud portion of the Smash player base that is spoiled by Sakurai, and they take everything he does for granted. Just to complain to no end about a couple flaws while never giving credit where credit is due (especially in the case of a certain gluttonous crate fellow). And with this game they catered to the loud minority, the devs thought to themselves “no zoners because Smash players hate zoners, almost no single player because smash players don’t care about that, no items because no one uses them, good online because that’s all Smash players care about.” And look at what we got, a messy game that’s nowhere near as good as Smash because it doesn’t have the same soul that the loud competitive people took for granted. This game is proof that the loud minority that does nothing but complain, doesn’t know what they want, and shouldn’t be completely trusted.

They fell into the same trap that has doomed countless Smash clones. Not only did they focus too much on the competitve audience, but they were too focused on trying to emulate Melee's gameplay. I knew this game was going to struggle the moment the developers kept bringing up wavedashing and seemed to focus too much on that mechainic. I understand Melee has a massive fanbase to this day, but the reality is that three Smash games(four if we count Smash 3DS and Wii U as separate games) have gone in their own direction in terms of the gameplay evolution of Smash, and wavedashing has not come back since Melee. A Smash player who started with Brawl or later is not gonna care about wavedashing. They may not even be used to Melee's brand of Smash gameplay. This focus also doomed the game, because it forgot the casual audience. Alot of Smash's player base are casual players who love to hop online and throw items at each other on the crazy stages. Other fighting games like Mortal Kombat, Injustice, Dragon Ball Fighter Z, and other games of that kind have things that appeal to casual players like a story mode, other gameplay modes, etc. While this game has clear presentation issues, I think the biggest issue is that they wanted to make another version of Melee, but with Nickelodeon characters. The problem is, they don't have the proper experience to create a proper balance between casuals and serious players or to cater to different gameplay styles.

I never quite understood why people thought putting all 4 Ninja Turtles wasn't nesccary. That being said: the roster just feels incomplete.

Yeah the lack of variety in playstyles was what made me eventually lose interest. At first I thought it was so cool how fast the game was compared to Ultimate, but because it was so fast, it forced every character to play more or less in the same aggressive, in your face way. I miss the zoning techniques in Smash.

Jigglypuff has more impact in her motions than the majority of these characters

I haven’t played the game, nor am I looking to pick it up at the current price point, but from what I can see, you make a lot of great arguments. One thing I feel is important you didn’t mention, however, was just the advertising side of things. After all, what made Ultimate, or heck, any Smash game from Brawl onward, survive in the public conscious is the hype train for character reveals. 4 and Ultimate in particular managed to retain momentum for ages because of the promises of DLC. And Ultimate sticks in my memory since we knew of two DLC characters before the game even DROPPED! Compare Nick All Stars Brawl, where it’s been promised we’ll get DLC, but we just have no clue what or when. Whereas with Smash, we knew it was reasonable to assume given Nintendo Directs had a good chance of revealing a Smash character. And I think the draw of who’s next to be revealed is really important to keeping the longevity of these kinds of mascot platform fighters for the casual audience, above all else. Not that they live or die off it, naturally, but it really feels like it hurt the game to have the momentum die so quickly.

Another note about the lack content, Slap CIty (another platform fighter Ludosity made) has a comparable amount of content for $20. Less characters, but more content everywhere else.

Platform fighter devs: “Alright so if we focus on *ONLY* the competitive players and not the casuals despite it being by franchises what casuals like and also make it so some characters with great moveset choices smash clones” Such a great business idea

I hope you cover Fraymakers in the near future. I love SSF2 and I'm glad that the devs are finally making an original platform fighter

I'm gonna be honest, while I saw the potential with NASB, I thought there were many things holding it back from being a game I actually wanted to give a try. As more footage came out, I wasn't really feeling the game. The slapped on references, the samey movesets both within a characters kit and compared to others. The usage of characters to fill an archetype rather than actually play to their personalities, the presentation not really seeming that great. These and many other things turned me off from the game and didn't really get super hype for it even though I really like Nick shows. I don't want say the game is awful, it's obvious the team was working with what crumbs they got. It just felt very mediocre.

I still remember it I always knew it would not come even CLOSE to smash bros, so I've been enjoying it a whole lot, and I'm excited for it to get updated

Smash fans saw “Nickelodeon Cross-Over platform fighter with good movement, tech, and rollback netcode” and immediately wanted to jump ship from Smash, making a shitton of memes and getting extremely hyped for the game. The game came out and was just lackluster at every corner. Why we play Smash and KEEP playing Smash is because how polished the experience is and the amount of content to keep people playing. Other platform fighters just struggle because they both want and don’t want to be Smash, and it’s really unfortunate because it is extremely difficult for them to make a name for themselves, the only one coming to mind being Rivals of Aether and Brawlhalla.

I feel like the main problem was Nick.Here’s what I mean Nick thinks this will be a quick crash grab. Ludiosity wants this to be a actually good game.

Simple. They forgot Raphael and Donatello.

Just a reminder, people were claiming this was gonna be the "Smash Killer".

Nick All-Stars: The developers had limited creativity and had heavy time constraints. PlayStation All-Stars: First time?

A flaw that I've noticed myself is you can't use your Dash when you're on your tumbling animation, so you gotta attack first to stop the tumbling animation so you can dash I hope that wasn't intentional and gets fixed

The game has a sad misdirection, I know a fair amount wanted to play NASB as a celebration of Nick overall, like how Smash is to celebrate Nintendo that would later evolve to celebrating Gaming as a whole. Sadly this game completely lack that, and didn't even have a boss or any Arcade Ending to warrent a Lore/Reason to why the characters are crossing over. Instead, mostly focus on the Competitive Side (more on Melee) without realizing the flaws Melee had brought to the community, even tampered the quality of the roster.

I wouldn't count it out just yet. I tried to get it on black friday at so many places and couldn't find it anywhere. A GameStop I called told me I was the fourth call that day specifically asking about that game.

Honestly, seeing all the trailers/videos focused entirely on it's mechanics and online gameplay with little mentioned about offline content and modes kind of clued me in to this game having a rough start. For a game focused on children appealing cartoon characters, it strangely lacks casual appeal with a lacklustre arcade mode and somehow around the same (or less if you don't count online) modes than even Smash 64. I didn't think too much about it's mechanical flaws but it was interesting to see them highlighted. The overly quick animations that you pointed out at 5:44 was something that I felt in watching trailers so it's nice to know that others noticed.

The difference between this game and Multiversus is night and day. MV's got its own unique gimmick that helps separate it from Smash Bros rather than it using Smash as its crutch, full voice acting with a lot of the original / modern day actors, complete with banter between characters, coherent, logical movesets where you can actually tell what your character is doing, less of a chokehold from the folks over at Warner Bros, which means things like Ultra Instinct Shaggy, room for playstyles other than Rushdown / Fratboy Melee Nerd, cross progression, multiple options for controls and display that were oddly lacking in NASB last time I played, and the game is very much free. I dunno, I guess Multiversus is currently lacking in music, and the sound effects could be a bit better, not to mention all the sins that come with F2P, but one clearly blew the other out the water

The biggest disappointment for me is the game focusing way too much on the competitive community, to the point of not even adding items or an equivalent to Final Smashes. It's good if you also focus on the competitive side, but not to this point. This is a game with iconic cartoon characters, it's obvious that children and casual gamers are gonna get interested. If you want a competitive platform fighter, then go play Rivals of Aether or something. There's also the animations. They are very unpolished and fast, sometimes you can't even tell what is going on. Some moves don't feel right, too. Like, why is SpongeBob's down special a bite? Maybe it's a reference to the krabby patties he makes, but that's kind of a stretch. Movesets shouldn't be about cramming in as much references as possible, they should be focused on what you'd expect from that character. I know next to nothing about Avatar, but even I agree that Toph should have something else as her light up tilt instead of the belt. It just doesn't feel right as a move, it's like if you took Snake's box and made it into his forward tilt. Overall, I think they should improve the game with updates, maybe even a sequel in the future. I also hope that Multiversus doesn't suffer from the same fate, because Warner Bros' properties mean a lot more to me than Nick's ones (I grew up watching mostly Cartoon Network).

Thank you for bringing up the reference issue - Patrick's phone is particularly egregious and doesn't fit the character at all. It's a funny scene, but he does it one time in the entire show and he was even acting out of character by wanting an award in the episode anyway!

Damn, I like this game, but yeah you kinda hit the nail on every one of my issues with it, except momentum cancelling, and a bit of stuff on blocking was inaccurate. I do still think the engine is fun enough to make the game still very enjoyable, but the game is definitely a long way from mass appeal, both as a casual game and as a competitive one.

i agree with most of this but the point about blocking is just not true at all sure attacks are faster but also block has 0 startup, there is no lag from dropping block, and there is no jumpsquat so you can still realistically punish most things that you could in smash (especially since 90% of neutral in ultimate is mashing extremely safe landing aerials)

I can't wait for this video for Multiversus

It simply focused too hard on being a "smash killer"(Well in terms of competitive) that it just didn't give enough attention to the other aspects of what made smash so special and what we got was a pretty bare bones game. I wouldn't say it's dead but had definitely been on a heavy decline. I haven't seen much videos being made on it.

This video was really well made! While I’m a bit sad that the game turned out this way, I also have faith that the wonderful team behind this game will learn from these mistakes and keep getting better with time. Hopefully in the future, they’ll have more freedom, as just like you said, I do suspect that certain factors outside of their control restricted them and held them back.

Something I just noticed is how weirdly heavy all the knockback curves are. That’s something that makes the game a lot less approachable, and something that’s hard to change once you’re committed to it.

I went into this video thinking "what do you mean went wrong, the game is alright", but I think you hit the nail on the head particularly when it comes to balancing and playstyle variety, which has been my biggest issue when playing. Granted I'm the kind of player that doesn't mind getting a game like this to play nothing more than competitive 1v1, so I overlook many issues, but I feel like this video is coming from the right place, so I hope the devs hear this criticism and are able to apply it to the best of their ability.

I’m so glad you brought up the weird movesets. More than anything else, those were what turned me off of the game. I was so excited to play as characters I loved growing up, but if a bunch of them don’t really feel like themselves, then I didn’t see much point.

Now that they know how badly Nick All-Stars Brawl bombed, I wonder if Multiversus can take the opportunity to learn from its failure and give us a better beat-em-up.

One of the main places it went wrong was that there was focus on side characters and memes rather than actual Nickelodeon All-Stars. We have a game to celebrate Nick's history and characters, but they forgot to include Arnold, Rocko, Angry Beavers, Tommy Pickles, Otto Rocket, Jimmy Neutron, Eliza Thornberry, etc. It's sad

You know, it's kinda ironic how they ended up becoming like that old project M game called "ICONS" in terms of focusing on only the competitive scene. Makes me wish they would have gone with a CN punch time explosion route where the characters aren't perfect but how movesets that fit them while also having a story mode that focused on character interactions

Also can we talk about how only 2 of the 4 ninja turtles are in the game.

I applaud your efforts to discuss the games issues without outright attacking it and providing some deserved constructive criticism. There's too much doom and gloom on youtube and it's nice seeing a positive spin.

No alt skins, no voice acting was a big bummer. I fixed that with PC mods. No dash dance in the beginning was weird. No official music was a bummer. I had mirror match mods that made you be able to tell the difference between you and your opponent with a tint over them. The first balance patch they did to adjust knock back was great.

Hopefully they add Defensive options, or at least make dashes refresh when getting hit, that's my biggest problem that could solve a LOT of the core gameplay right now Also ledgehogging sucks

Just my two cents on the whole Nick All Star Brawl burning out at arrival: I feel like it was simply a mix of Nickelodeon giving the team a minuscule budget and Ludosity trying to make it this hypercompetitive game overall. The overall lack of content is likely a symptom of the former, but for casual Smash players and Nick fans like myself, it's pretty isolating when every character is CRAZEE STRONK and there's such a reliance on crazy fast paced gameplay. Plus there's A LOT of reused moves in everyone's movesets, like Smash Bros. Sonic level bad. 😐 The release day price was WAY too much too. Fifty bucks for a half-baked game like this with little to no content is asking a lot for what you're getting, but I got it on sale for twenty on Black Friday and that's more than fair. My hope is that Nick allows Ludosity to do more with the game beyond one alt costume and the two DLC fighters we know about, and that a year or two from now we'll be talking about what a glow-up NASB went through. 😊 And hopefully my girl Jenny Wakeman makes it in a fighter 😀🤖

What's really sad is that Ludosity also made Slap City. That game had less caracters but more content else where and I'd argue better use of it's mechanics (admittedly it's a lot closer to Melee but it has it's onw unique qualities).

I think the two big things I think that caused brawl to "at best" be a quick fun game the fanbase enjoyed, then only weeks later barely saw any news is lack of content and future dlc leaks. Lack of content is obvious, once you played 10-15 hours of the online/casual matches in your fighting game, you basically have experienced all the game had to offer. With the limited characters/stages, flaws in those two categories become really apparent. Before you know it you are just on the Legend of Korra stage all the time playing your main and 1-2 other characters and get bored simply by it being the same thing over and over. Looking to the future isnt so bright either. The first dlc fighters Shredder and Garfield don't really resonate with "Nickelodeon nostalgia" or excitement. People want Jimmy Neutron, Rocko, Timmy Turner, Jenny, etc. and two non nick characters being the thing people have to look forward to short term isn't super ideal. The costume update we just got also kinda cemented, its a "step in the right direction" but still far from ideal.

Now we have Multiversus, but the thing is, it’s actually fun.. and everyone’s constantly replaying 😳

It also doesn't help that the characters movement look janky and how every attack has the opponent knocked in the air in a reeling spinning motion.

I feel like another reason is the hype is built around irritating Smash fans by saying "This is gonna kill Smash Bros" or some other shit when it has a fifth of the content and a twentieth of the production values.

Considering we are getting a sequel with improvements in every aspect of the game, I think the second time around will have much better results The second game seems to have remastered and update graphics which will hopefully include better animations, but it will have better alts for the characters and a story mode similar to the one in melee in scope since the devs won't have a triple a budget to work on the story mode. It was also confirmed that bosses and assist trophy like items will be added! (Not to mention rollback netcode and voice acting day 1) Expectations are high for the sequel but it will definitely be reviewed better than the first game and I hope it will be able to thrive for two years at the very least (PS: it would have been pretty cool if multiversus also made a comeback, but that will depend on WB)

What went wrong with this game was the servers were fucked I literally remember I could never get a game competitive play or normal, I’d just be sat in a lobby on my own for 20-25 mins before another player would join, tried all the different servers an they were all dead so idk

I feel like Danny got shafted. He should have been a zoner similar to Samus. His neutral B should have been able to charge on a hold instead of just shooting at best two ecto blasts. The Fenton thermos should have been a range grab (that maybe stores the opponent in the thermos for him to shoot back out). The Ice beam eyes are a good inclusion because even the show forgot he had those, but they don't do anything: they should have at least been similar to ice climbers where consecutive hits would end up freezing opponents. Also he can fly... why isn't his jump similar to Kirby with him flying a little before falling? Sure that would make his recovery really good, but on the other side: he is a teenager and is a light character. Most of his deaths would come from hard hits knocking him out rather than off ledge. The lack of dodging is really insane and the fact that they gave dodge to Nigel is crazy. Of all the characters, Danny can turn intangible - that means he can't be touched. Why not give him the dodge? Ghostly Wail is one of his best attacks but feels so small and should likewise be able to be charged where the longer you hold it, the larger the radius to a degree until you release the button and he does the attack. They recently did the costume update and while I like the costumes, each character only gets 1 costume and some are lazy, but keeping this about Danny: they put Danny in his pre-powers suit (negative colors) which is dope, but why are his eyes still green? They were blue!

Honestly, I felt it was the fans that went wrong. Everything I've seen and experienced in all star brawl, seems par the course. Bare Bones modes, no voice acting, janky gameplay, it's just like every other run-of-the-mill Nickelodeon cash in that's been released this past decade. And yet for some reason, fans caught on to the net code or whatever it's called, and they kept harping on that, like that alone was enough to push it over the top and into Smash Brothers territory. Maybe it started as a joke, but somewhere along the line it felt like the fans started to really believe it.

I also think another issue was they were betting on people like Hbox and all of them for the fan base. Rivals for example made a unique fanbase and didn't bet on people like Hbox and all of those people to promote the game. I also think the lack of voicing sucks and lack of casual play also sucks thats why I like ultimate I play competitive but people who like items can play items in All stars you got sports mode and thats it

Hence why you should never focus around if the game can be competitively viable, you need to make it fun

My main issue with the game is how fast paced it is. It doesn’t feel smooth or fluid half the time and most moves feel like they have no end glad it start up. On top of that the lack of voice acting or anything doesn’t make the characters feel alive. Yeah I’m playing as Ren and Stimpy but everything’s so lifeless

Is it just me, or does it seem like the Warner Bros. and First Player Games observed the trainwreck that was NASB and told themselves, “Ok so all we gotta do is the exact opposite of what they’re doing if we wanna be a competent Smash clone.”?

What went wrong is people hyped it up way too goddamn much and said it would kill Smash etc etc and then when it released as the simple indie game that it was, people’s expectations strangely weren’t met. The internet ruins things that could otherwise be perceived differently

Well Ludwig accidentally leaked the DLC is coming out on Thursday so giving it another shot, my biggest problem with this game is that it has no cross play, i can’t find a single person to match with anymore on PS5

They were too worried about FAST FAST FAST! HIGH SPEED HIGH SPEED HIGH SPEED!! Literally ignoring every other aspect of the game, even alternate outfits. Smh 🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️

All Star Brawl is decent...but flawed. I feel like many games that try to follow Melee's design (including Melee itself) kinda suffer from the same issue of lacking variety. It's why I'm not the biggest fan of Project M but love Ultimate; each character isn't forced to play as a rushdown fighter. Hope All Star Brawl manages to figure out how to increase it's diversity to match it's gameplay, as Rivals Of Aether proved it's possible. Maybe slowing things down just a little bit could help? Sounds dumb, but what good is high speed gameplay if it's the only option?

looks like multiversus is taking the spot light. I wish all-star brawl wasnt created and just put their characters in multiversus for a %

Props to Ludocity for managing to make the game decent, despite the small budget and constant creative stiffling from execs, but just as good actors can't salvage a bad director, a good dev team can't salvage bad executives. You know the higher ups really shot themselves in the foot by stiffling Ludosity to this extent, when MultiVersus' marketing campaign has focused on the voice talent for the characters and the general presentation. It's no secret that this is what NASB was robbed of and what players wanted to see most.

If by chance this manages to continue with DLC, Zuko is honestly a safe bet among them.

Aside from Aang and Korra, I would redo Danny’s move set. Having seen the show, I think Danny would work better as an all arounder like Mario or Ryu. No thermos, ghostly wail saved for a final smash (I know it doesn’t have those but you get that it should be a big thing), no need to mention all of his powers. I also would redo the Turtles representatives. It’s not just that only 2 of them are Turtles, it’s that it’s ONLY the 87 series. I get their fans of the 87 cartoon, which is why they used them, but there are four Turtles and four cartoons. Instead of focusing on just one cartoon, the one that didn’t air on any networks after Nick’s purchase, they could’ve had one Turtle from each cartoon. 87 Mikey, 03 Leo, 12 Don and Rise Raph honestly comes off as more creative than just 2 Turtles and 2 non-Turtles from the same cartoon.

This game is still 50 bucks, and it has like 15 active players lmao The way to go is probably just f2p and they REALLY need to add some kind of single player challenge/story mode

I think that every one's been complaining about everything that comes out lately, It's not that bad of a game.

Patrick is actually really good now. He got buffed a few weeks ago. Characters are getting buffed all the time and the mechanics aren’t the same as the start of the game.

Your voice kinda reminds me of Norm Macdonald (rip) and I love it.

Good criticism men, i hope they take notes, we really need more games in the scene, since the improvent and innovation of one, can help the other to implement them as a standard

I played the game again and it’s much better now.

They didn't include Tito from Rocket Power. That's where the money was.

I legit thought I misremembered it, that it was just a little fan project or maybe a heavily modded version of smash

I just find it wild that in Injustice 2 the Ninja Turtles can have serious, dark battles with a very dark Batman, and in NASB, they can have Smash Bros.-style fights with SpongeBob and Helga Pataki. I love video games.