Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the newest hit of Smash Bros.,  and it’s bigger and better than ever. It is the 5th game in the highly revered Super Smash Bros. franchise and has sold 12.06 million copies in its first two months alone and has gone on to become the third highest selling Switch game.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the culmination of gaming with classic Nintendo characters such as Mario, Pikachu, and Link and has expanded into a crossover of epic proportions. The game has a story mode that will last you well over 20 hours and tasks you with freeing the spirits of the fighters and their friends. However, the battles can get dull because they are all the same but with modifiers that relate to a specific character. Despite this, the battles stay different enough to motivate you to finish the campaign.  It’s rewarding and has some moments that will make fans of the series squeal in joy.

The game play of Smash Bros. is refined to a tee and is just as fun as it was back in 1999. Rather than depleting your opponent’s health bar, Smash Bros. tasks you with knocking your opponent off stage. Your characters have regular attacks such as punches and kicks and “Smash attacks” which is used to help knockout opponents at high percentages.

Your characters also have special attacks which relate to their abilities from their own game. For example, Cloud has his cross slash from Final Fantasy 7 and Luigi has the Poltergust 3000 from the Luigi’s Mansion series. The game play is easy enough for a casual player to understand and has enough techniques such as parrying to be in depth enough for hardcore fans of the series. It’s extremely rewarding to learn and is gratifying to play.

However, the true fun of Smash Bros. is the multiplayer mode. Local multiplayer is a blast and what most people buy the game for. It’s incredibly fun playing against your friends and with the various customization options it allows players to create tons of wacky and fun scenarios. Or you could keep it simple and just disable items or even stage hazards for the first time. Smash Bros. also has the function to play online with your friends or with random people. As you win battles, you win Global Smash Power which will pair you against higher level opponents. Similarly, if you lose your Global Smash Power goes down. The enabled password option allows for players to join a room with ease and takes the hassle out of joining parties multiplayer video games.

While fun, online multiplayer leaves a lot to be desired. The mode has a huge lag problem, which can be persistent during matches and can lead to some frustrating deaths. The matchmaking system is also lacking and can pair you against opponents with a much higher or lower Global Smash Power than yourself. On top of all of this there’s no option to play without items, or on omega stages. There are preferences but they are not guaranteed.

Despite this, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will leave you having a  great time and is worth your purchase. The game has no shortage of content with over 70 fighters, 100 stages and with even more characters including Joker arriving via downloadable content there is no doubt that this is the best game in the series.

Score: 9/10