By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - SSB Ultimate: Lackluster Single Player Modes?

 

Do you feel Single Player Modes are lacking?

Yes 7 22.58%
 
No 24 77.42%
 
Didn't notice a change 0 0%
 
Total:31

Hello VGC, it's me again, long time no see everyone around her, nice to be back.

My question goes straight to the point, do you feel that this time around, the single player experience has been lackluster when compared to the previous entries?

Somehow I feel it, Ultimate was my most anticipated game in years. However my excitement began to wore off as I advanced through the WoL campaign. It started feeling repetitive and a chore that I felt I must finish but didn't want to, since nothing surprising was happening along the way, save for the homage to the different series in the submaps (DKC, Street Fighter, Castlevania, etc).
It felt like a chore indeed, albeit an easy one. I felt no sense of challenge and the rewards were lame. Taking away trophies was a terrible decision, since they added a huge feel of completionism to the game like no other game did. This time around spirits were too lazy and too simple (no description of the characters you were unlocking, not even an animation or small video sample of where they came from). WoL's map felt rushed and very low value, you get almost no cutscenes and story makes little to no sense.

They also removed or didn't include home run contest, true all star mode, event mode (Events were much more fun than unique spirits fights), subspace or adventure mode, trophy rush, race to the finish, break the targets, masterpieces, stickers, collection view.
Classic mode is the only mode were things got better, however the mii characters are missing, kind of lame.

It's true, this time around the characters, stages and song list are enormous, but there's not that much new content.
Very few new stages and songs, characters to a certain extent, since you have to pay to get 6 of them.

I'm not entirely disappointed with the game, but it was so easy to finish and get everything in such little time, that there's no incentive in going back. I'm halfway through new game+ and it's no fun at all, nothing even changes. I have all spirits and am currently leveling them to their max. I honestly don't know what else to do. I've tried online multiplayer but it sucks. Local is great as always, better than ever I'd say.

Sakurai was probably only given 1 year to make a new smash and he chose multiplayer quantity over quality/replayability.

Cheers



Proud poster of the 10000th reply at the Official Smash Bros Update Thread.

tag - "I wouldn't trust gamespot, even if it was a live comparison."

Bets with Conegamer:

Pandora's Tower will have an opening week of less than 37k in Japan. (Won!)
Pandora's Tower will sell less than 100k lifetime in Japan.
Stakes: 1 week of avatar control for each one.

Fullfilled Prophecies

Around the Network

No. The exact opposite. I know I've been critical about the lack of "cutscenes" with actual character interactions for World of Light, but other than that I actually loved every second of it. Unlocking the world, going through portals to secret areas (some of which my jaw dropped). I've spent 85 hours on Smash Ultimate so far and probably only about 15 hours of that has been multiplayer. Yes... I have played and enjoyed the single player way more so far than any other Smash title, including Subspace. I love the Spirits. About 50 away from the full list.



1doesnotsimply

Trust me, with all the characters in this game, you would probably despise true All-Star mode after the third or fourth playthrough.

In all seriousness though, I will agree that Ultimate felt like the easiest game to 100% all the challenges, and World of Light, while I personally enjoyed it, did drag on a bit near the end, but the first playthrough was well worth the experience, but there's nothing to really gain from a second playthrough nor New Game +, and once you collect every spirit in the game, there's no real reason to ever go back to the spirit submenu outside of the DLC spirits they appear to be slowly adding in via updates (praying for some Persona themed spirits).

I personally enjoyed collecting spirits, and thought them replacing trophies was understandable given the sheer amount of universes and characters in Smash, but I do miss the flavor text and descriptions they gave to trophies, and was one thing I was bummed out that they omitted.

I know side modes like Home Run contest has its fans, but I can understand their omission considering the changes to the mechanics, and its obviously not something people really messed around with in a common scenario; if you're with friends, you're gonna be playing the regular Smash mode, and if you're alone, you're probably either doing Classic mode, World of Light, or online.

If there are some things that I do miss that would be reasonable requests, it would be a slightly better race to the finish bonus game (the one in Ultimate wears out its welcome after the third time, and Melee showed that you can have a single track while being dynamic with the difficulty and still never getting old after multiple playthroughs thanks to multiple pathways and the different time limits for each character) and coin launcher from Brawl, which was one of the best sidemodes in Smash ever IMO.

But yea, I am content with Ultimate's content overall, and I appreciate it over Smash 4 solely for having cleaner menus and a cleaner presentation overall, but I do think it's very easy for a completionist to clean out every corner this game has to offer, and unless you're a competitive player who is practicing to get better everyday and is trying to grind out as many characters as possible, there probably isn't too much replay value once they finish World of Light, clear out the challenge board, and obtain every possible collectable.



"Just for comparison Uncharted 4 was 20x bigger than Splatoon 2. This shows the huge difference between Sony's first-party games and Nintendo's first-party games."

Happy with it. World of light more than 30 hours and enjoying every minute of it



I' 105 hours so far, counting MP and it was a blast. The best smash in amount of content, no doubt, but the overall package lacks some polish and content. WoL was fantastic in certain aspects, but the lack of challenge does finally show.

Thanks for all the replies!



Proud poster of the 10000th reply at the Official Smash Bros Update Thread.

tag - "I wouldn't trust gamespot, even if it was a live comparison."

Bets with Conegamer:

Pandora's Tower will have an opening week of less than 37k in Japan. (Won!)
Pandora's Tower will sell less than 100k lifetime in Japan.
Stakes: 1 week of avatar control for each one.

Fullfilled Prophecies

Around the Network

World of Light is great. Classic Mode is great. i dont miss Home Run Contest or Target Smash. im really just upset that theres no custom stages



There's a lot about this game that could be better, but it's nice to know that they improved at the single-player content substantially from 4. I haven't gotten very far in World of Light because I honestly just haven't found it that fun, but even unlocking all characters through regular Smash took me about a week (and I was playing a decent amount even), and the Classic mode is a surprisingly convincing time waster considering it doesn't seem like a ton of development time needed to be put into it (lots of great easter eggs and nods as well as some very M-rated jokes make it a treat, and the GSP rating helps, then again I'd just prefer a scoreboard).

However while I will wait until finishing World of Light to give my final opinion on it, just reiterating how long it is isn't doing it any favors. I've heard it drags on for people, some stating it's just the last few hours, others saying it's more than half it's run. I don't know if they'r right but if I had to choose between a 20 hour campaign that wasn't very good and a 10 hour campaign that was great, I'd choose the latter.

While Ultimate does suffer a little bit from a lack of truly new content, to imply that this was only developed in one year is crazy. Pretty much all of the maps that were made before 4 were given a huge face lift and even some of the ones from 4 I'd imagine have been slightly improved. The characters are for the most part extremely balanced and a lot of the newcomers have some of the most interesting movesets in the game. You wrote in your OP that "Sakurai was probably only given 1 year to make a new smash and he chose multiplayer quantity over quality/replayability", which to me sounds like the problem that 4 suffered from, not this game.

Would I like Ultimate to have single player which appeals to my personal senses more? Absolutely, and truthfully I think there's a lot of heavy criticism that can be given. But as long as games like Smash 4 and Ultimate are given a 2.5 year development time, we're never going to get the "Ultimate" Smash Brothers ... there will always be things the previous games did better, because development times are only going up and even with a bigger staff on hand there's just so much you can focus on at a time. I would love the next Smash Bros to be developed over many many years, but at this rate I don't think that'll happen ... it's not necessary to get the kind of sales the series has gotten.



I'm sorry, World of Light is just not for me. It's a glorified Event mode. Love the bosses though. Still waiting on an evolution of the Subspace mode. But the fact that Break the Targets, and Home Run Contest are gone is concerning...especially if you're calling it Ultimate and some of the original modes for 4 games aren't there. Modes like Board the Platforms would be cool if they made a return too.

But the Classic mode is a step up from previous entries, gotta give them credit on that one. But the single player modes for me, are shallow at best.

Last edited by Ljink96 - on 09 January 2019

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. With only WoL (being worth 2-3 playthroughs most), classic mode, and the other modes (still haven't tried them), it does look lacking. It feels weird not having break the targets or homerun contest, but I don't think I played them aside from doing challenges. It's likely most people never really played these extra modes, so that may be why they were removed from the game. They were nice extras but I'm certain most people buy the series for the multiplayer fun. I do wish there was a Melee style adventure mode though.

Also, if the spirits did have their usual extra info on them, I wouldn't mind the switch to essentially stickers. But the text is missing, and that's a real bummer. I would have loved to learn more about the more obscure spirits.



 

              

Dance my pretties!

The Official Art Thread      -      The Official Manga Thread      -      The Official Starbound Thread

I'm not entirely sure why there seems to be such a divide about the game's singleplayer content. They cut a lot of the chaff (home run contest and other silly mods like the target test from 4 and the trophy rush), removed the terrible Smash Tour and mediocre Smash Run, and merged Event Mode with a variation on Subspace emissary.

There's really only two major singleplayer modes (World of Light and Classic Mode), and both of them are great. Classic mode is by far the best it's ever been, and while I do admit that I miss the platforming sections and the connective tissue that was the cutscenes from Subspace Emissary, I think that what they did here was refine and coalesce multiple modes and features into what I feel makes a lot of sense in the context of the world.

IT's not a perfect game but it's easily the most fun to play solo of the entire series. The original, Melee, and WiiU/3DS were not great to play singleplayer modes outside of Event Mode, and while I personally loved Subspace I think that's a mixed bag, too. So no, I don't think this has lackluster Single Player modes, I think it's a well-refined version of the best singleplayer content available.



My Console Library:

PS5, Switch, XSX

PS4, PS3, PS2, PS1, WiiU, Wii, GCN, N64 SNES, XBO, 360

3DS, DS, GBA, Vita, PSP, Android