This is a very fair point, but I want to stress that I'm not saying that Brawl is as deep as Street Fighter IV. It almost certainly isn't. I'm just saying that Brawl's depth is not readily apparent to people who play in the tournament style, or who judge it by the metric used for other fighting games.

All I see Khuutra doing is trying to address this idea that Brawl is not a deep fighter, is false. And I agree with him, Brawl is accessible to many but that doesn't mean it isn't deep.

This is kind of an oxymoron. The hardest core, most dedicated, most serious players...seek the most simplistic shallow way to play? Don't you think they would be searching for depth, rather than stripping it away for the sake of making it easier for everybody to play? They play the way they do because every other way results in a devalueing of the games depth, reducing it to a party game where skill isn't as necessary as luck. Competitive players add depth, they don't remove it.

Ok, how about this.

They make a game called 'Barrel Making'. In this game you, well, make barrels. But it's not that simple: it's actually incredibly deep: you can choose from over 100 types of wood. Dozens of nails. Scores of saws. There are endless ways to craft your barrels, all of them having subtle impacts on the overall quality of the final product. The game, while it is limited to making barrels, is SO DEEP that it takes up almost a whole Blu-Ray disc.

So, what's a better barrel game--that or Donkey Kong? Depth does not improve a game whatsoever unless you enjoy it's basic gameplay. Brawl's basic style of gameplay is more enjoyable to me and many others; we'd say Brawl is better. For many others, that is not the case: hence to them SF IV is the superior game.

When you're comparing games that are as fundamentally disparate as Brawl and SF IV, you can not argue for one using the usual variables: i.e., depth, replayability, etc...because they are all such COMPLETELY different games, everything becomes not an objective comparison but completely reliant on each players own subjective experience with each game.

Neither can truly be a 'better' fighting game, as they are not the same type of game. One *could* be labelled the better game overall--but then the only fair criteria (assuming both games have AAA production values, are bug free, and so on...which they are) is which is more fun.

We're back to being subjective. This thread is never going to arrive upon anything close to a consensus; it's impossible.

I do not believe depth = quality as an argument but I certainly feel that SFIV is the more technical of the 2 fighters. Having been a fighter fanatic for a long time now, I will acknowledge that I am slightly biased against the untraditional brawl, but the concept behind Brawl and SFIV is completely different.

Even if you add every single factor brawl has in fighting style, physic, mastery of characters, stages and items; the amount of thing you need to memorize to completely master the game is not a tenth what is needed to master SFIV. Where as brawl may asked an elite player to memorize the priorities of all items, games like SFIV (and Tekken / SCIV etc) demands a tournament level player to remember the priorities of every move in a character’s arsenal when compare to their opponent, what can override another move, what can counter another move, the specific frame advantage some move have either before or after an attack, which character has an inherent advantage / disadvantage over you and much much more before you can contemplate making your way to the top. 

Take Soul Calibur IV as an example. It is widely consider less technical than Namco’s other franchise Tekken and Capcom’s SFIV, yet fans of the series (myself included) will gather relevant data on frame rate for every character’s every move just to study frame advantage and that is only the FIRST thing you need to learn to be tournament worthy.

Brawl is no where near as technical as a traditional fighter, even the most un-technical of the crowd.

That is the rhetoric I am sure they use, but the removal of any sort of skill - that includes item management and environmental interaction - means that the experience is necessarily less deep.

Like I said, they plumb the depths of the character vs.s character interactions, but their plumbing occurs in a vacuum where the environment does not play a part and none of the game's other systems come into play.

Four lives.
No items.
Fox only.
Final Destination.

Dig it? Within those parameters (I am not being serious about that meme, I know that not all that many levels are banned from tournament play and most characters are viable) they go as deep as they can, but they do not operate outside of that. This turns Brawl into a fighting game like Street Fighter, when it is not that. It is considerably different, and has many other modes of play and factors which add to its depth, not remove it.

If you want to pretend that the removal of features and skillsets somehow adds to depth, you are free to do so, but I will not be taking you seriously. There is a difference between "character vs. character mechanics" and "depth", especially in Brawl, which is not a traditional fighter.

Of course, it's still kind of moot, isn't it? Because depth isn't the almighty metric of quality.

I have said previously that I do not think Brawl is as deep as SFIV (I haven't played the latter, and it almost certainly isn't anyway). I'm not making a comparison between them. I am saying that Brawl cannot be measured, in terms of depth, using the metric for traditional fighters like Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter.

Variety isn't the same as depth.

You are free to oversimplify the issue if you wish.

I have to go with brawl. a lot of yall are saying brawl has no depth but it really does. the its and stages its what gives it depth. you have learn moves, come up with combos, learn each characters spacing, predict your opponents moves etc. and since there is no health bar you can't win just by giving damage to your opponent. like I said both games are great but i have to give it to brawl.