This is my preferred way to play Brawl. Project + is an improved version of Project M, which is a mod for Brawl that gives it Melee mechanics, new characters, brings back removed characters from Melee, replaced and improved abilities of existing characters, new alternate costumes for the fighters, new stages, new variants of those stages, and countless other things. My mains carry over to this one and I play a greater variety of characters in this one. I love it and will gladly take this over Brawl any day.

I'm giving this game a pass on being difficult for me to set up because I think it's a lot of fun and is worth the praise.

The current method to play it on the wii without a disc is so jank I can only really recommend people play the game if they have a powerful pc and emulate it through dolphin or if you have a brawl disc + sdhc sd card + wii because the hack method is so much easier.

To play it on original hardware without a brawl disc means you need the iso on a flash drive plugged into the usb next to the corner of the wii at the back and you need a SDHC sd card (NOT AN SDXC sd card) AND you need a hacked wii (which isn't that difficult, hacking a wii is one of the easiest console hacks you can do). I have been using an SDXC sd card because it is not limited to 32 gb and I can load 30+ wii and gamecube games with it. So, in order for me to play it I need a separate sd card and flash drive. You can't launch it from USB loader GX (where I launch all my iso's), you have to launch it from the homebrew menu. Annoying. It takes longer to load than any other game on my hacked wii, probably cause its compiling something, getting things set up that are already ready for an officially licensed game. I wish they could just patch the iso but apparently it doesn't work like that/isn't possible.

If you need a pitch for playing this, the pitch is brawl but with custom stages, costumes, and major balance + moveset changes for almost every character. For example, Bowser's neutral B is now a chomp or fireball instead of breathing fire. Look up the tier list for brawl and compare it to the project+ tier list, they did a good job.

Also, I know it sounds weird, but I prefer the slower playstyle of these game in comparison to smash ultimate. The moves feel very deliberate, and you can't just input some crazy move combination to destroy your opponent like in smash ultimate. There is less of a barrier to entry. Yes, you can go insane in these games too, but casually the gap between players is much lower than in smash ultimate.

Premium balancing is very hard to do and it's refreshing after playing games like rivals of aether where it is fun to play custom characters, but balancing is basically a free for all.