Note: Been playing Smash competitively since 2007, won't be covering the casual aspect of this game.

Since the very first day this game was announced, I felt sceptical about it. All the talk about the game was exclusively the implementation of rollback netcode, and movement options like air dashes and wavedash (and of course "funny spongebob does Melee techniques meme"), both of which were great for the marketing of the game, and the timing was perfect.

Smash players have been disillusioned with Ultimate for a while because of the incredibly poor online experience + the Covid-19 pandemic + Nintendo shutting down events, and NASB promised a fresh "Smash-like" ("Melee-like"?) experience that had good online, incredible potential for internet humor and the famous mechanic that Super Smash Bros has neglected for the past 3 games.

And I think NASB, as a product, really delivered. The game is exactly what they made it out to be. But mechanically it has no soul, the philosophy behind the design is flawed, and it ends up feeling like every other "smash clone" that has ever existed like Digimon Rumble Arena or Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion. The big difference being that now, most smash players know about the competitive scene.

The game is too technical for its own good. Mastering movement in NASB is very very important, and ergonomically awful, high level matches are just 2 characters flying around and doing a lot of "sick movement" while throwing out random hitboxes, until one of them gets hit and dies (or not) and then repeat until the match is over.

And why would you want that many movement options in the first place? Aerials have no endlag, short hopping and spamming aerials is a super strong strategy with very low risk, and some characters have moves so big that you can approach and anti air at the same time.
It's a super unnappealing gameplan for me, and the lack of defensive options make it even worse.

I criticize Rivals Of Aether for some of that as well, but every character has a specific mechanic/gameplan that makes them unique, they have to work towards a specific objective in the match, and taking all the matchups into consideration makes RoA a very rich game that stands out, where characters have their own way to deal with each other, and where movement really matters, even though it not being my cup of tea.

In NASB every character has crazy ground and air movement by design, similar recoveries, very similar or identical kill confirms and combos, they all look for the same things in neutral, so the line between characters is blurred.

Balance is really silly too, but that's expected in a game like this. And I really couldn't care less about patches, they won't fix what really is wrong about the game (most people are complaining about the game not being polished, lack of voice acting, and even about the price, and I think they are completely missing the important stuff).

And I'm sure Nickelodeon pressured the devs a lot to release the game asap, so that sucks too.

In the end NASB is another game that tries to be Smash (with a twist) but doesn't get it. I don't want every platform fighter to be the same, and this is a nice little experiment, but there's so much more to the genre than wavedashing and getting 0 to deaths.

Kusoge material for sure. Feels like Smash 64 with UMVC3 movement and that just doesn't make any sense.

Reviewed on Oct 10, 2021


2 Comments


2 years ago

While I agree with some of what you say about NASB itself, Shrek is a Power Stone clone while Punch Time Explosion isn't even remotely comparable quality wise to NASB.

2 years ago

Oh yeah, that's my fault. I honestly don't know why I mentioned the Shrek game in the first place, it's been a while.
And about the quality of NASB vs PTEXL, I'm not so sure. One game came out 10 years before the other, and like I said the main difference between now and then, is that developers finally know about competitive Smash and why Smash is not so easy to replicate. NASB devs have already made a platform fighter (Slap City) that I honestly think is kinda decent, and that makes NASB even more dissappointing for me.

I think the idea of what makes Smash great has changed a lot over the years, and the divide between casual and competitive audience has been shrinking a lot. People who tried making all star Smash clones could only see the casual aspect of the game, from the early games like Digimon Rumble Arena and Viewtiful Joe Red Hot Rumble to later games like Punch Time Explosion and even PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, they just couldn't compete with the deep and well thought out system mechanics that Smash is famous for.
Right after that, thanks to Melee being included at EVO 2013, the popularity of PM and the release of Smash4 (which sucks), more and more of the casual crowd started to understand why the game was more than a slapstick reunion of characters. And suddenly there was no audience for "All Stars" games.

Since then, most(?) smash-like games (or platform fighters) have been really tied to the competitive Smash community, developed by actual fans of Smash. Rivals of Aether being the best example of a game that not only understands Smash, but is also able to experiment and expand the concept, while stil being its own entity.

The thing with NASB is that sounds, looks and feels like the old All Stars games, but plays like Melee on crack. It feels like the devs fetishize wavedashing and movement in general, to the point where it feels like a forced inclusion to the game, a hook for competitive players in a game that ultimately, was made to be casual.