This is meant to be more of a review of the environment that this game created, as I have very little credibility when it comes to the critique of its mechanics. I don’t play Super Smash Brothers Ultimate competitively, and I have rarely looked into the deeper mechanics at play. I still get frustrated by Sephiroth’s neutral B catching me while not paying attention, and I frequently spam Banjo’s side B to my friends’ equal dismay. If you’re interested in reading the experiences of a high-level Ultimate player, this is not the place to do it. What this game accomplishes on the gameplay side of things is enough to facilitate having fun with my friends, and that is all it has to do. Smash Ultimate was more than just a game to me in the excess of three years it has continually been in the public eye for. While the character reveals for Smash 4 were monumentally hype, especially as it opened to door for characters like Cloud and Ryu, Smash Ultimate solidified the “character reveal event” with the Fighter Passes. Everyone would come together for each Nintendo event with bated breath, wondering if enough time finally passed for a new fighter to be revealed. These characters captured everyone’s imagination, and Joker’s reveal gave credence to anyone’s left field bozo pick. Dante? Definitely in the conversation. Doom Guy? Not too out there. Steve from Minecraft? He actually made it in, and it still feels like a fever dream. The funny thing is that, other than Sephiroth, I don’t particularly love any of the DLC characters included. Even Sephiroth, while a very left field pick, didn’t really wow me in the same way Cloud did for obvious reasons. The truly surprising door was already opened by the likes of Cloud and Joker, and every character that followed them was a little less surprising. The community aspect was still there for characters like Byleth and Min Min, but nobody’s dream was coming true. That kind of cynicism that felt so antithetical to Smash Brothers, the series that embodied everyone’s childhood fantasies, started to creep its way in. For the final DLC character, it felt like almost an inevitability that they would disappoint. Despite the overwhelming amount of soul that Masahiro Sakurai (one of my all-time favorite creators) has given Smash Brothers as a series, and the equally astounding care put into each character in their every facet, even I started to feel like Smash Ultimate would end on a down note. I was ready to post some unoriginal and unfunny joke when I believed the character would be from Dark Souls. I was anticipating my cynicism to be rewarded as it usually is in this world, and I would feel the momentary satisfaction of coming down on this labor of love that shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t even the knowledge that Sora would be the final character that quelled this feeling. I had considered Sora to be a leading candidate despite the licensing nightmare that is his existence. It was the love that was put into his cinematic, and the silly but bittersweet knowledge that Sakurai’s wild ride was coming to an end.

I don’t even like Kingdom Hearts that much. I think 2 is a fine game, and Birth By Sleep and underrated gem, but the rest of the series I can take or leave. I grew up banging my head against the original Kingdom Hearts, having restarted it countless times. The game was difficult, and the narrative was like nothing I had seen in any other game. I never grew to like the game, but I certainly remember it like few other games. I would probably call Kingdom Hearts my least favorite series that I cannot get enough of. There are times where I truly hate it with a passion, but there are other moments that still get me teary eyed. I’m not sure why I expected to look upon a hypothetical Sora reveal with steely eyed stoicism. Any representative from a game that I had played tirelessly before the age of 10 would have had an effect on me. Sakurai could have thrown Crash Bandicoot in and my heart would have fluttered a little bit. Sora, in his great experience with doing so, unlocked something in my heart. The unashamed love that I could have for something, a feeling that I seldom experience in my 20s, came back to me for a while. I sat watching this silly sales pitch for downloadable content in a game I have spent over $100 on, knowing exactly what it was, but not being able to stop the tears in my eyes. The image of all these characters I’ve spent my life with emerging from their plastic state and having one last hurrah for their final visitor made me more emotional than I should be willing to admit. I don’t know if there’s going to be anything like this for the rest of my life, but I can’t imagine it will be as exciting. I’m not part of the “smash community” (and I don’t know if I want to be), but I am part of the internet community. It’s this larger group of people that made Smash Ultimate special. I couldn’t go two hours after the reveal of Sora before I heard the news being talked about among people outside of my circles in real life. Everyone, regardless of how they felt about this character or how much they play Smash Brothers, knew that there was magic in what Sakurai did. In retrospect, that magic was always present, and we didn’t appreciate it enough. It’s not until summer vacation is over that you regret taking it for granted.