by Erik_Twice Sun Aug 28, 2011 8:47 am
I see very little reason toplay Melee over Brawl. While it was a great evolution of the saga, it has dated pretty badly and certain design choices ended up clashing with the main design of the game.
Design-wise the unnaturally high speed of Melee, high gravity, long hitstun on attacks and combo-based gameplay directly clash with the focus of zoning and keeping your distance of Smash Bros. L-canceling and Wavedashing also add a execution barrier that adds nothing at all to the game but work.
Brawl is slower, more floaty (a bit too much perhaps), doesn't have as many combos and thus fits better with the overall design of the game, a very zoning-based fighter.
Brawl also has better balance between characters, with around 20 being viable, while Melee has always had only 7 good characters at best. Melee also had too many clones, making many characters boring to play. Brawl has some too but not as many.
The number of good stages is also higher in Brawl, Melee has 9 including counterpicks and Brawl has between 11 and 16, taking the first two groups of counterpicks and leaving the third, which isn't used too much.
Brawl also has a better presentation, with one of the best videogame soundtracks and decent graphics that may not be specially good but compared to Melee's even more outdated presentation is an improvement.
Brawl also has a lot of small stuff, like the trophies, the single-player mode, a kind of useless stage builder, more taunts and online mode that makes it feel more polished but don't add too much to the game itself on their own.
I think that's my assesment of the games.
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