You Want Him, You Got Him: Sora In Smash Bros
As the sun rose today, Smash Bros fans watched Nintendo’s live broadcast with a lot of anticipation and a bit of nervousness. They were about to reveal their very last fighter for Smash Bros Ultimate, and a complete lemon wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Fortunately, Sakurai delivered the good stuff: Kingdom Hearts’ Sora, a long-time demand, was at last satisfied. He’ll be leaping around and slashing his Keyblade before the month is through.
Anyone who’s played a Kingdom Hearts knows Sora controls light (we mean he’s not very heavy…he doesn’t literally control light). In Smash, this has advantages and disadvantages….Sora is best at jumping attacks and doing things in midair, but he can also be knocked out of the arena much easier than, say, Bowser can. Sora has one of the best recovery moves in the game, a shooting attack of 90-degree angles that can cover a great distance in a short time. His special moves contain a dash of elemental magic like Fira or Blizzaga, and he can also pretend to cast Stop, though that is just a taunt because being literally able to freeze everyone would break the entire game.
While Sora was here, Sakurai, Nintendo and Square took the opportunity to reveal the Kingdom Hearts series — the real one, not any spinoff — would at last be playable on Nintendo Switch…sort of. We regret to inform you these are cloud-beamed copies, meaning the bulk of the graphics processing work is done by a remote server somewhere. When it inevitably gets shut off, you won’t be able to play the game you bought ever again. We figure the brand will rope in a few buyers, but most gamers who know what’s going on will stick with their PS4 copies, leading to reduced sales, and leading to Square thinking “oh well, guess we’ll never put a mainline KH on a Nintendo system again.” Grr.
Sora comes to Smash Bros Ultimate on October 18, and brings with him ten songs from the KH series and his own stage, Hollow Bastion. And with that, the Switch lineup of Smash Bros Ultimate fighters is at last complete. What do you think?