Quote:
From Fire Emblem, Ike appears! The fact that he can wield a two-handed sword with a single hand is a testament to his magnificent strength.
He brings his special move "Aether" with him as he crashes the Brawl party. Try for a single-stroke finishing blow with his mighty blade!
Quote:
Ike’s up special move, obviously, is "Aether." And it is ethereal. Oh, yes.
First he throws the sword!
Then he leaps after it and catches it in midair!
Then he swiftly plunges, slicing the air!
Of special importance is the fact that he is resistant to attacks for a moment right after throwing his sword.
He’s not flinching?!
He’s not really invincible—he still takes damage. But he won’t flinch in the slightest.
This time, there are several moves like this among the heavy characters, so watch out!
Oh, he also has this special move...
His standard special move is called Eruption!
You can even charge this one up.
Gimpyfish's E4All Impressions
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Character Impression
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Character Impression
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Alright, now let’s move onto one of my favorite characters from the demo. Generally speaking his animations are wonderful, the way he moves, his final smash, his taunts and his throws are really cool visually speaking, and his final smash is awe inspiring.
But enough about the visuals and animations, let’s move onto the actual gameplay of Ike. Some of you readers saw my initial exaggerations of Fox’s nerfs and thought perhaps I was doing the same for Ike – read on to see if that’s true or not, but don’t get your hopes up to much. Let me start with this. Ike is strong, and when I say strong I mean STRONG. He KO’s at much lower percentages than Bowser does on average, only a few moves of Bowser’s seemed to compete with Ike’s power. Ike’s smash attacks are all HUGE disjointed hitboxes of raw power. If you can for a moment picture Marth’s hitboxes, but regardless of what point of your sword you hit them with it’s a tipper, those are Ike’s hitboxes. That was just an example, Ike really doesn’t have a moveset that is anything like Marth’s whatsoever, I was just comparing hitboxes sizes and knockback. For those of you who haven’t read a thing about Ike, he plays absolutely nothing like Marth/Roy in melee (but then, nobody really plays quite like their melee counterparts).
Alright, so now we know. Ike is a serious powerhouse, the strongest character BY FAR (at least in the demo) but he has some pretty intense drawbacks. As a player who uses the “slow but strong” character in Melee well I can see the limitations of another “slow but strong” character pretty easily as far as potential goes. Bowser in melee was slow but strong, and so was Ganon. I play both of those characters (although only Bowser in tournament). Ganon is CLEARLY the better of the two for multiple reasons. Now – for a moment – let’s compare Ike from Brawl to the Ganon/Bowser “slow but strong” character setup. Ganon and Bowser both have several moves that activate quickly or have a lot of shield stun or have a large amount of range or can grab from the air. They both have some manner of safety in their approaches or have at least some manner of speed in their character. Ike on the other hand seemingly has none of these positive factors. Ike is much, MUCH slower than either Ganon OR Bowser. I realize that this is a new physics engine, but he is VERY slow when compared to the rest of the cast. I’m trying to put the least amount of bias in this update that I can. I really wanted Ike to be good after seeing him played, and I honestly didn’t believe that he was as slow as people were telling me; then I played as him. His airials are ALL slow, his tilts are slower than most smashes, his smashes are almost the same speed as his tilts. He really, REALLY lacks in speed. After watching some of the videos of Ike I find myself doubting that he is really as slow as I recall. Visually some of the startup of his moves is actually hidden; he appears to be much faster than he really is in the videos. Let me make another thing clear. Ike is NOT very laggy. Ike does NOT have a large amount of lag after his airials, he just has slow activation time on them, which is MUCH more difficult to get around on a competitive level of play. If there is a Nintendo representative reading this somehow I implore you, please DECREASE the activation or startup time of SOME of Ike’s moves. He only needs some manner of safety or a move to combo into his ridiculously strong moves at very least.
Moving onto some of the other aspects of Ike (after again stressing, which I can’t stress enough, that Ike is VERY powerful)… Ike has a neutral b move that is similar to Marth and Roy’s neutral b. It is chargeable until it is an auto kill (if you charge it all the way you receive a ten percent penalty just like Roy’s), and seems to do an awful lot of knockback initially; this may legitimately be one of his fastest moves – and no, unfortunately, it isn’t very fast. Ike’s side B seemed to be one of his better moves. You can move across the stage quickly with this move and it’s a nice powerful strike (think of Pika/Pichu’s over b in melee, but much more useful and less laggy). This move can also be used as a recovery due to the new sweet spotting mechanics, however, after you use this move one time in the air, you cannot perform any airials or air dodge, it is just the same as using his up b, so it is NOT like Luigi’s over b recovery. Ike’s up b is pretty good on the stage. It has a nice chunk of super armor in it (super armor means that you take percentage, but no knockback) is fairly fast, and has quite a good amount of knockback. His up b looks visually very similar to Kirby’s, but as a recovery move it is noticeably worse. Unfortunately you gain ZERO horizontal distance when you use this move. You cannot move to the left or too the right, you can only go straight up and straight down, which is a major blow to his recovery. Ike’s down b counter comes out relatively fast and lasts for a fair amount of time, this move does more knockback than Marth’s counter did, but I’m unsure whether or not it has the same effect as Roy’s did in Melee.
Overall Ike doesn’t look like he will be an effective character in the competitive scene unless we see some buff’s for him, or we find out things we couldn’t in a 4 day period with a demo, which is of course likely. Obviously we didn’t get much time with Ike or the demo, but with all of us competitive players racking our brains to try and think of a way to get this character playable we couldn’t find a way.
Don’t get me wrong, Ike at the demo was doing very well. Ike is a complete BEAST in four player games because of his massive killing potential, and he may very well be a decent team’s partner for doubles matches in the competitive scene, but at this point he seems to not have much competitive singles potential due to an overwhelming lack of speed and a completely horrendous recovery when compared to the rest of the cast. One of my favorite characters from the demo; let’s all cross our fingers on this one.
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Final Smash
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Final Smash
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Alright, Ike’s final smash is another one of my favorites. You may be able to set this one up with throws or something like that, his moves in general are really slow so it would be hard to do it another way. Ike’s final smash has rage similar to metaknight’s; it hits right in front of him and is pretty limited in distance away from him, but it’s really quick. Once you land this final smash Ike launches his opponent into the air where he unleashes a massive and amazingly cool looking barrage of sword strikes and kicks, then finishes with a downward sword plant on the ground which causes a massive explosion. The explosion can hit multiple people, but the last hit can also MISS if you use this final smash in the wrong place. If you space this JUST right (or wrong I suppose) the final hit will drag them down and they will land on a platform in front of you, while you continue downwards with the explosion hit on the lower section of the screen. This one would be a fun one to do off stage if you were up by a stock because it would spike them into oblivion. This final smash is really cool looking, just like the rest of Ike’s horrendously slow moveset.
