Super Smash Bros Ultimate released a little over a week ago, and we absolutely loved it in our review. More importantly, professional players have already made their tier lists. These lists will undoubtedly shape the face of the Smash Bros Ultimate scene for years to come, guiding players towards certain characters over others.
While we’re not about to go that far and claim one character is better than another, we can use these lists to give advice on which characters to avoid if they ever want to play competitively. However, take the following with a grain of salt; every character is deadly in the hands of a master. Moreover, the characters in this article fare better on certain stages, most of which have been banned from competitive play, so don’t get too discouraged if your favorite character is on this list.
Least Competitively Viable Super Smash Bros Ultimate Characters
Chrom
When Robin was announced for Super Smash Bros 4 (the Wii U/3DS), gamers prayed fellow Fire Emblem Awakening protagonist Chrom would also appear in Smash Bros. And he did… as Robin’s Final Smash. While Chrom is playable in Super Smash Bros Ultimate (even though he’s still also part of Robin’s Final Smash), he regrettably suffers from Little Mac Syndrome.
What’s Little Mac Syndrome, you ask? Well, like Little Mac (more on him later), Chrom is a beast so long as he’s on solid ground, or at least above a stage. He has all the range of Super Smash Bros Ultimate’s other Fire Emblem swordsmen (and swordwoman) but with none of their swords’ sweet and sour spots. However, unlike other Fire Emblem characters, Chrom has the recovery capacity of an actual sword.
In their infinite wisdom, Nintendo decided to make Chrom a hybrid of Ike and Roy, which meant pairing Ike’s soaring up-B with Roy’s combo-happy side-B. Yet therein lies the problem: Ike’s up-B is all vertical and no horizontal, which is why his side-B is strictly horizontal. As for Roy, his up-B shoots him diagonally upwards, which means he doesn’t really need a side-B for horizontal mobility.
Chrom’s recovery is the worst of both worlds since it has zero horizontal options outside of his single midair jump. Competitive matches always take place on floating arenas, which means Chrom players fight with a serious handicap, one the rest of Super Smash Bros Ultimate’s roster doesn’t have.
