Why NO ONE Plays: Ridley | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

One of the most anticipated but confusing fighters to be added to Ultimate's initial wave of newcomers would undoubtedly have to go to Ridley since Brawl Ridley was highly requested by the player base for a multitude of reasons, but the main one I can remember is that while other big franchises have a lot of representatives metroid has only one samus, it would have made a lot of sense to include swan adversary in

smash

given that other protagonists like mario link fox kirby and donkey kong have brought their rivals at some point or another bowser another time and the dwarf wolf meta knight and king k rool surely our wish was granted and the space pirate big bass

ridley

became the second unique metroid character to be introduced in the

super

smash

bros

franchise, but despite everyone's enthusiasm For its release, its competitive story can only really be described as non-existent, even despite its initial hype, there wasn't much success even shown for the dragon from upper to high and even mid levels of play, so for the today's episode of why there's nowhere we are.

I'm going to go over Ridley's design and history to find out where things went wrong. I said before that Ridley is one of the most confusing fighters ever brought to Smash, even if you consider the fact that a pink marshmallow can go toe-to-toe. toe with some of the most destructive forces of destiny the world has ever seen yes that's a joke I'm aware that Kirby is probably the most powerful being on the entire list play along for a second smash

bros

presents characters come in all shapes and sizes, so it's not unusual for someone large or small to have their true size altered to some extent when imported.

The problem was, according to the Smash developers, that Ridley was canonically too big to be implemented in Smash, and on the face of it, that was a completely reasonable assumption. have him tower above most other characters with a minimum height of 4 meters and unlike bowser or ddd, who mostly have circular designs and can therefore be expanded or reduced,

ridley

has many details, narrowing it down would be quite a challenge, especially when taking into account that his fighting method is very focused on the air, true to his appearance, ridley is a heavyweight, although surprisingly he is lighter than samus by one point with 107 units in weight, he's actually closer to mario than ganondorf dk dddk rule and certainly Bowser, although I imagine they did it intentionally to keep him balanced.

Multi-jumpers have an inherent advantage in aerial combat thanks to their ability to stay in the air for longer periods of time, ensuring that substantial weight can be somewhat overpowered, while king ddd is also a multi-jumper, He is hamstrung by his air mobility or lack thereof He doesn't really move very well in the air, as expected Ridley's greatest strength comes in the form of his incredible air pressure He has fantastic effective range, courtesy of his wings and tail, while having equal parts speed and power, combine that with two jumps in the air instead of the usual one and useful aerial physics, and he has a very threatening bonus scene, like other large-bodied characters, his enormous size can work. for or against him obviously when he attacks it's a buff and when he's attacked it's a debuff in terms of attacking ridley has a solid balance of bowser and dk for unloaded speed and power with the pension of ddd for walling of pain, its neutral forward, backward and in the air.

They all have a low enough charger to be used on every jump and have one of the best attack ranges of their kite, even against other mid-range threats like departures, Riley has no problem contesting your space in the air, nothing from this comes to Although I would say that his ground pressure cost, aside from incineroar and Kazuya Ridley's ground game, is among the best of the heavyweights, his quick jab does a lot of damage. Fortel is a good spacing and punishing tool with great killing power when ideally it is noticeably safer on the shield than it looks.

Tilt is an excellent anti-air move that combos into itself and drives any of its aerials downward at higher percentages until it has tremendous horizontal range and the same combo potential as its up-tilt dash attack. is a moderately slow but powerful burst option that can be used to close out actions, finally ridley's smash attacks each serve their own purpose, match his guard and variety of kill moves and are one of the strongest in the game. up smash is possibly the best while suffering from blind spots on the side, it is a wide, disjointed arc slash that, as far as I know, is large enough to cover the entire space of a battlefield platform, while the slower one is a powerful ground pound that can be used to punish the lift attack. or incorrect tech options, in fact you can cover almost all launch options to get off the ledge with just your normals.

Ridley has basically the same effective range as a swordsman, if not more, while also having the killing power expected of an average heavyweight by design. It's great to see him make use of all parts of himself to insert pressure from his claws to his wings to his tail to his legs. His specials also come with their own functions that create ways to bypass your opponent's defenses. Plasma Breath is one of the most brainless edge guard tools that can be used by anyone with a linear recovery path and he can force a lift option if you tilt him off the ledge, meanwhile, space pirate race is a dangerous commando graduate who is not only really hard to crush. but he also drags his opponent towards the edge of the platform or stage, if not killing him outright, setting him up for an easy edge guard where he thrives, even his optimistic side attack widely considered a disappointing recovery option is difficult. to directly challenge in light of being a disjointed attack and the down variant can choose two framing options if you discover the moment in the entirety of ridley's moveset is great, he has some quote unquote useless moves like the air and pace, but overall there's a healthy balance between speed and power range, a strong early to mid percentage combo play that transitions to any number of strong kill options at a high percentage, unlike most other weights Heavyweights who have a simple, if not one-dimensional, game plan, Ridley is a very adaptable character thanks to his theoretical attributes anyway.

His effective range gives him an advantage against most stocky characters who struggle to hide his ability to Putting up a wall of pain gives you the advantage against long-range fighters who lack the frame data to escape combos or recovery. To return to the stage, his grappling command can severely punish anyone who likes to protect themselves too much and the sheer force behind his attacks means that he usually wins a losing blow battle. Basically, Ridley has an answer for almost every situation that doesn't necessarily mean. an easy answer but it's an answer anyway, so having spent the first half of the video breaking down his impressive moveset, what's the reason players don't use it as much?

I must say that there are many reasons, but three in particular come to mind: the first. is that it swings very far in any direction to the point where you can even consider it a glass cannon, contrary to its appearance and weight, the predominant theme surrounding heavyweights is that to compensate for their overwhelming strength, their attacks They become very slow at start and o and lag, but to take into account the fact that they will take more hits than they can deal, it is somewhat offset by the greater weight allowing them to survive longer, the more competitively viable heavy weight before Kasia would have to go to Bowser and a lot of that has to do with her incredible stamina.

He easily survives past 150 on a regular basis most of the time. If you see him die early, it's because his opponent took advantage of his linear recovery. In contrast, Bowser can tear you to pieces with just a few neutral interactions. the other person's responsibility is to minimize their periods of vulnerability to not allow that to happen, where ridley falls into all this is that he doesn't have that margin of safety, like i said, he's lighter even than his rival samus, yes, he's relatively heavy. to the rest of the cast but he's not that heavy in other words, ridley can dish it out but he can't take it, this is further compounded by having one of the biggest damage boxes in the game and not as much intangibility in his moves when he attacks, leaving him prone to overextending his box, he faces a considerably higher risk of dying much earlier due to being a disadvantage and heavyweights are known for their susceptibility to being comboed and guarded, although it is true that ridley has many more offensive options.

Like other heavyweights, he suffers from a lack of defensive options in the same way, he just doesn't have the luxury of taking as much punishment as those other heavyweights. Having a large flock is only a problem if you don't have the right tools to work with. Ideally, yes, the smaller you are, the better, but it's not as big a problem as many would say in concept. The problem for Ridley is that he doesn't have those solutions to neutralize that weakness enough to find consistent results in the professional scene. Take for example his recovery, technically speaking Ridley is a multi-jump, but he only has one extra jump, not the way Jigglypuff Kirby and Meta Knight do a third jump, it opens up a lot of different options for Ridley that are inaccessible to anyone without one, but it's not enough to fix his support recovery, he has many different ways to return to the ledge, whether from above, below or from the side, but his linearity makes it easy for most of the cast to protect him, especially in light of how big it is.

He must beat up another big guy as Rob has a burner robot that offers a nearly infinite number of ways to return to the stage, not only from where he can recover, but also when he can recover. Stopping your return to the ledge makes you less susceptible to two frames. ridley doesn't have that luxury nor is he able to fight as much now if hypothetically when blitz behaved like firefox or octaslash and allowed him to decide which direction he wanted to go instead of just four that would significantly improve his recovery but it wouldn't solve the root problem that he is too ruthless to play.

His enormous size, lack of flexibility, and inferior stamina mean that his disadvantage makes him too inconsistent and competitive, even if he has a decent neutral and powerful advantage that gives your characters a lot of talk. They have bad drawbacks like roy kazuya and minman, but they're not as big as ridley, so they're not as easy a target to hit on the inconsistency issue. Ridley's second crippling problem is that his moves, while individually effective, are weak and some are even downright horrible. Uptilt Nutmash are fantastic anti-airs with good damage, decent speed, and long range, but they have atrocious blind spots on their sides.

Plasma Breath can only be used safely when your opponent is off stage or across stage that the space pirate has not seen. ends lag if you missed it and is very easy to react to given its start and where you would expect most ridley players to use it and the most problematic would have to be the abundance of bitter points in its attacks which require players to space out with great care. However, if they want to make the most of their gear, since it has such a large damage box, that means poorly spaced attacks can result in bad traits, it's not like Marth where even if you don't get tipped, you're not messing . too much danger the inconsistency in his movements can make him very uncomfortable to play the whole appeal of great heavyweight fighters is that they don't put as much emphasis on precision rather patience ridley needs patience and precision even though he himself is a huge target, you can see this most noticeably when he is fighting zonators or long range fighters against his rival samus, as mentioned above, plasma breath is not a reliable projectile to use in neutral, its bulky size makes getting close almost impossible without being hit and his attacks.

They are not disjointed enough to defeat our projectiles, even if they can, you must be precise with your spacing and keep in mind that he cannot take on the tank as easily as other heavyweights, there are many situations where Ridley is destroyed by his opponent. As there are situations where he actually destroys them, what happens is that he doesn't have enough proper tools.to reduce the probability of losing those situations. It's big but lacks the durability to balance it. He has a fantastic aerial game, but is quite vulnerable. in the air it has a lot of effective range but not enough disjointed range.

You have recovery options but not enough confusion to ensure your safety. His punishing game is arguably top-notch, but he has no ways to force unwilling opponents. Approach two and its frame data are not fast enough to box in characters who want to get closer. Finding success in Ridley comes down to a test of patience and a heavy, confusing

plays

tyle. It has really good tools, but not enough. to where you don't have to think about it and you get results and that brings us to his third main problem, there is nothing about ridley's equipment as a practical asset, i.e. that incentivizes players to use it on other fighters or even as weights heavy, if you believe.

In this regard, he has the reach of a Saudi like Sephiroth Shulk or Ike, but with the added drawback of a massive Hurtbox, he has the same vulnerability as Bowser K-Rool and Donkey Kong, but with the added drawback of being much lighter in response. . What do you have to offer that sets you apart from other heavyweights? Damage, yes, it has good damage, but so does everyone else. Heavyweights also have good reach. They are called exits without being them.exits for a reason recovery, I mean you have an extra jump, but I would hardly say that your recovery is much better than theirs.

What about edge protection, perhaps? But edge protection is only a virtue if you can consistently knock your opponents off the stage, as well as the lack of base power to kill them while they're on the stage, heavyweights as a class aren't too concerned with edge protection. the edges because most of the time they have attacks strong enough to close the actions on the stage or his name is Donkey Kong and he aims to kill anyone with The charge throw beyond 80 projectiles, plasma breath can force jumps, but only if you are in a ft type scenario, also I would say K-rool has better projectiles.

He had a set of shields, he's not the worst, but he's certainly not the best, he's not nearly as dangerous as Bowser kills them. You don't really get the idea of ​​what hanging again syndrome is if you isolate Ridley's move set and evaluate it in a vacuum, they're all good moves back air up here air forward air neutral forward tilt up smash up tilt down tilt side b neutral b etc., but if you put them together in the context of someone like Ridley, it doesn't make him stand out enough in any aspect or in an aspect that isn't overshadowed by his myriad weaknesses. , since Ultimate has more than 80 characters to highlight.

You have to have excellent stats across the board and weaknesses that can at least be suppressed with good fundamentals or skill execution or you need to specialize in something. A great example would be Kazuya Kazuo, he sucks at a lot of things, he's slow. The aerial game is ass, his drawback is one of the worst in the game, he has very linear close range targeting options, the list goes on and on, but if you get a single grab or an electric, you're dead, because yeah , has a lot of weaknesses. but all those weaknesses are irrelevant if this is someone who needs only one successful neutral interaction and a combo chain to close the stock on him.

Redly doesn't really have that x factor, he's too balanced a character if he had an extra jump to be able to jump. three times in the air instead of two, that might be enough to differentiate him from other heavyweights because now you have a huge dragon with air pressure comparable to jigglypuff, that's ridley's problem right now and for the Most players feel like a nuzlocke pokemon runs a character with additional restrictions that only make things more difficult without necessarily rewarding you for overcoming them. When you compete at the upper echelon of the game, it is in the player's best interest to minimize the number of things that can go wrong, especially the things you have. there's no agency to stop you, you have some degree of control over, say, Saffron's fragility and you just have to avoid getting hit too much, but for Ridley, he's so big that it's physically impossible to dodge certain attacks, everyone's stuff like that.

Anyway, that sums up everything I have. What to say about Ridley, similar to my previous episode about Ken Ridley, he's a good character, very fun to play at least, but he has more problems than most people are comfortable handling when it comes to using him in competition right now, the only place I can do it. What comes to mind would be mezcal and ner, that's all. I wish we could see him more often, although he sure is one of the coolest design heavyweights. If you enjoyed the video, I would appreciate it if you could leave. like and subscribe, consider following me on Twitter at var Cum for spicy takes join my Discord server.

I'm trying to grow the smash community there and don't forget to check out my other Wine on Place episodes if you haven't already. but until next time, thank you very much for watching and I hope to see you again soon, take care.