Let’s just get this out of the way: I hate Kingdom Hearts. I hate the characters, I hate the convoluted story, and I hate that out of the billion possible characters we could have gotten that Sora – the poster child of “generic JRPG protag” – was somehow the most requested fighter for Super Smash Bros. I refuse to believe he’s anywhere near the top in his own franchise.

…..

Folks, I’m not mad – I’m just disappointed.

But unlike your dad who is likely nodding their head in shame as you read this piece, Super Smash Bros. dad Masahiro Sakurai and the talented folks at Sora (not the one above) and Bandai Namco has proven time and time again that it can turn even the most uninspired picks into fun and technically adapt fighters. That’s because no matter how much of a following, hype, or seething hatred a character has once officially announced, none of that tells me the most important thing – how do they play?

Now that the final DLC has dropped, I dusted off my Switch, popped in my copy Smash Ultimate for likely the final time (maybe?), and decided to get to the bottom of it. Just like Daedalus watching in horror as their spawn comes crashing down to earth, all I can do is sit here in silence and try to collect my thoughts. So, strap yourselves into your gummi ship, open the door to my personal nightmare with your keyblade, and follow along as I disclose my honest opinion of the final DLC character.

Before jumping into gameplay, let’s start with the obvious consequence of being the last fighter, namely everyone else who didn’t make the cut. Just in the last couple years all the way up to this month, there were plenty of potential characters both within and outside of Nintendo’s core franchises that could have easily taken the final slot. We could have had Raven Beak from Metroid Dread. We could have gotten a WarioWare rep. We could have had the Doom Slayer, Travis Touchdown, Dante, and almost any third-party character.

Hell, we could have had another Fire Emblem character. No scratch that – we could have had literally any Fire Emblem character and it still would have been more interesting than this sack of bricks. Do you want to know why? That’s because for all the moaning about “too many anime swordfighters,” the development team actually took the chance to make interesting movesets and playstyles around them.

Let’s compare some of the new non-echo fighters from just Fire Emblem. Robin has four different magic tomes and a Lightning sword – all with various properties within them. Corrin can turn into a dragon hybrid, has incredible reach and a killer projectile with a close up hit if timed well. Byleth had four unique legendary weapons and not a single counter special. And if they really wanted to spice things up, Fire Emblem Heroes has literal Norse figures and mech suits. No, you read that right: Mech Suits.

What does Sora have? A goddamn sword.

In game with almost 90 fighters, it’s understandable that not every character is going to click for every person. Under normal circumstances, I’d simply give it a go, chalk it up to “I’m not feeling it,” and move on. I had a similar experience with Steve who plays nothing like anything that has come before, but came to understand the design philosophy in trying to both pay homage to the source game while presenting something never before seen in Smash. Yet no matter how unorthodox the fighter or how deep the references go, it should never come at the cost of balance and smart mechanics.

If you’ve played any fighter, you’re already familiar with some variation of the principal – a character’s “feel.” How they move, the speed at which standard and specials connect, unique calling cards specific to their playstyle or how they fare against different opponents/mirror matches and so on. Though I don’t consider myself to be a fighting game guru like my more battled hardened mates, what frustrates me most about Sora is the most basic element of any fighter – his movement.

For starters, he’s one of the lightest fighters in the game, yet his run and jump animations betray the most basic tenet of gameplay. In my first few hours with the character, one of the first things I noticed – aside from his obnoxious “float run”– was how slowly he came to a turn upon flicking the stick in the opposite direction. This is a kid who literally floats, yet he turns like a truck trying to awkwardly transition into a U-turn while taking a mid-air dump. This isn’t a deal breaker mind you, but what really signaled the red flag of doom was the moment I performed a double jump.

His second jump is noticeably heavier. How heavy you ask? I’m talking Kazuya levels of time to complete the second jump. I know some have argued that a character’s weight does not correlate with their jumping abilities (see King Dedede, ROB, and Snake), but there is something off putting about having a midair specialist jump at the same speed as the ground martial artists. It takes way too damn long to execute and feels more like an empty gesture to callback the source than adding anything of value to the character, much less this game.

It only gets worse with his actual toolkit. His Neutral B is a cycling projectile that you can’t select. It’s a simple problem that’s already been resolved with characters like Shulk now letting you select it mid activation or Robin and Hero letting you charge specials, yet they chose not to for Sora. His basic attacks and mid-air hits are boring 3 hit auto combos that cheaply targets the closest fighter with its first hit. Even less impressive is that his side special functions in a similar manner, albeit you have some manual control. His recovery is literally Link’s up special with the added bonus of being able to transition into his side special. Adding even more insult to injury, his down special is… a counter that only works in front.

Not that it would change much if it did work on both sides as he hits like a feather and gets knocked out faster than the time it took to write this sentence! While the counterargument to this is he hits multiple times to rack up damage, from a gameplay standpoint, it is simply another variation on an existing playstyle. He is quite literally a dull sword guy that can’t cut as hard and can easily be cut down, relying solely on his gimmick of “hit multiple times, distance, air, annoy, repeat.” Even fighting a few rounds against the character became more of a chore than a satisfying KO. At a certain point, I stopped having fun altogether.

As I realize that this will be a highly unfavorable opinion and I can never claim to be 100% unbiased – those that know me in close circles know my thoughts already! – it does very little to change my thoughts on what was a rather lackluster addition to a franchise known for regularly adding new and fun ways to play. Taken individually, this would be less of an issue if the character had more going under the hood beyond physics, but when so much of Sora’s base kit could have literally been pulled from any existing sword fighter, it’s baffling how this character scored the top ballot.

Sora is easily the most uninspired DLC character of the two season passes by somehow being a worse version of the anime swordfighter everyone loves to hate. Frankly, it’s insulting to every fighter that fits that label when so little effort was put to diversify what could have been an interesting addition. But at the end of the day, I guess that’s Kingdom Hearts (and Smash Bros.) for better and for worse: shameless fan pandering and excessive spending in all its glory wrapped up in Tetsuya Nomura’s weird mind palace (see Brawl).

Make no mistake, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate succeeded in becoming the series’ most successful entry and a worthy fighting game in its own right. It’s just a shame Ultimate’s last sendoff didn’t reach the same sky that the legendary franchise often portrays in its final destination.

Dark Aether is a writer/contributor for TAY and AniTAY. You can check his previous writings on TAY2, Medium, or follow him on Twitter @TheGrimAether. Not Dead Yet.