I'm having a problem in this game that I don't know how to fix. I've been playing this series since Smash 64 pretty devotedly and playing Smash 4, I find myself in situations that I really shouldn't be so often. It's like when I want to be aggressive, I always find myself in poor situations that I have to swim against the current to get out of and when I want to play patient and focus on fundamentals, I feel like I'm always just one hair out of range and it hurts everything from my ability to capitalize on reads or punish to just establishing stage presence.
I'm kinda hating how much I feel like I'm flailing around and things that I should get for free are slipping out of reach. What's more I'm still not used to a lot of the subtle changes a lot of the cast (vets mostly) got and that leads to some pretty silly miscalculations on my end (seriously why is Peach such a beast and why does Shulk manage to be the most easily understood character that consistently kicks my ass).
What should I be focusing on in general playing this game guys?
Hmm, that's a very vague and nebulous problem there. Unfortunately there is no clear answer other than to just get your feet wet and learn through playing over time. Some ideas that I believe can help you build your fundamentals are:
- Play without items on simple stages. Not to say that "no items is the correct way to play" nonsense but that without items or stage hazards as factors, it forces you to learn your character faster as that is the only way you're going to deal damage. When Brawl came out and I kept going to Final Destination-esque stages with no items, I became acutely aware of how much I depended on items for my wins in the past and I had to learn how to use my characters better to compensate.
- Air-mobility and your N-Air are vital. For the majority of the cast, you are at your most mobile in the air so get used to doing short hops with your N-air attack. N-Air tends to be a very fast attack that covers the entire body (or a large space in front) and has the least landing recovery time. A basic approach is to do a short hop forward, N-Air, and then move away from the enemy during the falling animation of your short hop.
- If an approach or attack fails and your close to your enemy, stop attacking and use your shield and focus on escaping. Playing against the computer trains you to rush down because they die easily and you want to speed through the modes to unlock things. STOP THIS ASAP. If you approach and your attack fails / misses, you've lost that exchange and you need to get things back to a neutral position as soon as you can. Shield afterwards in these situations and you will get perfect guards much more often than you would think. From there you can try to grab, spot dodge, or roll away (avoid trying to roll forward unless you're trying to get away from the edge because forward rolls turn your character around which can disrupt what type of attack you want to do after the roll).
- When hanging from an edge, try climbing up with a jump instead. Going to the air again means you can use your air-mobility to dodge and try to return things to a neutral position.
- Do not spam dash attacks. It gets frustrating when attacks miss and the dash attack is very easy to fall back on during those times because it placates both of your frustrations: being too far away and not attacking. This is a really bad mindset because the dash attack tends to have the most amount of recovery of all that character's ground normals and becomes predictable very fast. Use in small doses and / or save for when an opponent is trying to recover to the stage as the dash attacks tend to have giant hitboxes.
- Your Tilt attacks should be among your primary ground normals. Tilts are the happy medium between your standing attack and smashes. The standing normal is the fastest but has low range and low damage while smashes have the most range and power but are the slowest and most unsafe. Tilts are exactly in the middle. They have good range, good speed, good damage, and typically good recovery. If you're having trouble learning how to work them into your gameplay style, go into options and change your alternate control stick from "Smash" attacks to normal "Attack" and use it in fights. It's kind of like the logic behind playing without items to force you to learn your character, setting up your second control stick this way in a sense removes your smash attacks forcing you to learn the tilts instead.
- For Glory Teams are great for practicing and 1on1 for serious time. Teams are best for practicing because you have someone helping you so it's not entirely on you. They'll sometimes assist you when they get a chance or you assist them. Just them being on the stage taking up space will impact how your opponent moves giving you more freedom to be aggressive and learn the in's and out's of your moves. 1on1 doesn't give you that luxury so it's better to save that mode for when your more confident in your character and have a playstyle & strategy with them.
- Replay Channel is AWESOME! One of the best new features in the game. Watch a character you want to learn in 1on1 mode and see what they do in a neutral state, in close quarters, when returning to the stage, and when intercepting a recovering opponent. Conversely watch characters you have trouble with and see what they do in those situations and you will be able to better predict how they will act in a fight and you can punish accordingly.
Seems like a lot but hopefully these will help develop fundamentals. A more highly skilled player will see through a lot of these tricks but learning the basics of approach & defense will help you develop your own play style that isn't so standard or predictable.