Overall impressions from a more competitive player after gleaning over all the footage today:
Currently cautiously optimistic. Game looks a little less floaty than Brawl did, pace is a little different. In the Developer Direct, we get a few glimpses of some interesting things.
-For starters, Mario doesn't autosnap to the edge with his Side B the same way he does in Brawl. Not sure if it's because the player was holding down *after* the Side B or not, buuuuut nonetheless it could be a good sign that the edge won't be as free anymore.
-Megaman looks annoying. Projectiles out the ass, can you clash them out with any moves? Otherwise, he's going to be a monster. He'll be Falco on crack with so many projectiles at his disposal. 45% down smash in one of the videos (the one where it's supposedly Sakurai playing the game against Megaman or something).
-Mario has FLUDD again (could just be the early transitional period where some move sets are unchanged atm like the Brawl reveal where Kirby had his Melee Side B still) not sure... if I like that.
-Brawl air dodge is still there. Not sure if I like it. If in the final product you *can't* cancel hitstun with an air dodge, I won't mind. But if hitstun is completely negated again in this game, I'm not sure I'll be happy. I WANT my combos and my reads.
-Bowser's new move looks great and looks like it could give him a boost. Overall mobility improvement for him sounds wonderful. It's definitely what he needed.
-Villager looks okay, not much I can say really without seeing him played in actual matches.
-Wii Fit Trainer looks interesting. She seems to have the mobility of Sheik, to me anyway. She's kind of floaty but it's okay to have floaty specific characters IF the other characters also have their own unique gravities/physics.
-Animation touch-ups on Samus' moves, most notably forward tilt. Less stiff than in Brawl which is REALLY good; visually appealing there. Not something of competitive value BUT I do appreciate it nonetheless.
-Knockback looks like it scales differently but I'm not sure.
-Hitlag for some things look lower, which is good, less time to SDI on reaction (for the less in-the-know, SDI = Smash DI, which is smashing the stick in a direction to push your character more strongly for more survivability).
-Less hazardous stages is always good, more unique PLATFORM layouts for stages is a big plus. Please do more of these stages, I hate the chaotic ones. Unique platform layout spotted on Skyloft and the new Smashville has two plats on each side (I'll assume they move in some way). I hope there's more variety in plain platform stages rather than chaotic and hazardous ones... but I'll keep my expectations in check.
-Powershielding looks to have the same bullshit from Brawl where you don't take any pushback from whatever move hit your shield. And it kinda looked like Bowser buffered it from something but it's obviously hard to tell. If shielding overall is weaker and this is still powerful, I guess I won't mind, but if BOTH are still super powerful together, then it's going to be a repeat of Brawl where defense trumps everything. =\
-Aesthetically it looks great, much better than Brawl and somewhat more in line with Melee's vibrancy. I hope they keep that aesthetic going for the rest of the cast and stages.
Overall like I said, I'm cautiously optimistic but Megaman did get me hyped this morning. I don't see a whole lot of... well, inspiration from what the modding community has done but I guess that's not something I should expect. I guess you could argue Skyloft counts buuuuuut come on, it was a no brainer that was going to be a stage in the next Smash game anyway (all they had to do was import Skyloft's model and create an animation for the stage to make it seem like you're moving in the air).
I hope to God they really don't keep things from the Brawl engine and that this is still rather early where they can fix up whatever's looking... kind of off. I hope none of the bugs or coding related issues transfer over (such as teching using the wrong damn ID or variable which is why teching felt so off in Brawl). And of course, PLEASE NO TRIPPING AT ALL.
Also, I hope Jason got to ask Sakurai my questions..!