Xenoblade’s Shulk Confirmed For New Super Smash Bros.

Shulk from Xenoblade Chronicles has finally made his appearance in Super Smash Bros as a playable character. Xenoblade Chronicles was one of those game that was a part of the fan petition for Operation Rainfall, which brought Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower overseas. The most beloved of all three of these games is Xenoblade Chronicles for the Nintendo Wii and despite being a new IP, its massive popularity was enough for Nintendo to recognize its’ potential and add Shulk into the game.

Shulk is the first character in the series that hails from a traditional JRPG (Fire Emblem is Strategy RPG and Mario was from a platformer first) so it’s quite interesting to see the huge variety of attacks he has at his disposal. This might mean that Shulk has a steeper learning curve than some of the other characters in the game due to the fact that he has different styles of play depending on the different emblem that’s on his sword. Shulk might be a character best used with someone who prefers Zelda/Shiek in Brawl or Melee.

Some fans worry that Shulk may end up being fairly overpowered because of his diverse moveset and range of options. In fighting games or competitive games in general, a lot of options can easily mean a playable character is often better than other characters in every way because there are more ways to adapt to the meta game and other play-styles. Hopefully Nintendo won’t give us another Meta Knight to ban from every Smash tournament.

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