The awesome train just keeps on a-rollin’! My in-depth impressions of Brawl continues today with three more character profiles. For those of you that missed it, my general impressions are here and part one of the characters is here. This installment’s guests hail from Lylat, the Mushroom Kingdom, and Dreamland.

Fox

Standard special: blaster
Unleashes a barrage of laser fire when pressed repeatedly. Zero knockback and about 1% of damage per shot. Great for racking up damage from a distance.

Side special: fox illusion
A quick horizontal dash that deals a little damage and has decent knockback. Can also be used for recovery.

Up special: fire fox
Fox’s third jump first charges up, and then shoots Fox in whatever direction the player chooses. The charge deals damage on contact, and the actual attack deals a decent amount of damage and has good knockback.

Down special: reflector
When activated, it will bounce any projectiles back at whoever dished them out in the first place. It can also hurt enemies if they are in close proximity to Fox.

While Fox is still one of the fastest characters in the game, his running speed has definitely been toned down a bit. I think that overall, Fox’s power has been nerfed since Melee to accommodate for his incredible speed. That isn’t to say that he’s not still a “top-tier” character, since I can definitely see him still being a crowd favorite. Up+A in the air is still a killer, as I was able to kock Samus off the top of the stage at around 80% (which for Brawl is pretty low). Smash moves are all pretty much the same as they were, with nice arcing movements and a good amount of knockback. His A+A+A infinite kick combo actually seems to go a bit faster this time, too.

Fox’s final smash, the Landmaster, is one of the most interesting. Basically a giant tank descends onto the field and can spin around or shoot to hit enemies. My favorite way of landing KOs with it was to launch up into the air and just fall on top of people. One thing that you have to watch out for, though, is that it can be easy to fall into a sense of security and accidentally fly off the edge. This won’t be a problem after people get the feel of the Landmaster down, but I can tell you that the first time I pulled off Fox’s final smash I accidentally drove off the edge and wasn’t able to get back on.

Bowser

Standard special: fire breath
Hold it down to continuously shoot out fire. This time it can be tilted up and down a bit!

Side special: flying slam
Basically this is just a second set of grabs, but these can also be performed in the air. Bowser grabs onto an opponent and launches into the air, then comes down with the other guy on the bottom for the most epic body slam ever. Ever.

Up special: whirling fortress
Bowser’s third jump. Basically he just spins around and goes more horizontally than vertically and can damage people along the way.

Down special: Bowser bomb
It’s butt stomp! Bowser falls fast and hits any enemies along the way. Has a good amount of damage and knockback.

Of all of the characters, I’d say that Bowser is the most improved. He’s a bit faster than he was before… perhaps much faster than he was before. Despite his newfound speed, though, he doesn’t seem much weaker and can usually land KOs at less than 80%. Essentially, his smash moves are all the same but with a bit less lag. Fire breath’s ability to tilt up and down makes it easier to keep enemies stuck within the flames, and Bowser bomb is just plain awesome. Since he goes up into the air, Bowser can now do suicide kills, which is awesome (I loved doing that with Kirby… muhahaha!)

While Bowser is a bit faster, he’s still among the slowest in the game. His lack of speed makes it much more difficult to get to the Smash Ball to hit it, but if he does he usually breaks it open with a single swipe of his mighty claw. His final smash, Giga Bowser, is really fun. For anybody that’s played Event 51 from Melee, they’ll understand why. Bowser becomes enormous and has incredible range and power on his attacks. Unfortunately, I found that it was one of the easier final smashes to avoid since just hanging on the edge of the stage will usually keep you clear of Giga Bowser’s attacks.

King Dedede

Standard special: inhale
Just like when you battle him in the old Kirby games, Dedede inhales and spits you out. It’s not that great.

Side special: waddle dee throw
Dedede throws a waddle dee or, at random, a waddle doo or a gordo. It’s an irritating move to spam.

Up special: super Dedede jump
It goes really, really high. Great for getting back on the stage. The second half is difficult to control, though.

Down special: jet hammer
A chargeable hammer attack. Dedede can move around and do a single jump while it’s charging. Great knockback and damage.

I’m going to be honest: Dedede is probably one of the coolest villains of all time. He’s particularly evil. He rarely has any particular goal in mind. He just doesn’t like Kirby, and it seems like his life goal is to simply inconvenience the denizens of Dreamland as much as possible. Luckily, this attitude transfers into Brawl pretty well, especially in the Subspace Emissary mode (which is all I’ll say about it! I’m trying to keep this as spoiler-free as possible…) Dedede is a powerhouse. Several of his A moves have his hammer spinning around at a good range, which can deal several consecutive hits. The nice thing about Dedede is that he has fast moves to rack up damage, and then slow, powerful moves to land KOs. Add to this that he’s heavy, so he can’t get knocked back easily, and that he has multiple jumps AND a huge third jump and you’ve got one of the hardest characters to kill. The waddle dee throw is really irritating when it’s used against you. Those suckers come out pretty fast and have just enough knockback to keep anybody at bay long enough to throw out another one. One irritating thing to me is that his up special has a portion where Dedede does a butt stomp after reaching the apex of his jump. What bothered me was that if you ever press a direction at any time after the apex, Dedede will instead fall vulnerably. I think it’s just going to take some practice figuring out when I’m supposed to stop trying to get more horizontal reach.

Dedede’s final smash, waddle dee army, has a bunch of waddle dees, waddle doos and gordos drop from the sky and fly out to the left and right, bashing enemies along the way. The effectiveness of this attack seems to vary, since I’ve seen instances where nobody has gotten hit more than once and where everybody on the stage is knocked off from the wave of baddies. It seems like the smaller the stage, the better, just like most final smashes.

That’s it for today! If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll address them in tomorrow’s installment!