Smash Advent Calendar - Day 14 - Meta Knight

Meta Knight is the subject of Day 14, and was a well received choice for the roster when initially revealed on during the E3 of 2006. Another child of the head of the game, Sakurai, Meta Knight has been a recurring character in the Kirby games for a long time. A mysterious figure, Meta Knight has both helped and fought Kirby at different times but ultimately became a popular character.

Meta Knight is a very fun character - to see in action and to play as. His animations are very well designed, each wave of his blade visibly slicing the air and hitting multiple times a second, giving a strong visual representation of the sort of the power and dominance Meta Knight exudes. His specials also look impressive, both Neutral+B and Side+B involve spinning at high speeds and the detailing of the effects of these moves again highlights them cutting through the air.

In terms of gameplay, Meta Knight is pretty much the undisputed champion of the tier list. He has found himself banned and unbanned at certain points over the years but his position at the top of the tier list with no negative matchups is never met with much argument. If Meta Knight returns, which I'm sure he will, then he needs some nerfs and he needs them hard and fast.

Some of his dominance stems from Meta Knight's intense recovery; though small and easily flung, Meta Knight will return with 5 jumps, a glide, and Up+B that gains some vertical height and turns into a glide, a Down+B that sees him vanish and reappear with a slash at an angle of the players choosing, a Side+B that travels a decent horizontal distance whilst surrounding himself with a hitbox and a Neutral+B that does much the same but at a different speed and angle. This all leads Meta Knight into having an unpredictable comeback factor, leaving enemies often optionless. Some of these options need to have their effectiveness reduced. Perhaps the attacking specials should have their distance reduced or active hitbox time reduced, or even have some added recovery slapped on to them if they miss to soley reduce their effectiveness as recovery moves without hindering his attack options.

His final smash was pretty mediocre but they're tournament banned anyway.

One big factor in Meta Knight's A-game involves his movement, power and options. He racks up damage with ease with quick and easy to deal blows. He can then smash and semi-spike enemies with attacks that deal high smash for relatively short start up times, including his glide attack that is pretty much instant and blasts enemies clean away. If the opponent does by chance survive, Meta Knight can also set up ridiculous walls of pain with his tight aerial control, to beyond levels of even Melee Jigglypuff. Should the enemy make it near the edge, Meta Knight luckily possesses the best edge guard game in Brawl, with down tilts that'll pop enemies away when they're an inch away from the edge and gimp them as they try to recover.

So how to combat this? Well as well as the aforementioned special changes, Meta Knight needs his smash factor toned down - he suits quick but should not be as powerful as he is fast. He should have to struggle to get the KO. I know that Meta Knight is like Kirby and Dedede in that he has always had multi-jumps, but perhaps reducing the number of jumps could even out his recovery, as the glide should be enough. It's either that or the glide has to be less controllable, so that it isn't so reliable.

All in all though, I think Meta Knight deserves his place. He has a place in Smash history now being the first banned member of any of the games' rosters. He is a very interesting character with a unique feel and personality to him, he just needs a massive slap with a nerf stick to make him go from "unfair" to "fun". I fear though, that he'd be met with some backlash should he return - a distrust from some of the community, of sorts. Still, we've seen it happen before, Fox went from first to mid in his Melee to Brawl transition so I'm sure we'll see Meta Knight return in clean, working order.