Smash Advent Calendar - Day 19 - Rosalina & Luma

Day 19 is Rosalina & Luma, who announced just yesterday! This will be a quick article as the character hasn't been shown off much yet, so these are just some initial impressions.

First of all, the animations for the characters look great. They move fluidly and cleanly, so look great from a technical standpoint. Rosaline moves with grace as you tend to expect from the character, and the Luma moves just like it does in the game, with cute twirls and spins. The colours and effects that jet from the characters look great and add some interesting visuals to the fight that suit the characters well, looking very star-like and suitably cartoony.

The gimmick for these characters is an expansion of the Ice Climbers - both Rosalina and the Luma that accompanies her attack together. The difference here though appears to be that the Luma can be thrown and placed at different points, similar to characters like "Fortune" in Skullgirls, who could have her head attack with certain button pressed when left around on the stage. From what the trailer shows, this ability looks insane, with some devastating looking combos utilising attacks that pass an opponent from Rosalina over to the Luma across the stage who then juggles the opponent upwards. It is unclear how this would control, but this already seems to be a great looking mechanic.

This promotional image is too cool.

It does seem like Rosalina suffers some negatives for her amazing gimmick though. It's easy to see that the character is light, possibly even lighter than similarly built characters like Peach, so will be knocked away from the stage with relative ease. Along with this, her power doesn't look impressive, but that's good - power would off balance her unique combo potential and spacing ability and make her completely overpowered, so it is nice to see some real thought behind her.

One thing that the trailer is unclear about is the colour of the Lumas. Do some attacks change the colour of the Luma automatically? Or does Rosalina have the ability to call out different coloured Lumas which possess different attributes? For all we know, they very well might just be the palette swaps for the character, but this seems unlikely. Either way, it'll be exciting to find out more. as more is revealed in the coming months.

So what do you think of this newcomer? Welcome addition? Or do you hate Rosalina with the power of a thousand burning suns? I welcome her myself, but let me know what you think below, or visit the facebook page.