LogFAQs > #973893376

Solar_Crimson posted...

* The gameplay is fun.
* The roster of established and popular characters is amazing.
* It's relatively simple to pick up and play.
* It offers the ability for up to 4-8 players at once.
* In combination with the above, it's easier to get friends and family playing together due to it's low barrier of entry.

MorganTJ posted...

It's a fighter where you don't need to memorize combos or inputs, so the barrier of entry is low but it still retains a high skill ceiling.

All of this, especially that last point. It's so easy to pick up and play, and once you learn the basic controls and mechanics, you can play pretty much any character in the game. No need to waste hours flipping in and out of the move list in training mode to learn a character only for most of that knowledge to not carry over to the rest of the cast. There's still a high skill ceiling, but that skill ceiling is mostly based in the mechanics of the game itself (movement, spacing, off-stage play, match-up knowledge of the very large roster) and not simply in who can input a long string of buttons and quarter-circles the fastest.

The only other fighting game franchise that I enjoy nearly as much as Smash Bros is Soul Calibur, which also has more simplified inputs and more focus on movement than most fighting games.