LogFAQs > #975089866

I Coveted That Wind
Link (Soul Calibur II): Easily the greatest console exclusive bonus of all time, nothing else even comes close. I love how he's not just a regular fighter, either, they actually went out of their way to integrate his items naturally into his moveset, and made all of his alternate weapons use weapons from his series. He feels so much more complete as a guest character than Heihachi (who's made by the same company as Soul Calibur, and so feels like less of a "guest" than Link) and Spawn (who has nothing to do with Xbox, or video games in general, and the spot obviously should have been Master Chief or the Arbiter). They even get him right in the opening cinematic, where he raises his sword, not that there's much to get. I love how the Soul Calibur Wiki immediately tries to identify which version of Link this is, settling on describing him as "timeline-confused." I mean, yes, Link is terrible in-game, of course, but he's good enough to beat my friends James and Travis in tenth grade by spamming arrows and bombs until they ragequit, and that's all I care about. Oh, did Link not show up in the HD rerelease, but Heihachi and Spawn did? That's hilarious. I also think that Link is by far the best guest character the series ever had. It's had Link, Heihachi, Spawn, Lloyd Irving, Darth Vader, Yoda, the Apprentice, Kratos, Ezio, Geralt, and 2B, and Haohmaru, and of those, Link is by far the best. I mean, the Star Wars characters are the most famous, but they're SO completely discordant with the rest of the game that I just can't accept them, and the Apprentice being in instead of like Obi-Wan or Luke (and Yoda, even, whose only gimmick is being basically unplayable because he's too short) just renders them bad. 2B is another 'doesn't even attempt to fit in' character, though she's more fun mechanically. Ezio is the only character who actually fits the series' aesthetic and tone, though Geralt comes close, but that's the thing, Link is just SUCH a bigger name than any of these other losers (besides Vader and Yoda) that it's way more exciting and fun for him to be here. I don't know who else could be as exciting as Link, probably like Kid Goku or something, but as it is, Link might actually be the greatest guest character of all time. Also, why the hell does Smash have Kazuya instead of Jin or Heihachi? They're way more beloved and famous than Kazuya, he's easily the least 'main character' of the three.
Zelda/Sheik in Smash: It's amazing how importantly timed OoT was for Smash. Pre-OoT, Link was just a kid, it's only in OoT-on that he's an older teenager. If OoT didn't exist, or if Smash was made before OoT, I'm confident that the default version of Link in our minds would be a twelve-year-old. And while Smash was always going to eventually include Zelda herself, the fact that it was Zelda and Sheik, and Zelda's entire moveset of magical spells, were purely a result of OoT and MM still being the most recent big Zelda games when Melee was made. And then when OoT was no longer the most recent big Zelda game, and Sakurai updated her to TP, he had to update Sheik, a character who didn't even exist in that game. And does this make Zelda the first character in Smash to have stances? Does this count as a stance character? And why did the series never bring Sheik back, this is one of the most remembered aspects of Zelda as a character, and it happened one time in 1998. I mean, am I alone in thinking that each Zelda character ought to just use the design from one game, right? Like, Link should be whatever the most recent game is (BotW in this case), Zelda and Ganondorf can be whatever, and Sheik should be OoT, because OoT is a big famous game that changed everything, and also she was only in a single game.