Even as you approach 80 (!) Fighters, it’s impressive how Super Smash Bros. Ultimate can find new ideas to liven up your roster. Nintendo’s amazing group of characters certainly helps, but even in that context, Min Min, the last character to launch Ultimate’s second Fighter Pass DLC, is a strange choice. He’s not a fan favorite or wild third-party guest star, but he quickly sets himself apart by forcing him to rethink his usual habits and be a little more methodical in the way he approaches Smash Bros. He’s a specialized character with a curve steep learning. and clear weaknesses, but if you’re willing to stick with it, it’s one of the best examples of combining a character’s source material with her kit that Smash has seen in a long time.
Min Min hails from Arms, the Switch’s slow-paced arena fighter who makes you lead your shots as you land long-range punches with extendable arms. Her playing style in Smash matches that beat, and I had to reconnect my Smash Bros. brain a bit when I started playing like her. Rather than relying on the standard combination of regular A attacks and B’s special moves, the A and B buttons are assigned to Min Min’s right and left arms, respectively, and the two sets of moves mirror each other. She only has two “special moves”, in the traditional sense: by holding down an attack button, Min Min performs a mid-range swing with her respective arm, and her B-side performs a crushing attack with her left arm, just like that she A side attack would be.
The great reach of her arms makes her great in a range that most fighters are not, and can keep most melee fighters at bay; This is especially fun to do with your launch, as it can grab enemies from the same distance, or even from the air when they try to jump back onto the stage. Even better, its independently controlled arms mean it can launch two Smash Attacks in a row and in different directions, allowing it to cover a great distance around it. It’s a different style from Smash Bros. than almost any other fighter, and while it was exciting to play a little differently than I had before, it takes a while to get used to.
The original arms also allow you to customize your extendable cuffs, and that is also represented here. Min Min’s down-B move switches his left arm between three different options, and micromanaging these weapons adds a great strategic layer to the character. The circular Ramram has a winding arch and is excellent for protecting character ledges that cannot easily jump onto the stage, but do not do much damage; Ball-shaped megawatt makes all of your B attacks hit much harder (his neutral airstrike goes from a decent defensive option to a powerful finisher, for example) and can ensure a kill at lower percentages, but is slow and lacking scope; Dragon Arm has the best range, but it is not as powerful as the Megawatt or as versatile as the Ramram. Keeping track of which arm I had equipped tripped me up at first, judging when to rack up damage with the Ramram, when to surprise people with the Dragon, and when to go kill with the Megawatt reminded me of using Pokemon Trainer, and it’s an excellent way to give you options and prevent you from sending the same few remote attacks.
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Playing well with Min Min means reading both your opponent’s distance and actions a little more early than usual, just like in Arms. Its slow, mid-range attacks sometimes feel difficult to handle as they can be closed easily. You can’t mix with her either, since touching A or B makes her use her legs to push people a short distance, which is not her best option. And, like Little Mac, she wants to be at the level of her opponent as often as possible: keep opponents out, surprise them with consecutive attacks, and trade weapons to keep them guessing. But because of Ultimate’s free vertical movement, most of the other characters will find it quite easy to stay out of their ideal range, and if you lose an attack they will likely leave you open to counterattacks. Min Min has an especially difficult time against zoners like Palutena, who can keep her out of her comfortable range for most of the game without having to get close. And while her grip recovery has a good range when hit, otherwise she doesn’t have much of a chance to get back on stage, and she suffers a bit in some of the weirder scenarios like Hanenbow.
Luckily, Min Min has some fun tricks to fix his lack of vertical finesse, like an aerial diving kick that can surprise opponents who used to only look at his sides, and his Up-B allows you to quickly close the distance when using on the floor . This may surprise people off guard, but the novelty of these tricks wears off once you start learning how to play against it, and I hope it only gets harder to land as more people inevitably figure out how to play around their range. . But I don’t see her ability to cast two Smash Attacks in a row lose value any time soon; Every time my opponent dodged my first Smash Attack, only to be reminded by the force that she had a second arm to score a gratifying death, all her rough edges seemed to disappear.
The Challenger Pack 6 DLC also comes with the Spring Stadium stage and 18 new Arms music tracks. Spring Stadium is a flat, somewhat bland stage, similar to Smashville. However, it does have a couple of cool tricks; Some jump pads activate at different times, allowing you to get away from your opponent a bit if he is suffocating you. A couple of them are also off the main stage, making it easy for characters to recover. There are also a couple of small ceilings that can prevent you from being hit vertically, which feels like a thematically appropriate blessing if you play as Min Min. Spring Stadium can get quite chaotic with more than two characters, but unlike Min Min, it feels pretty much in line with the most basic stages of Ultimate.
