It's almost February and we should be getting Corrin and Bayonetta soon! Unfortunately, one of these characters are still receiving large amounts of controversy within the fanbase. Hint: it's not the one who is the sexy witch with guns on her hands and feet.

Regardless on where you stand with Corrin's inclusion in Sm4sh as DLC, there are several people that have issues with him. Go into any corner of the internet and you can see that there is still a large amount of discontent with his addition. Here, I will attempt to give an unbiased explanation on why Corrin is considered to be a bad addition to Sm4sh.

The first reason is the biggest reason why his inclusion is terrible to the point where it bleeds into all other reasons; there is too much representation for the Fire Emblem franchise in Sm4sh. In previous titles of the franchise, Fire Emblem had moderate representation within the Smash Bros. franchise. It all began with Marth and Roy in Melee, who turned out to be huge hits as characters among the growing fanbase. Then in Brawl, Roy was cut due to time constraints but Ike was added in the game. Then Sm4sh comes around and we get Robin and Lucina, doubling the Fire Emblem representation in the series. Already, there is a bit of an issue here; there's four characters in Fire Emblem in Sm4sh, which outnumbered a good amount of other represented franchises in terms of playable characters. It was reaching towards the peak of other franchises that defined generations of gaming.

But, most of the hate for the doubled representation moved away. Let's go into DLC season. In the middle of the season, one of the DLC characters announced in Wave 2 was none other than Roy, who was absent from the series since Melee. Despite bringing Fire Emblem's main character representation to five characters, Roy's inclusion was actually met with adoration because people actually liked Roy as a character in Melee (despite being a clone of Marth). But at this point, Fire Emblem's character representation was tied with Legend of Zelda's character representation, one of the biggest gaming franchises Nintendo owns. The reason why the issue isn't as big as it would have been was because Roy was a Melee veteran that had a huge fan following.

Now we advance a few more months into the year. Cloud was announced as a DLC character and there was another announcement that stated the very last Sm4sh broadcast. People were excited as to what the final 2 DLC characters can be! But, nobody knew who the DLC characters would be. Then the final Sm4sh broadcast opened up and we saw a Fire Emblem Fates cutscene, which led to Corrin becoming a Sm4sh character. Corrin is not only the 2nd Fire Emblem character to be DLC, but he/she is also the sixth Fire Emblem character in the game. This meant that Fire Emblem is now tied with Pokemon with being the 2nd most represented franchise in Sm4sh character-wise.

To stress why this is such a bad addition, Corrin tipped the scales of balance towards which franchises should be represented in Sm4sh. Having Lucina in addition to Robin as new Fire Emblem characters was pushing on the careful scale of roster representation while Roy miraculously didn't tip it over. But Corrin is from a then-Japan only game. He didn't have any of the graces that Roy or Robin had. As a result, many fans of the game (including some Fire Emblem fans) felt that Fire Emblem is now definitely oversaturated with character representation.

Sakurai previously stated in his Famitsu column that one of the DLC character spots would have been reserved for a character whose game was recently released or would be released in the near future (games debuting in 2015-2016). Fire Emblem Fates happened to be one of those titles, but Sakurai was very hesitant with adding Corrin in as DLC. The only reason why Corrin made it in for that spot was because the development board convinced Sakurai that Corrin would have a unique moveset. Corrin does have a unique moveset, but the problem is that there are other characters that could be added in this particular spot that fit the criteria that also had high potential for unique movesets themselves, such as the Inkling (Splatoon) and any playable character from Xenoblade Chronicles X.

Finally, there is the issue that Corrin is the only new first-party DLC character. While Ryu, Cloud Strife and Bayonetta are undoubtedly going to be very cool DLC newcomers, they all share the trait of being third-party DLC newcomers. For this reason, Nintendo fans complain about Corrin because this along with the fact that Fire Emblem is now in 2nd place when it comes to character representation are circumstantial evidence that would show that Nintendo cares more about the Fire Emblem franchise over other franchises.

To conclude, Corrin would have been a good addition to any other Smash Bros. game after Sm4sh since the developers would be able to work him into the game. But the fact that it is Sm4sh as one of the final DLC characters, Corrin has a bunch of hatred going after him. He completely destroyed the scales of balance when it comes to character representation in Sm4sh, Sakurai had second thoughts upon his addition (meaning that he had other choices in mind when it came to character additions) but his board convinced him otherwise and the fact that he is the lone new Nintendo DLC character caused him to be a scapegoat of hatred among the Nintendo fanbase. Again, Corrin would have been a great addition in any other Smash game except for Sm4sh.

5008057 Let's see now...I honestly don't understand why people complain about 'character representation'. I don't see people complaining about Pokemon or Mario having too much character representation because they have the most characters in their representation. Why are people complaining about Fire Emblems representation when there are two other prime examples of 'too much' rep. I know Pokemon has a shit ton of potential but when the candidates need two items specifically to them I don't entirely see why it's a problem.

If they don't like him, don't buy him. Sakurai may have second thoughts but when you look at how Corrin is, if I was in his shoes I would be like 'This is a unique and good character', not have doubts about representation. I think Corrin is a good candidate because, just like with Fire Emblem Awakening, it's going to be a big fire emblem game coming out in the US, and there's two of the tactical bastards. I haven't played all the way through of Xenoblade Chronicles X(or played the first) and I can understand that I would like characters from those games but who cares. It just means an even bigger roster of choices for the next Smash. If you can tell I like that Corrin is coming out but this is just my personal opinion, that if a fan base puts a stand against one of the party's representation, with an actual reason to have a newer character in said roster, and not even glance at how huge two of the other representation of characters are(I.E. Mario and Pokemon) so it makes about as much sense as saying 'We don't like over representation now let me go over here and get dog piled by over representation'. I know that most of the mario characters and half of the pokemon rep's are from previous games but come on. (Oh and sorry if this seems like I'm banging on the same door this entire time)

5008153

The reason why people would argue about Fire Emblem specifically is that, unlike Mario and Pokemon, the franchise never defined a genre of gaming or has been considered a flagship franchise.

5008563 Even though it's basically Nintendo's 'chess' like game or something along those lines. And how come it needs to 'define' a genre or be a 'flagship franchise'? I think just being one of the well known 'table top video game' gives it enough credit.

5008594

There's a distinct difference of prestige between being a well-known video game franchise and being a genre definer/flagship franchise. On an objective scale, Fire Emblem is a prestigious franchise with tons of age underneath it. However, it is not as prestigious as Mario or Pokemon are. That's the issue that a good number of people have with Fire Emblem's representation in Sm4sh.

5008613 Then there's the fact that the only reason those two have prestige above Fire Emblem is because when Fire Emblem was coming out and making it's strides it was a 'Japan Only' type of game until it made the long jump to America and then those strides turned to light speed jumps.

5008866

Fire Emblem's popularity in the west is still niche though. Awakening stands as the only game in the series to hit the 1mil mark, which means that while it saved the Fire Emblem franchise from being shelved, it shows that the franchise still has much more to go before it can reach general prestige to Nintendo's more prominent franchises, which hit that milestone with their first and/or second titles.

5009154 Which I have a counter that 'people aren't good at tactics games' which is true. And also it's because they don't instantly have the 'make new game stamp' placed on them every two seconds like Mario, Pokemon etc for whatever game Nintendo has.

5009182

Xenoblade Chronicles is a difficult game to pick up, the first game in its franchise and was given every disadvantage marketing and distribution-wise. It still gained over 1mil lifetime sales.

5009254 Well I will put that 1mil amount to my almighty favorite Let's Player Chuggaconroy who literally did a hundred percent run of the thing. He does have almost 1mil subscribers so there's that. But it's still a great game so I wouldn't be surprised if that was before Chugga did his work.

5009320

Chugga had some influence within it, but the game was still selling surprisingly well despite the poor distribution avenues and the fact that it is the first entry of a franchise within a genre that was not popular in the west. Regardless, I'm still glad that both franchises are doing well and is a sign that Nintendo is focusing on their more niche franchises.

5009372 yeah that is good. No need to see Mario and Zelda repeated.

5008057

Honestly I would love to see someone from the Senran Kagura Games... they have a lot of Characters, that could work there (like one fights with shuriken entangled into her long hair, or another with Fans)

But personally I would go with Homura

since fighting with 6 is a lot of fun (and unique conpared to the other Sword User)

and her Final Smash could be Crimson Homura

5008057

while pretending to ignore the " 'nother swordsman" problem for now, the over-rapresentation of a serie that struggles out of japanis what people use as ground for being unconvinced of the characther; while what have we seen is a new, uniqe combat stile, the one of the other fire emblem characthers (or at the very least, the ones in the base game) is not, as the moveset are pretty much identical; the charather weight-to-power ratio changes, but that's hardly do, and due Wolf (and according to rumors, the original version of Lucas as well) being dropped for this very reason, just having that many similarity in the rooster is seen as a waste

in a few words, the problem isn't the newcomer, but in what group it arrived

5011496

Exactly. Had Corrin been from a different franchise altogether, then he wouldn't get even a tenth of the hatred that he is still receiving today. But the Fire Emblem banner he is under is why people have their gripes against him. Had he been a newcomer for Smash 5, then people would actually be more appreciative of him since the development team would be able to make Fire Emblem's overall representation more manageable (either by boosting the character representation among other lower-represented franchises so that Fire Emblem's representation wouldn't look overwhelming to the fans or maybe even cutting away some Fire Emblem characters that would just be there).

5008057

To stress why this is such a bad addition, Corrin tipped the scales

tipped the scales

tipped the scales

I see what you did there.

5011751

I had to put that there.

5011765 Clearly your clock is broken. It isn't time to tip the scales, nor changing fate, but rather, Shulk time.