The Next Smash Bros. Should Do More With Echo Fighters

gamerant.com:

With no future Fighters Passes planned for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, fans can look toward the next entry in Nintendo's hit series for ways it could improve. Given its ambitious scope, the title after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will need to pull out all the stops to improve upon what it offered.

One of the improvements Ultimate made was to create a new classification dubbed «Echo Fighters» to help refine its roster and account for fighters who were similar to others. It was a decision that allowed Nintendo to introduce new Smash Bros. fighters without needing to go the extra mile of fully rebalancing the game and its other characters. The next entry needs more Echo Fighters to capitalize on this category and flesh out the roster by including a range of characters who deserve their own invites.

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Since Ultimate made the ambitious decision to include all previous fighters in its roster, by the final count it had 89 playable characters (including Echoes), which is almost double Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Condensing the roster to make it more user-friendly likely motivated the creation of Echo Fighters, especially when they are typically seen as near clones of their original characters.

Currently, there are only seven Echo Fighters on the roster, and more similar examples such as Lucina for Marth or Princess Daisy for Peach set a standard that not all Echo Fighters need to reinvent their functionality in order to feature in the game. Some do bring new mechanics or moves with them, such as Ryu and Ken or Simon and Richter Belmont, but this was never been to an extent where they would be better considered a entirely different character,