...I don't think Brawl can be classified as a fighting game. Note that this doesn't mean that Brawl is a "fun" game - it is. But when someone claims that it's a competitive fighting game, they're completely, totally wrong.
Here's why: lack of character balance, signature advanced/competitive techniques from previous games have been either removed or dumbed down, combos are nearly impossible, and the game doesn't really reward true skill.
As far as character balancing goes, there are certain characters which are almost guaranteed to win against other characters. For example, Meta Knight vs. Captain Falcon: Meta Knight has extremely high priority, numerous air recovery moves, hits fast, and has several easily spammable moves. Captain Falcon, on the other hand, suffered from the physics change in Brawl and has very slow moves with lots of startup and finishing lag, terribly low priority, and a lack of combo-starting moves. Even if the Captain Falcon player is very skilled, and the Meta Knight player knows what he's doing or has some level of skill, it's almost guaranteed that the MK will win. In Melee or Smash 64, it was possible for two players of equal skill levels to play characters that had opposite positions on tier lists and still fight a very even match. There's no questioning that several characters in Brawl are definitely broken - Meta Knight, Snake - or nearly unplayable for competitive play - Link, Ganondorf, Captain Falcon. In Melee, however, there isn't really a broken, win-all character. Sure, Marth and Fox are at the top of the tier list, but a highly skilled Falcon or Link can still go toe-to-toe with a highly skilled Marth. Isai mained Falcon in Melee, and Ken mained Marth. The two were considered to be the best competitive Melee players, and they were evenly matched, even if Ken was a little better. The point is that skill isn't what determines most matches in Brawl - the character you choose does. For once in Smash games, the Tier list actually has a more prominent role in deciding which character to main.
Brawl also lacks the advanced techniques prominent in SSB64 and most importantly Melee. Wavedashing, moonwalking, l-canceling (Brawl autocancels for you), dashdancing (dashdancing can still be performed in Brawl, but there are less frames to do it in and tripping basically kills the point of doing it), hitstun (lack of hitstun = lack of combos in Brawl, unless you consider chaingrabbing to be comboing), and numerous other character-specific advanced techniques are stripped from Brawl. Why does this matter? Well, hitstun allowed for true comboing in Melee, and wavedashing, l-canceling/SHFFL, and moonwalking constituted skill in Melee. It took very fast reflexes to be able to pull off perfect combos while using these techniques, and thus requires a lot of skill from the player. In Brawl, the game takes out all of these features, mostly due to the new physics change, and the game cancels some of your aerials (but usually not f-airs) for you. And before you say, "But those advanced moves were just physics glitches/exploits that made the game uneven and unfair!" keep in mind that other fighting games also have advanced techniques and exploits that are featured in the competitive scene of the game. Besides, I'd consider a true "glitch" to be Snakedashing in Brawl (using Snake's dash attack, and immediately after it connects with another character, canceling it into upsmash and sliding across the platform), or Meta Knight's infinity cloak, not wavedashing and moonwalking.
I don't think Brawl really rewards people attempting to play with true skill. Classic example: you can have a very good Fox player going against an Ike, but since Ike is known for his hard-hitting Smash moves, you're going to see some epic C-stick spamming. Thus, the game as I mentioned before is much more character-oriented, and you're pretty much determined the outcome of a match based on which character you choose to play as. If you're in a tournament (do they even do Brawl tournaments anymore?) and you're a really good Falco player, but someone else chooses Meta Knight and is also really good, you'd be really lucky to win.
Again, just because Brawl can't be classified as a fighting game doesn't mean it's not fun. It is. But when the game lacks all of the competitive techniques and lacks the character balance from its predecessors, its competitive gameplay is severely broken. Melee and Smash64 can be considered true competitive Smash games - not Brawl.
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