Fox McCloud (Super Smash Bros. Melee)

Brawl's Meta Knight Melee. But He's a fox. Oh by the way he has a Reflector, **but broken as heck**

NOTE: This page is discussing on how he was buffed too much in Super Smash Bros. Melee, not to mention that this page is only judging him on his moveset and playstyle, not him as a character.

Fox McCloud is a fictional anthropomorphic fox and the main character in the Star Fox series. He also appeared in the Super Smash Bros. Games, which he is fun to play as in, Except in Melee where he was buffed too much and became a broken and overpowered character.

Why He Sucked

He was unfairly buffed from a very good but fun fighter in Smash 64 to a broken, overpowered, and not fun fighter in Melee, being the best, and in a bad way.
His high falling speed makes him very easy to combo and chaingrab off of a single conversion from the opponent, and his light weight can result in extremely early horizontal KOs if the player's DI is poor.
Although he boasts long-distance recovery options, their linear paths makes it easier for certain characters like Marth to predict his recovery path and edge guard or gimp him.
Although Fox can rack up damage quickly, his combo game is rather unreliable, as many of his strings rely on tech-chasing and DI mixups rather than guaranteed hits.
Fox also lacks a good combo finisher in his kit, as his shine spike is extremely situational and cannot be properly used to end his combos.
Unlike other top tiers, such as Falco, Marth, Sheik, and Captain Falcon, who can net a kill off of starting a combo at mid percents, Fox's best option after a combo is to create an edgeguard situation (usually with his back aerial), which gives the opponent a chance to recover.
His high falling speed makes him very easy to combo and chaingrab off of a single conversion from the opponent, and his light weight can result in extremely early horizontal KOs if the player's DI is poor.
Although he boasts long-distance recovery options, their linear paths makes it easier for certain characters like Marth to predict his recovery path and edge guard or gimp him.
As such, Fox relies on getting a kill confirm at high percents to net KOs if he can't successfully edgeguard or Shine spike.
His blaster no longer causes any knockback and only deals very minimal damage.

Redeeming Qualities

He does have his weaknesses,like his rather short reach due to his lack of disjointed hitboxes outside of his Shine (one of the most versatile tools in the game, by the way) and high falling speed.
- As such, he gets outspaced by other top tiers, especially in aerial combat, though his fast movement can compensate for this.
He is emblematic of speed, as he’s very fast. Not only that, but he also boasts numerous approaching methods, giving him some of the best neutral game options among the entire cast and has access to effective, long-distance recovery options in Fire Fox and Fox Illusion. All of those give him excellent comboing and damaging abilities.
Overall, he can dominate foes with his quick movement and overpowering offense in all areas of his game.
He has KO options and setups at a wide variety of percentages.
His aerial game also includes several low-lag, effective and powerful moves to complement his ground game, especially when SHFFL'd.
He is incredibly effective at approaching and edgeguarding.
Fox has an extremely high technical learning curve, as most of his techniques require extremely nimble fingers and fast reaction time.
He was better in Flash than Melee.
Thankfully, he has been noticeably nerfed in Brawl and onwards, making him more balanced and fun to fight against.
Shinobu Satouchi was still great at voicing him.

Trivia

Fox is the only character to have completely lost his forward and back throws from Super Smash Bros. to Melee. Kirby and Jigglypuff both gained new forward throws in Melee, but their former forward throws were moved to be their up throws instead.
In Melee, Fox uses his tail as a support while firing his Blaster, but not in later games.

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