Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – Kazuya Impressions

At the end of June, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate got a new fighter in the form of Kazuya from the Tekken franchise. We got a lengthy look at how he played prior to his release with one of game director Masahiro Sakurai’s usual character breakdowns, revealing that Kazuya wasn’t going to be just a simple addition to the game’s roster. This first look was intimidating to say the least, and had me a bit nervous to get my hands on him myself. I’ve spent the past week playing with Kazuya and can say that he’s a powerful force to be reckoned with, but requires a lot of work in order to be properly utilized.

Following in the footsteps of fellow fighting game reps Ken, Ryu, and Terry, Kazuya’s move set is seemingly lifted straight from Tekken, right down to the command inputs. It’s been translated into Smash pretty well, but there’s a huge learning curve to work through. You see, Kazuya has the most directional moves out of any character in the game. There’s the standard up, down, left, and right attacks, as well as diagonal moves, tilt attacks in each direction, and others that require specific inputs in order to be performed. It’s a lot to learn and even more to keep track of, and if you want to get the most out of Kazuya, you’ll have to learn every single one of them. He’s not your usual pick-up-and-play character.

Even with that being the case, once you know what each of his moves are and how to perform them, you’ve already won half of the battle. Because the key to success with Kazuya is stringing his moves together to create combos, the next challenge to successfully using him is seeing what moves you can reliably make combos out of. No matter how basic the combos are, once you’ve crossed that hurdle you’ll be able to enjoy the power he holds. It took me a bit of time to find combos that I can reliably get off, and even now I still struggle at times to land them, but I’m liking his character quite a bit.

Kazuya also has a unique feature called Rage. After reaching 100% damage or 25% of his maximum health in Stamina battles, he enters a state where all of his moves are a bit stronger than normal. This state lasts until Kazuya either takes too much damage, is knocked out, performs a Rage Drive attack, or misses too many Rage Drives. Rage Drive is a stronger version of his Heaven’s Door down special move, and is capable of doing serious damage to any target. This state is when Kazuya is both at his most dangerous, and also his most vulnerable. Since his moves are powered up, he’s able to eliminate opponents even faster than normal. But because he’s more likely to be on the offensive like this, it puts him at risk of getting damaged too much and knocked out of this state, or even eliminated entirely. Whenever Rage was activated, I was more cautious of how I approached my opponents, but always tried to be as aggressive as possible to make the most of the extra damage that it gave me.

As a heavyweight powerhouse that can quickly rack up damage with his moves, Kazuya can send opponents to their doom very easily. Most of the heavyweight characters in the game are slow moving, but Kazuya is able to get around at a good pace that allows him to keep the pressure on foes. His surprising amount of speed combined with his immense strength allows him to control of ground battles and knock out opponents while barely receiving any damage himself. This is especially true when it comes to lightweight characters such as Fox or Toon Link who will have a difficult time going up against Kazuya because of his raw strength. He also has Super Armor for some of his Smash attacks, allowing him to finish his moves even while being hit. All these different aspects of Kazuya make him a dominating presence in a match, but that’s largely where his advantages end and his more glaring disadvantages reveal themselves.

One of which is that lighter and faster characters can easily run laps around him. Since Kazuya can’t keep up with them, they can adopt a hit-and-run strategy to get his damage up as high as possible before attempting a killing blow. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if he had much in the way of ranged attacks, but he doesn’t. Aside from his neutral special (a laser beam which shoots across a large portion of the stage), his side special (a short range dash attack), and his recovery move that doubles as an attack, every single one of Kazuya’s moves require him to be right in the opponent’s face. Characters like Pikachu or Sonic would be difficult opponents since they can attack from a distance, and also quickly get in and out of close quarters, whereas other fighters like Lucina or Inkling could get him within their attack range and stay outside of his. Having mostly close quarters attacks also means that it’s very easy to dodge his moves and own the battlefield. These cons to his play style can cause him to lose control of a battle fairly easily and struggle to regain it if he can’t bring the fight back into the close quarters that he excels in.

Those cons combined with his high barrier to entry make Kazuya a difficult character to recommend for basic casual play. He’s a character that demands patience to learn and truly understand how he works before being used in actual fights. For the more dedicated, hardcore players that like to take the time to study their characters and work out different combos for them, Kazuya will be right up their alley. Overall, he’s yet another great addition to the game and is worth putting in the effort to truly enjoy playing as him.