History YMMV / SuperSmashBrosBrawl

* [[Awesome/VideoGameLevels Best Level Ever]]: For the competitive community, [[VideoGame/AnimalCrossing Smashville]] is seen in this light. It's widely regarded as the most balanced of any tourney-legal stage, even more so than Battlefield.

* UncannyValley: The darker colors and shades used for the characters sometimes make them look rather strange, particularly in regards to characters like Toon Link, where the detail in his character model contrasts the cartoony nature. This is not helped by the fact characters don't emote as well as they should (Dedede and the aforementioned Toon Link had only a few faces with little variety). Later games in the series would increase the color vibrancy and [[ArtEvolution updated]] character expressions to be more varied.

* MagnificentBastard: [[Franchise/{{Kirby}} King Dedede]], the resident arch-frenemy of Kirby, turns out to be the single most effective operator in a cast already full of Nintendo heroes and villains alike. Already aware of [[BigBad Tabuu]]'s master plan, Dedede goes about gathering as many trophies as he can through a mixture of brute force and trickery, ambushing Luigi and then using his trophy form to tempt the greedy Wario long enough for Dedede to abscond with everyone Wario has captured. Even after he himself is turned into a trophy, Dedede's ChekhovsGun--in the form of a golden badge in his likeness that auto-resurrects anyone turned into a trophy--saves the day after the entire cast has been taken down by Tabuu, which allows Dedede to rally the remaining heroes and villains alike to face the true threat. As AffablyEvil as he is in canon and twice the manipulator, Dedede's plan ends up totally undoing Tabuu and everything he planned for.

* EndingFatigue: The final level, The Great Maze, features battles with every playable character you encounter up until that point, along with every boss character, all contained within an elaborate (but well-designed) maze. You cannot fight the FinalBoss without going through every room and completing every fight -- to put it into perspective, the level takes a few hours to complete in a game where stages are usually ten minutes long, give or take cutscenes. The level is so long that there are ''{{Save Point}}s'' in multiple locations, and completing it all in a single sitting is a Herculean task. Oh, and good luck with OneHundredPercentCompletion. On the bright side, once you've completed the level once, you can just go straight to Tabuu, subverting the trope.

* DisappointingLastLevel: Or rather, Disappointing Last Event. Many fans consider ''Brawl'' Event 41, "The Final, FINAL Battle", to be a lazier, inferior version of ''Melee'' Event 51, "The Showdown". It pits the player against an overpowered giant Mario, Snake, and Sonic (in place of Giga Bowser, Ganondorf, and Mewtwo respectively). The battle is ridiculously [[AntiClimaxBoss anti-climactic]], as it's possible to trick Giant Mario into falling off the ledge in just a few seconds.

* AccidentalInnuendo:
** Maybe. YMMV as to how "accidental" it is.
-->'''Snake:''' Mei Ling, [[ShedArmorGainSpeed Samus took her clothes off!]]
** Meta Knight's down taunt in Japanese is a standard battle cry[[labelnote:*]]''"Koi!"''/"来いっ!" literally, "Come!"[[/labelnote]]. Translated ''directly into English'', however...

* AccidentalInnuendo: Maybe. YMMV as to how "accidental" it is.

* ThatOneBoss: The battle with Master Hand and Crazy Hand at the end of Classic Mode. Master Hand himself in Classic Mode is the most difficult boss in the game after Duon because of the aforementioned attacks, and his high HP in Classic Mode ensures players will have to deal with them. Throw in Crazy Hand to distract you from being able to preemptively prepare for these moves while giving you another full-powered boss to fight, and welp, good luck taking them down on Intense difficulty without any stock loss (Crazy Hand alone himself, however, is a complete pushover, so if you can take down Master Hand, you'll have the fight won).

** Tripping. Whenever a player makes a dash input, they may, by [[RandomNumberGenerator completely random chance]], trip over and leave themselves vulnerable. While a disruptive annoyance in general, this commonly causes players to trip and get hit by attacks they would have avoided otherwise to no fault of their own. This only applies to ''random'' tripping, not ''forced'' tripping caused by attacks, as the latter is triggered by players and can be part of legitimate strategies. There was much rejoicing when random tripping was removed from the fourth game.

[[/folder]]

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: Mario moving his Mario Tornado move from down-special to down-air and receiving [[VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine F.L.U.D.D.]] as a new down-special was heavily criticized by many fans. While many competitive Mario mains like it for giving Mario further edgeguard options, other fans dislike it for being much more situational than the Tornado (it's effectively useless on stages without regular ledges, which is a lot of them), making Mario lose a recovery option, and giving him a move based on a one-time gimmick in canon.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: The remix of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4'''s Love Theme introduced in this game sounds remarkably similar to the main theme of the ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' films.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: The remix of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4'''s Love Theme introduced in this game sounds remarkably similar to the main theme of ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' films.

** The Great Maze. It is by far the biggest level in the game, so much so instead of being a straightforward level like the rest it is instead an open-ended labyinth. On paper it sounds interesting to have the final area be a mini-metroidvania, but in practice it is extremely tedious as in order to complete the level and get to the final boss, you need to explore every nook and cranny of the Great Maze and [[BossRush refight every single boss]] as well as fight ''all'' the playable characters sans four (Sonic, Jigglypuff, Toon Link, and Wolf). The Great Maze being made up of recycled levels further adds to the grind and can make it hard to remember where to go. The worst part is though how HUGE the Great Maze is, as mentioned before it is unquestionably the [[MarathonLevel longest level in the game]] and takes up ''at least a fourth of the entire Subspace Emissary's length''. It is often regarded as the worst part of the Subspace Emissary and many a fan refuses to replay the mode because of the Great Maze alone.

* ThatOneLevel: The Subspace Bomb Factory; it's the longest level in the game besides The Great Maze, is chock full of dangerous encounters, has the most grueling battle sequence in the game that finishes with the only time you'll fight two [[DemonicSpider Armanks]] at once, features a deadly auto-scrolling section that will get your characters killed easily should they fall the least bit behind, and to cap it all off it has a boss battle at the end of it. Fortunately, the boss, Meta Ridley, is [[BreatherBoss very easy to defeat]] as previously covered, though trying to turn him into a trophy is another story.

*** In the fourth stage, you have a 50/50 shot of fighting on New Pork City, a massive level in which characters can survive to absurd damage percents. There is an additional chance of it being a multi-man battle that can easily slog on for multiple minutes, given the rather passive AI that will often wander around the stage aimlessly. What makes this aggravating is that you can only fight Crazy Hand at the end of the mode by reaching Master Hand within nine minutes, so getting New Pork City instead of the Fire Emblem stage is essentially a run ender.

*** New Pork City is an absolutely massive stage with a ton of empty space that's difficult to move in, and opponents will often live to ludicrous percents. While it's a stage most people dislike playing on even casually, it's at its worst in single-player modes, as **you must** play on this stage whenenver you fight Ness or Lucas. This is especially bad in Classic mode, as you have a 50/50 shot of fighting the PK kids on the fourth stage and thus having to play on New Pork half the time, with a chance for it to be a multi-man battle on New Pork that can easily slog on for multiple minutes (especially with the rather passive AI they have that will often have them wandering around the stage aimlessly), while if you want Crazy Hand to show up at the end you have to get to Master Hand within nine minutes, which this stage can easily cost you a big chunk of that time. You have ten other stages you have to clear on Classic, so for all but the most skilled players, having one stage eat up a fifth or more of that time limit is pretty much a run ender for those wanting to fight Master and Crazy Hand together, especially on Intense difficulty.

*** Whenever you have to fight Ness or Lucas, as explained prior as it forces you to fight on New Pork. Especially so if it's a multi-man battle against Ness or Lucas, as winning that fight in a remotely reasonable time is off the table without some really good item luck.

* DisappointingLastLevel: Or rather, Disappointing Last Event. Many fans consider ''Brawl'' Event 41, "The Final, FINAL Battle", to be a lazier, inferior version of ''Melee'' Event 51, "The Showdown". It pits the player against an overpowered giant Mario, Snake, and Sonic (in place of Giga Bowser, Ganondorf, and Mewtwo respectively). The battle is ridiculously [[AntiClimaxBoss anti-climatic]], as it's possible to trick Giant Mario into falling off the ledge in just a few seconds.

* {{Narm}}: The opening narration of the "Main Theme (Metroid)" track, for sounding like some cheesy military ad calling for the player to join the fight and help Samus even though she's a OneManArmy in the games. Only one other track in the game ("Opening/Menu (Metroid Prime)", played on the Frigate Orpheon stage) has a narration like this, but it's considerably more in tone with the stage's dark atmosphere as per [[VideoGame/MetroidPrime1 the source material]].

*** Snake makes his presence known inside the ''Halberd'' by lifting up his trusty cardboard box and saying - ''[[BreakingTheFourthWall to the player]]'' -"Kept you waiting, huh?"
** While the heroes are conducting an operation to reclaim the Halberd, Snake instructs Peach and Zelda to stay hidden, much to their annoyance. After he leaves, the princesses exchange glances and Zelda disguises herself as Sheik, escorting Peach out of the room while the latter giggles.

** Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard barely appear in cutscenes and are essentially treated as non-characters, in favor of their Pokémon Trainer being the one to appear in cutscenes and get any development. The former only appears in the Trainer's introductory cutscene, and the latter two only appear when he's capturing them and as trading cards/photos that he owns. Many fans found this to be emblematic of how the Trainer's Pokémon in general in ''Brawl'' were treated more as bland partial characters and mechanics for his fighting style than the rest of the cast. This was fixed in ''Ultimate'', where the Trainer as well as his trio of starters are prominent in the ''World of Light'' intro cutscene, and each of the three as well as both the male and female Trainers were better-established as characters in their own right.

* AccidentalInnuendo: Maybe. YMMV as to how 'accidental' it is.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PInuVXgxO1g game's main theme is this to many.]] With its triumphant music, its Latin chorus and its incredible use in The Subspace Emissary, even those who don't like the game can agree that this song sounds absolutely cracking.

* FanNickname: "The Big Gay Dance" for King Dedede's Final Smash because of its use in ''Brawl Taunts''.

* MemeticBadass: Meta Knight, due to being widely considered a massive GameBreaker to the point where not only does he get his own tier in that game, but that incarnation of him is often considered to be the best character in the ''entire series''. He's so badass that tournament players cower in fear unless he's explicitly banned from character selection. Adding to this is that Meta Knight is already very popular among ''Kirby'' fans for his [[TheStoic stoic]] & honorable nature and his Zorro-esque voice in the English dub of [[Anime/KirbyRightBackAtYa the anime]].

* {{Narm}}: The opening narration of the ''Main Theme (Metroid)'' track, for sounding like some cheesy military ad calling for the player to join the fight and help Samus even though she's a OneManArmy in the games. No other track has a narration like this.
* NeverLiveItDown: Captain Falcon was considered the worst character for the first two tier lists (which covers about the first year of the game's competitive scene), and while like ''Melee'' Mewtwo where he got discovered to be a lot more potent than his bottom tier brethren and would permanently rise out of the bottom tier, he never shook off the stigma of worst character and even for a low/bottom tier character had almost no serious players throughout ''Brawl''[='=]s entire competitive life, despite being an immensely popular character in the rest of the Smash games. This stigma didn't follow him into ''Smash 4'' though, where he has perpetually been considered a high tier character and had a very large flock of players playing him since day 1.

** The revamped air dodge. Removal of wavedashing aside, the fact that ''Brawl'' air dodge is highly spammable and hard to punish makes it ''too'' effective for its intended use, which, combined with ledge planking and camping, turns ''Brawl'' into a game of turtling instead of the offensively-oriented ''Melee''. This is alleviated in the 4th installment; the air dodge is still momentum-conserving like in ''Brawl'', but you can no longer air dodge out of hitstun, and air dodging near the ground now produces significant landing lag for all characters, making it much more punishable.

** Excessive stale-move negation. In layman's terms, spamming any move causes said move to get weaker, knocking back enemies less and less. This effect is much more severe in ''Brawl'' than it is in the previous games, as while the previous games just reduced damage, ''Brawl'' also reduces a move's knockback. Among average players, this mechanic is hated for widening the gap between characters with several reliable finishers and those with few. But with competitive players, the main problem this introduces is it [[NotTheIntendedUse allows some moves to combo into themselves far longer than they reasonably should]], making certain stale moves in certain situations more useful than the fresh move, and in some cases, can completely break certain matchups, such as Sheik's forward tilt or Pikachu's down throw on the ''Star Fox'' characters.

** The fact that you can't straight-up restart Event Matches like you could in ''Melee'', as the [=GameCube=] controller's Z button (or its equivalent on other controllers) now lets you take snapshots instead, like in other modes in the game. Not only do the other two options - quitting and failing - take longer, but the former requires a button combination that can strain your fingers, depending on the controller used. This was carried over to the Wii U version of the fourth game.

** Following the hoax about unlocking him in ''Melee'', demand for Sonic's inclusion [[IncrediblyLamePun spiked]] since Snake was revealed. Nevertheless, Sonic's reveal in ''Brawl'' was surprising, especially for fans that remembered the UsefulNotes/ConsoleWars during TheNineties. During that time, Nintendo and Sega were heated rivals and any form of cooperation between them was out of the question. Eventually, Sega dropped out of the 1st-party console developing market in 2001 and became a 3rd-party company, now releasing games for their former rival Nintendo. That in itself was surprising at the time, but for Mario and Sonic to officially appear together in the same game was quite surreal for many fans. However, since the release of several titles from the ''VideoGame/MarioAndSonicAtTheOlympicGames'' series and Sonic's consistent appearances in ''Smash'' since his inclusion in ''Brawl'', newer fans won't see why these two mascots standing side-by-side would be so remarkable.

** Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard barely appear in cutscenes and are essentially treated as non-characters, in favor of their Pokémon Trainer being the one to appear in cutscenes and get any development; the former only appears in the Trainer's introductory cutscene, and the latter two only appear when he's capturing them. Many fans found this to be emblematic of how the Trainer's Pokémon in general in ''Brawl'' were treated more as bland partial characters and mechanics for his fighting style than the rest of the cast. This was fixed in ''Ultimate'', where the Trainer as well as his trio of starters are prominent in the ''World of Light'' intro cutscene, and each of the three as well as both the male and female Trainers were better-established as characters in their own right.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Sonic and his role as the EleventhHourRanger. Given that he was one of the major guest characters advertised for the game, many were disappointed that he did not play a role in the story until literally the very end. This was because Creator/{{Sega}} didn't grant Creator/{{Nintendo}} the rights to use Sonic until late in the game's development.

* GameBreaker: Meta Knight. His neutral aerial deals 19% damage when both hits connect and is very fast, giving him some of the highest DPS against enemies and bosses. Since there's no stale-move negation in the mode, players can spam it with impunity. As for his special moves, Mach Tornado is useful both to clear large hordes of enemies and to traverse horizontal platforming sections quickly and safely, while Shuttle Loop makes vertical platforming a breeze. And since all his moves besides his throws and dash attack are sword-based, powering him up is a simple matter of giving him some stickers that boost Slash Attacks.

* OneSceneWonder:
** [[VideoGame/KidIcarus Palutena]], who only appears to give Pit his sacred bow.
** Also, the Subspace Gunship, laughably so. So much effort into designing this massive monstrosity, yet it goes down in a matter of seconds after its full reveal. There's not even a level for it.

** Certain character introductions are lesser examples:
*** Falcon [[note]]where he leaps out of the Blue Falcon to deliver a Falcon Punch to a giant-sized R.O.B. (set to ''Brawl''[='s=] [[AwesomeMusic/SuperSmashBros rendition]] of "[[VideoGame/FZero Mute City]]"), runs over several VideoGame/{{Pikmin}} in the process, and [[SuperSentaiStance poses epically]] for a good five seconds [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments as Olimar watches]][[/note]]
*** Snake [[note]]making his presence known inside the ''Halberd'' by lifting up his trusty cardboard box and saying - ''[[BreakingTheFourthWall to the player]]'' -"Kept you waiting, huh?"[[/note]]
*** Sheik [[note]]Snake wordlessly directs Princesses Peach and Zelda to "stay here" rather than get into the fighting; as the door closes, they look at each other, only to emerge a moment later with Zelda disguised as the ninja and Peach giggling[[/note]]
** The scene where Samus regains her Power Suit [[note]]set to [[AwesomeMusic/SuperSmashBros a chillingly triumphant arrangement of her theme]][[/note]] is another minor example.