YMMV / Super Smash Bros. Crusade

• Awesome Music: The devs have original composers on their team, and they're talented:
  • "Asteroids" does for Asteroids what "Flat Zone" did for Game & Watch.
  • "Infected Dreams", the QBert stage's theme. It's surreal, bouncy, it just fits the Q*Bert tone.
• Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: The fangame by itself has grown increasingly solid and fun in its own right, but many recent players have gotten into it mainly for its mod support, making it one of the few contenders for the title of "Platform Fighter M.U.G.E.N" alongside Rivals of Aether's Workshop support. Many players exclusively play the extensive CMC+ build thanks to its wealth of content and features added over the vanilla game.
• Default Setting Syndrome: Yes, there are items in the game, but it takes some players a while to figure it out as they're turned off by default.
• Growing the Beard:
  • v0.9, when the biggest grievance most people had against it — the graphics quality, or lack thereof — finally began to get addressed. In addition, the game began to further distance itself mechanically from the official Super Smash Bros. games at this stage, introducing its own variant on the Air Dodge which is reminiscent of Project M Lucario's modified Double Team move.
  • v0.9.5 has been well-received as well, as the movement was greatly revamped to be more Melee-like (fast-paced with better dashdancing and other options), a glow-up for the menus, and well-received moveset changes. While it does reduce the number of airdodge options from the previous version, it composites the Crusade, Melee, and Ultimate airdodges into a single Crusade option combining the best of all three.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Who could have guessed that Pac-Man, Duck Hunt Dog and Ryu would actually make it into Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U?
  • Ridley is now playable as of Ultimate.
  • In addition, in Ultimate, Little Mac's Final Smash in that game is nearly identical to the one in this game, the exception being that he transforms into Giga Mac in the former.
  • And looks like Final Smash activated by the gauge is a thing in Ultimate as well!
  • Petey Piranha as a playable character in this game became this when the first DLC fighter for Ultimate was announced: a normal Piranha Plant, with Petey himself being its Final Smash.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • A likely reason for adding characters such as Ridley, Krystal, Geno, Porky, Klonoa, Shantae, commonly requested characters absent in Super Smash Bros. (except for Ridley in Ultimate), and Crash Bandicoot, a commonly requested character conspicuously absent in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.
  • It also extends to changes within the existing roster: Mario's gets his more popular Star Spin instead of FLUDD, Ganondorf has been heavily reworked to actually use his abilities from his home series instead of being a Moveset Clone of Captain Falcon, several of Sonic's moves have been altered to reference Sonic Battle and he has a different side special, the list goes on.
• Polished Port: The mechanics have been brought over pretty well, and the addition of things like an official combo system and a Mana Meter has proven to be a nice touch.
• That One Level: Classic Mode, much like in the official Smash games, is an arcade mode styled gauntlet of fighters and special challenges for players to run through. The penultimate stage is always a battle with a metal opponent^note except on Very Easy difficulty. While normally a cakewalk in the official Smash games, the amount of staying power that the opponents here possess can be quite ludicrous at times, with foes staying around for as high as 200% before getting starting to get knocked away any further. Couple that with Crusade's great recoveries across the whole roster, and the fact that there are two metal opponents on the two harder difficulties, this could turn into a rather annoying challenge overall.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many players were unhappy with Sonic's resprite in the 0.9.5 update, feeling that his "smooth" animations look weightless and slow and that none of the other Sonic characters received similar resprites. Tellingly, the team of CMC+ reverted Sonic to an altered version of his previous Sonic Battle sprites for its V8 update.
• Unexpected Character: There are many truly unexpected fighters currently in Crusade, and most likely, those will not be the only ones seen. For the curious, Weegee is likely the biggest oddball to check out, with Goomba and Tetromino right behind.

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