The following story was written by a student on the staff of The Jaguar Times as part of Hilliard Bradley High School’s Journalism Production course.
By Maxwell Matheny
Staff Writer
On October 18, Sora from Kingdom Hearts was released on Smash Ultimate. Kingdom Hearts is a game owned by Disney that focuses around the main character Sora, as he makes a journey through the fictional universes of Disney.
In the game, Sora adventures through the game with characters such as Donald Duck and Goofy. It was a wonder to some fans that he was even able to make it to Smash Bros Ultimate. This is because the series is owned by Disney, and they thought he would be kept under lock and key; quite fitting for a character that wields a “keyblade”.
This came after months of debate on who would be the last addition to the roster. Some of the other smash character speculations included characters such as Phoenix Wright from Ace Attorney (Owned by CapCom), Master Chief from Halo (Microsoft), and a Pokémon from gen 8.
Sora’s gameplay is quite unique as his character is very light. One aspect of his gameplay is that he can strike several times in the air. He also has an interesting neutral special attack that cycles from a distant fire projectile, to a more powerful and slower lightning attack, to a freezing attack that can stun an opponent. However, his most interesting and best mechanic is his ability to use his recovery that can chain into his side special. Sora’s side special is a combination of three targeted jumps that have very limited vulnerability to them. Combine this with a Link style recovery, his aerial game becomes very hard to beat and it makes him virtually impossible to kill offstage.
When discussing the side special, one Bradley student comments, “the only way to get out of it is to shield or dodge roll.” Sakurai, the creator of Smash Brothers, evidently wanted to make him pretty strong in the game, however, that isn’t the end of it. Recently Sora players have been shown to be able to combo heavier characters from 0% by pulling off a difficult series of moves to kill them off the stage.
With the final addition to Sakurai’s roster being added, fans are already asking the question: what’s next? Sakurai already announced that this would be his last game. But it begs the next question: will there be another installment beyond Sakurai? Fans of the series will just have to wait and see.