Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Review: 5 Ups & 3 Downs

1. World Of Light Is A Repetitive Slog

This also will prove a contentious opinion among fans, but Smash Ultimate's campaign mode, World of Light, is an intensely mixed bag of ambitious and undeveloped ideas.

You start the story mode as Kirby, the sole survivor of an attack from the evil monster Galeem, which has turned the other 73 fighters into soulless shells of their former selves.

It's up to Kirby to battle these husks in order to return them to life - though more often you'll fight one of the thousand-plus Spirit augmentations - in turn unlocking the characters if you haven't already.

It's certainly fun at first, and the map is much larger than it initially appears, but after a while the central loop becomes so transparent and unfixed that it ends up feeling quite listless and boring.

Clocking in at anywhere from 15 to a reported 40 hours depending on your level of perfectionism, the cinematic quality promised by the opening cut-scene basically isn't there, and even with some occasional gimmicky fights thrown in for good measure, the core of this mode is fundamentally rote.

There are systems layered on top of the usual Smash gameplay - such as using Spirits to raise your power level and a skill tree - but it's ultimately fairly simplistic and too often mistakes volume for depth.

World of Light is probably best enjoyed as something you play for 30 minutes a day when you're bored or on the commute to work, because having played it in numerous hours-long stretches, the central loop just isn't addictive enough to excuse the repetition.

Unless you're especially in love with grinding for loot, it otherwise may not hold your attention for long.

So, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is pretty damn far from perfect, but when it's great, it's really great. Here's everything it nails...