During a Brawl break earlier today, we finished up all of the unlocks of stages and characters for Brawl. I'm not "done" with the game-- are you ever really done with a party game or a fighter?-- but I feel like talking a bit about what I've played so far. Spoilers ahoy if you look at anything after the cut!
I played through the vast majority of SSE in co-op. There were roughly three levels, platform-heavy ones, where it wasn't viable at all to have a second player active. Those were solo'ed, and then the Great Maze and the final boss were defeated in co-op mode.
I was warned countless times by friends that the Great Maze was horrible and the death of fun. Actually, it's probably the stretch of SSE I enjoyed most, since it seems to be the part of SSE actually designed with co-op play in mind. Granted, we played with Kirby, Metaknight, Dedede, and Pit, and so spent most of SSE just flying over obstacles and annoying enemies.
Tabuu is... I don't understand Tabuu, like at all. He's kind of an interesting design, and I would guess Brawl would require a more impressive villain than Master Hand. Still, how does it follow that the ultimate villain and master of Subspace is a... floating glowing naked dude with butterfly wings? I blame Street Fighter 3.
Seeing Sonic pwn him for his debut was interesting enough, but I notice his presence in the game gets absolutely no context, and he gets even less time for interactions with other characters than Snake. Granted, I suspect that if Brawl had shipped on time, Sonic could've been a big surprise character and not just "OMG IT'S SONIC YAY".
Unlocking the other playable characters was a solo experience but it went very quickly for Jigglypuff and Toon Link. Wolf demanded an afternoon's worth of cursing since he's at the end of a long platform section and is tricky to beat.
Most of the stages that could be unlocked via Brawling or Events were. The last two, Spear Pillar and Hanenbow, were Gold Hammer'd since their unlocks were time-consuming and we were impatient to get the levels. Plus, getting Gold Hammers was actually easier than fulfilling the unlock conditions. I'm sure this would bite us in the ass in the long run if we wanted full unlocks, but hey, I don't.
I think having the full character roster and level roster to choose from drastically improves the quality of the game for multi-man Brawls. We don't have all of the Assist Trophies, yet, but most of them are probably going to be unlocked by straight Brawling, and I imagine we'll Gold Hammer the one that calls for unlocking a bunch of CDs (which I otherwise don't care about). It'll probably be a week or so before this happens, since a key member of the regular Brawling posse is leaving town.
Online... to be honest, I haven't tried the online. I generally prefer multi with people in the same room, and with no shortage of that I don't feel the need to go online. I've heard nothing but horror stories about the lag and problems connecting, so I'm really in no hurry to try it out, either. Maybe with some friends over the next week, but I really just don't expect much.
