Recent reviews by Plaid

The best-designed platform fighter on the market. Much more accessible and balanced than Melee, much more fast-paced and interesting than any of the later Smashes. The game is pretty easy to pick up if you're familiar with the genre, but the entire genre is a hard one to get into as a total newcomer. The mechanics are thought through very well to avoid being overcentralizing, and it's very satisfying to be able to hit cool combos and cool tech like shield dropping without spending days in training mode. That isn't to say punishes are free--defensive options are good, and if you're too predictable, you won't be able to string together more than a couple hits. The skill ceiling for this game remains very high while the skill floor is much lower than you would expect for such a competitive game.

I would highly recommend this game for anyone interested in fighting games.

Starting off, I'm going to say this game was obviously not ready for early access. The animations/graphics have improved a lot with time, but the game does not look fluid in action yet. They also have been getting hammered by their poorly-thought-out f2p character system, where the characters cost the same as the highest rarity cosmetics and thus require a lot of loot boxes to obtain. They're improving it, which is good, but you only get one first impression. I worry they might have spent it before the game was ready.

I think that's truly unfortunate because the game has a lot to offer. The netcode is excellent; I also enjoy Rivals of Aether but have a much harder time getting a good online experience in it. Icons devs spent a lot of effort on their rollback code, and it's very good. The movement options are also excellent. Wavedashes have good length and are simple to execute, dash dance windows are good, and several characters have the Marth lean that makes his dash dance so good for dodging. Coming into the game as a Melee/PM/Rivals player, the movement felt excellent.

A few of their characters have clear Melee analogues, but they have some unique features, and there's a reason we all like playing Marth and Fox. I think they've got enough unique characters to merit adding a few familiar movesets.

I should also mention that the game has good balance and is patched to maintain that. Also, there have been big improvements with character animations as time has gone on. Weishan and Afi/Galu have significantly better animations than the rest of the cast, and the devs have said that Weishan is their approximate goal for visual quality to bring everyone else up to.

Despite its current flaws, the game is definitely fun as is. I hope people will give it the chance it deserves as they continue to improve what isn't yet making the cut.