Don’t be offended too much. I actually don’t hate Dark Pit as a character (I don’t even really hate Dr. Mario, Pichu or Roy as characters) it’s the inclusion in Smash that rubs me the wrong way and not exactly the character.

He has similarities to my problems with Dr. Mario which up until Dark Pit was confirmed as a Newcomer through the leak. Was my least favorite inclusion in Smash Bros. history. So first I’ll list my problems with Dr. Mario from Melee before I list off why I don’t like Dark Pit’s inclusion.

*Dr. Mario is a minor part of the Mario series. I actually really like the Dr. Mario games. But I never would think of seeing Dr. Mario as a completely seperate character from Mario himself

*Would be ALOT better as an Alt

*Competiively, he’s at least slightly better then Mario. This rubs me the wrong way in why didn’t they give the properties that made Dr. Mario better to Mario in the first place?

*Sakurai’s logic for making him a seperate character made no sense. It was based on “Dr. Mario looks weird throwing fireballs”. It’s not impossible to change the fireballs though. Project M managed to make Dr. Mario an Alt, with fireballs changed to the Megavitamins  and even the sound effect programmed in and everything. Why couldn’t an official game do that?

Now let’s get to Dark Pit

*He’s a minor part of his one game (I saw a full let’s play of Kid Icarus Uprising, so I know most of the story. Dark Pit didn’t really have that big of a role overall)

*Would be so much better as an Alt. In fact he technically was one in Brawl. Though he wasn’t really a character back then, just a black recolor of Pit. And heck they made Alph an alt for Olimar and the Koopalings alts for Bowser Jr., yet they made Dark Pit a seperate character? wat?

*While we don’t know yet for sure if he’s better or worse then Pit. We DO know that he’s basically a Melee-esque clone of Pit with not many different attacks. His Final Smash is different from Pits, but it’s a clone Final Smash of a different character: Zelda & Shiek’s.

*Kid Icarus should not have three representatives. Before Uprising, the last Kid Icarus game was just a little over 21 years ago. And it’s not even considered canon. Going back to the first Kid Icarus game. That came out almost three decades ago. Some people complained about Star Fox getting three reps in Brawl when that franchise was up and down every few years or so. Imagine how Kid Icarus getting as many (And with Star Fox & Mother reps shrinking, as well as Kid Icarus having more representatives then Metroid and Donkey Kong) as Star Fox did in Brawl might rub people the wrong way

*Even if Kid Icarus earned the right for three representatives. There were far better choices. Like Medusa who was the main antagonist of the first game, and played a decently important role in the story. Or Hades who while he would be as new as Dark Pit is, he’s already become a pretty beloved villain just in his short time.

*While this is a relatively minor point, I can’t help but feel the Shadow the Hedgehog vibes I get from him. That’s not a good thing by the way.

*And lastly he’s just overall too minor & too recent in the overall scheme. He doesn’t even have the history that even Dr. Mario had (The first Dr. Mario game was in 1990) While Greninja is even more recent then Dark Pit. There’s a difference between Kid Icarus and Pokemon. As I sad two bullet points ago. The gap between all the last Kid Icarus game and Uprising makes the wait for Half-Life 3 seem normal. While Pokemon is a hugely successful franchise that gets something new every 1-2 years. And they needed to advertise the most recent generation somehow. While because of this, Greninja was my least favorite Newcomer inclusion up until Dark Pit came about. Greninja’s merit is helped by having his own moveset, and he’s major because he’s the final evolved form of one of the starters from Pokemon X&Y. Robin & Lucina are relatively recent as well, but both of them are fairly popular within the Fire Emblem fanbase. And Robin himself is the first Fire Emblem character in Smash Bros. to not entirely rely on swords.

I just don’t like Dark Pit’s inclusion at all. I would literally feel like the roster would be overall better without him. There is so many characters I would take over Dark Pit. He doesn’t make Smash 4’s newcomer pool worse then Melee’s but it definitely keeps it from being as good as the near-perfection that both Smash 64 and Brawl had in it’s additions.

That said, he doesn’t ruin the entire game for me. Don’t worry about that, both him and Dr. Mario are only 2 characters out of a 51 character roster (Counting the Mii Fighters as seperate). That’s only about 4% of Smash 4’s roster that I really don’t like. Compared to Melee which had 3 inclusions I didn’t like out of 26 (Including Shiek) makes it 12% that I don’t like. And I enjoy Melee despite it’s roster being mathematically three times worse then Smash 4’s in my opinion.

In fact the difficulty scale is something I love with Smash 4, I’m going to put to good use here. I’m going to go through Classic Mode and All-Star with every character on at least the default setting EXCEPT for Dr. Mario and Dark Pit. Where I’ll be playing on the lowest difficulty possible. Just to get them over with and receive their trophies.