At The Game Awards, fans of Smash Bros. had a pretty big announcement drop into our laps, namely the reveal of the next fighter joining as part of Fighters Pass Vol.2 – brooding mama’s boy and Final Fantasy mega villain, Sephiroth. It was met with an admittedly mixed response but left me thinking about something. Something that I haven’t seen anyone else mention or speak about.
Sephiroth is now canonically the most powerful character in Smash.
Stay with me, because I have a reasoning for this, but we have to go back to the beginning and the story mode of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for it. The World of Light mode opens, as I’m sure you will remember, with the combined cast of the game fighting together against impossible odds during the invasion of an army of Master Hands, led by the evil entity Galeem.
It turns out that the Master Hands were a redundant addition to their arsenal, as Galeem is arguably the most powerful entity in Smash Bros. history. They unleashed a devastating array of beams that vaporise the entire roster, except for the precious pink marshmallow Kirby, who only really escaped owing to his speed and because Sakurai loves him like his own son.
This began a quest to rescue the entire roster from Galeem’s control, and then combining their efforts to eradicate the mysterious being for good. There’s a few other things such as a twin evil entity and other such nonsense in the story, but that’s the heart of it. However, something in the Sephiroth trailer overturns the prospect of Galeem being the most powerful force in this universe.
As he makes his grand debut, Sephiroth cleaves through the angelic abomination with a single slice of his Masamune and turns the entire army of Master Hands to dust. This is after several of the roster, including DLC fighters like the Hero of Dragon Quest and Richter Belmont, are literally brought to their knees again (or for the first time, it’s hard to nail down a stable timeline for this game) by the invading forces of Galeem.
Our favourite son of Jenova then proceeds to “bring despair to Smash” and beat down on several of what could be considered the strongest characters in the game, making easy work of powerful fighters such as consistently top-tier Bayonetta and, erm, Greninja. Before turning his attention to Mario in one of the greatest fake outs in Smash Bros., impaling the portly plumber on his blade through a strap on his dungarees.
The truth is that he saved the roster from annihilation by Galeem’s “Mega Vaporiser Lasers”™ (the official name, so I’m told), which were in the process of being charged up. Instead of this being an act of mercy, however, it was instead a means to bring his own devastation down upon them in the form of frenzied sword slashes, dark orb explosions, and glorious swishes of his magnificent hair.
All I’m saying is if it took the combined power of the entire base game roster to take down Galeem in the World of Light, it’s going to take more than a simple upgraded Omnislash to dispatch Sephiroth, no matter how pretty it may be. Also, let’s not forget that not only was he still standing after this attack, but he ascended to his Safer (read: god-like) form at the end of the trailer, no doubt increasing his power still further above his “One Winged Angel” form.
Not only this, but he isn’t even the “real” Sephiroth if we’re taking all the Advent Children lines and visuals in mind. This version is – SPOILERS, by the way – the possession of Kadaj by the spirit of Sephiroth. So, he’s not even the actual Lifestream-bothering villain and yet he is still powerful enough to bully Galeem.
So, in short if you needed a TLDR, here’s my reasoning for Sephiroth being the most powerful character in Smash Bros. Ultimate canon:
- Sephiroth destroys a baddie it took the entire base Smash roster to defeat.
- He did the above without exerting himself at all.
- He then proceeded to lay waste to the roster too.
- He has ANOTHER two forms above his base form.
- Sephiroth has simply glorious hair.
- This isn’t even the real Sephiroth.
We’re due a guide today about the character and how he will play in the game from Sakurai himself, which you can watch here at 10pm GMT, but honestly, I have no idea how they will top this. Sephiroth now stands as the most powerful entity in this game beyond doubt, and short of adding an actual god to the game, I’m unsure how he could possibly be canonically defeated.
Unless, wait …
Make it happen Nintendo, you cowards.
