Falco “should” be using projectiles to cut off most neutral options and pushing people towards the corner. I say “should” because that’s how PPMD played, but every other (less good) Falco plays him like Fox with bigger combos. Still, I’ve heard people compare him to an old-school SF character in that regard.
Puff and Samus are just borderline impossible to approach and even harder to kill. They do play the space control game really well though. The difference between them is that Samus has to play grounded and has waaaay worse punishes, while Puff has rest and edgeguards while pretending to be MvC2 Storm flying around the stage.
I’m not sure that’s fair to Falco. There isn’t hardly any aspect of the game he isn’t one of the top 3 characters in, so you can kind of just play him however you want.
Yeah, Samus damage is pretty low, almost no combo game. But she does has probably the best survivability in the whole game. So while she has to grind the opponent down slowly, she at least gets a lot of chances to do so. Still not viable though.
I’m being unfair to Melee players who insist the game has to be played at 1000mph with sick combos and flashing lights every second more than I’m being unfair to Falco tbh. It’s just that nearly all spacie players seem to fit that description.
Samus kinda reminds me of Asuka from Tekken tbh. Terrible at opening you up, but attacking her directly is really, really hard.
Also, dunno about Samus not being viable. She’s not great for the aforementioned reasons, but she’s probably the mid tier with the most top 8 placements in Melee. If anything she’s borderline.
