Spirit Fights Are Pretty Hard so I'm Ranking Some of Them

Hey; it's Shade, I decided to do something a little more easy than my last blogs. Well, easy in the writing aspect; I'll actually have the fight the spirits listed in this blog myself, meaning I'll actually have to play the game omg this is insane wow.

( #TwilightWings tags incase I forget later)

Now, before we get into this thing, I'll have to go over something real quick.

What Qualifies for the List of Hard in This Predicament?

Now, while its a relatively easy thing to understand. Difficult means hard to do or complete after all. However, in this blog, there are a few different things to add onto this rather than the definition.

Notoriety and Publicly Thinking

This usually isn't included within the definition, but I'll include it because there are alot of opinions on which spirit fight is hard and what isn't. An example of a spirit fight that isn't hard yet is widely considered hard due to the fact that it requires a strategy you wouldn't automatically come up with is Pauline.

So, for this list, I'll be including spirits that aren't necessarily hard, but are widely considered to be hard. For example, I dont consider Pauline to be a hard spirit, but it's such a big name in the smash community to not compare it to harder spirits that other find or I find hard.

Anyways, thats enough chit-chat, let's get right into the list.

Side Note: There are well over 500 spirit fights in the game, im not ranking them all, so for the sake of convenience and my patience; I'll make it a top 5 hardest spirits list.

Side Side Note: I will not be including spirit battles not from the base game. Aka spirits that are added with paid DLC.

#5 Pauline

Funnily enough, the spirit that is widely considered at the hardest is the easiest of the bunch on this list. While it is hard, extremely hard infact, there is an easy way to get a free win on this battle. All you had to do was equip a spirit that gives you the staff item and shoot. Since Pauline is programmed to be as far away from you as possible, the staff will do incredible amounts of damage and will kill her in one or two hits. Of course, this boss fight becomes hell if you're doing it spiritless, but this can apply to all bosses on the list.

My experience with this boss was mostly a mix of confusion and disappointment since I had expected an extremely hard boss. Of course on my first attempt I did fail since I had a PSI, increased damage at critical health, and a Side Special boosting spirit. Though, it became laughably easy when I used a staff spirit I had beaten into the ground a while back.

Though, if you attempt this without using any spirits, I would place it in the #2 spot since the difficulty becomes much higher.

#4 Dr. Wlly

Dr. Wily, well known by many as the absolute side cuck lord of one of the dungeon like areas you traverse through in WOL. His fight is brutal, causing you to be faced against multiple mega-men while on stamina mode, never a good combination. He only comes out into the fray when youre beaten down and have just crawled through a hoard of 8 megamen, all having 100hp, all metal, and you only having 120hp.

This sounds horrible and it really is. During my first playthrough, I had no idea what was coming and got ass-blasted to hell with projectiles and more of the like. However, then came a serious and reliving realization...

"Yo wait, a lot of Megaman's projectiles are energy based."

Thats right ladies and gents, the obvious has been stated but never taken advantage of. This fight has been the bane of many a character's existence, but luckily for us, two particilar psychic children can ez clap these robots and clutch the way to victory. Lucas' and Ness' down special suck in energy based projectiles, healing them in the process. Since this battle is a stamina battle, health is the most important factor that decides who wins and who perishes. This strategy doesn't even require spirits, but the main catch is that you still need to identify if a projectile coming your way is physical or based on energy. Even if you have the perfect deck, you still need to play the right cards to win.

#3 Blood Falcon

Y'know, for an Ace rank, this guy is really fuckin hard for a battle.

Paired against both Ganondorf and Captain Falcon, one would think that maybe it would be an easy fight. I thought it was an easy fight aswell when I first started the match, then next thing I knew I was off the stage and oh god Ganondorf is hitting harder than he's suPPOSED TO—

What makes this battle hard is the sheer collaboration the ai have with each other; it's incredible, really. Due to there being increased speed movement, Ganondorf bum rushed me with the speed of a homicidal hummingbird on crack and I would get endlessly up special'd by the actual character I was supposed to kill. Not to mention, the battle is held on the mute city stage, meaning every now and then cars would go whoosh and boom youre dead sucks you got falcon punched in the dick towards one. Maybe I just got unlucky with the ai because I haven't seen anyone else talking about this spirit battle, but in my case it was harder than most of the legend battles in the game.

The trick to beating it, however, is running away and praying to go the us are stupid enough to run into the cars. That's how you win, along with relying on the items that can either aid you or the guys trying to push you over the railing because you simply exist and that's a sin in their eyes. It'll take a few tries, thats guaranteed for sure due to the rng routes of the cars, but you'll eventually beat his face in and rip that spirit out of him and claim victory.

Unless you're me. I missed the shot. Twice. It was more upsetting than words can possibly describe.

#2 The Boss

The boss is a much less known hard spirit in the community, but on my first attempt it was already leagues harder than the previous ones I had done. That was until I equipped the Madame Butterfly spirit that heals you when you're in with poison. When the poison part is dealt with, all you have to do is focus on healing yourself at low health and dealing damage to ZSS. Even with the poison healing you, I found the opponent to be one tough motherfucker.

This spirit is all about management of your health using Madame Butterfly (if you have it equipped) and dealing damage. Since its a legendary ranked U; it's naturally going to be hard to defeat, especially with Health Points. Overall, The Boss took me around 5 tries to beat, and that was using Madame Butterfly. Trying to beat her without it is certainly possible, I almost did it a few times using Joker, but is still a hard feat nonetheless.

All I can say is good luck doing this spiritless if you attempt it.

#1 Baby. Fucking. Bowser

Holy shit.

All I can say is thank God this thing isn't in the WOL mode. It is an absolute nightmare to beat, which is why after my last rematch (I had 20 before I started the fight) I made the decision that it was too hard for me to beat.

And then I realized that I was making a post on hardest spirit battles and that if I didn't fully beat a spirit, my opinion would become irrelevant oh boy.

After looking up how to beat this spirit, (props to DPD4M0 btw, watch their video here) I realized just how stupid it was to beat this. Not only do you need Chrom and those spirits to beat the battle, but you also need to get lucky. Yeah, even with that strategy, you still need to get lucky and hope that everytime you hit Bowser he'll be in the air and will flinch. If you dont get him to flinch, then pray he does beat you into oblivion or time you out using his neutral special.

Even with the Chrom up-special tactic at hand, it still took me numerous attempts to beat this spirit. Either from human error or not being close enough to land a hit whilst the second stage Bowser first spawns.

With all of this in mind, I have made the final decision to place the Baby Bowser spirit as the hardest spirit battle currently in vanilla Smash Ultimate.

———Epilogue———

Would there be changes if I included spirits not included in the base game?

Most likely, seeing that the Phantom Thieves spirit battle is decently hard if you dont have the appropriate healing spirits equipped.

Would there be any changes to the list if you restricted players from the use of spirits?

I honestly doubt it to be honest with you. These spirits are hard in their own right, with spirit buffs applied or not. Without spirits, all of them provide a horrific level of difficulty thatll take many, many attempts to . So, no, there wouldn't be any changes to this list.

Is this for certain?

While I would absolutely love to boost my own ego, no, these are all my opinion. Some may have an easier time with Dr.Willy than Pauline, others maybe be absolutely insane and think Baby Bowser easy compared to Blood Falcon. Every view on difficulty is different, there is no opinion that is the exact same.