Rivals of Aether

Gameplay-wise, Rivals of Aether heavily borrows from the SSB series …and there’s nothing wrong with that.

As a long time Super Smash Bros. fan, Rivals of Aether caught my eye as soon as it was announced. I never particularly enjoyed other fighting games, and so Street Fighter and its contemporaries failed to fill that niche. Gameplay-wise, Rivals of Aether heavily borrows from the SSB series. From the percentage-based damage system, to the platform-style stages, to the ubiquity of special attacks also serving as “third-jump” recovery moves, the similarities are strong. ...and there’s nothing wrong with that, especially when that emulation is this well-executed.

That’s not to say that Rivals is unoriginal, however. Aside from Ori (of “...From the Blind Forest” Fame) who is available as a DLC character, all the characters are new creations, each with their own move set and unique handling. While a few attacks are similar, no character feels like they’ve been lifted straight from SSB.

The stages have their own individual flavor as well, and - like Smash Bros - most of them serve as a “home stage” for a particular character. A feature I found interesting was inclusion of a “B” version of each stage, which removes environmental hazards and elements of chance that can impact serious competitive matches. So while Smash tournaments are played on limited rosters of stages that lack these random environmental hazards, every stage in Rivals can be played in a more “fair” configuration, eliminating the need for these restrictions.

Rivals was clearly designed with competition in mind, from the way stages are selected before each match, to the ability to personalize your characters with custom color palettes. There is a small - but very much active - competitive Rivals community still holding tournaments (with prize money) at the time of this writing, which is impressive for an indie game over three years old. Rivals was also released on the Nintendo Switch just three days ago, which will undoubtedly bolster the game’s popularity for years to come. That being said, I’m here to discuss the game on Xbox One and what it looks like on this platform.

For the relatively low asking price of $15USD, you get nearly an original Super Smash Bros level of content. Eight characters, a dozen stages, a survival mode, and a simplistic campaign that manages to have more of an actual story than the series that inspired it. There’s also three DLC packs, each available for $5USD. Two include two new characters apiece, while the third includes the aforementioned Ori character and an Ori-inspired stage.