Smash Legends by LINE games is a multiplayer brawler featuring a roster of characters plucked out of popular fairy tales. The game has drawn comparisons to Supercell’s Brawl Stars and Super Smash Bros., as well as that unappreciated Dreamcast gem, Power Stone (which it resembles most). It’s immensely stylish, polished to a sheen, and runs like a dream on most devices.. With fast-paced combat, short rounds, and lightning quick matchmaking, Smash Legends is a bite-sized fighter that’s enormously hard to put down.

The character design in Smash Legends is excellent. Characters have strong silhouettes so they don’t get lost in the action, and no two characters feel or play the same way. They’re (very, very loosely) based off of fairy tale characters, like Peter Pan, who Smash Legends imagines is a frontline scrapper with a sword bigger than his body, or Little Red Riding Hood, who has the ability to disappear into the shadows and stab you in the back.

Like in Power Stone, fights take place in small arenas designed to let players jump right into the fray from their spawn point. There’s a decent variety of stages, and they’re different enough that you may have to change up your play style when moving from one stage to the next. And just like in Super Smash Bros., there are no invisible walls to keep you from being thrown out of the fighting area, so it’s important to know how to edgeguard.

Some stages are more vertical than others, and the locations of powerup spawns and launchers (which launch you sky-high so you can attack from above) are different in every map. I’d love to see more power-ups, as the current selection is basic and feels more like an afterthought. Having the ability to heal in a pinch is great, but the game needs more offensive items like the bomb.

Despite the simplistic controls (each character only has two abilities and a single attack combo), Smash Legends is surprisingly skill-based. Most abilities are area-of-effect spells that stagger opponents while dealing massive damage, so you don’t want to get hit. However, their wind-downs are pretty long, so if you can bait an opponent into whiffing an ability, that leaves them open to punishment. Unlike most brawlers, there is no attack or skill canceling, so once you’ve pressed the button, you’re committed. This heavily penalizes button-mashing and makes fighting more like fencing than a straight-up brawl (though at the lower skill levels, a round isn’t so much fencing as it is a clumsy melee of “almost-had-’ems” and “walked-right-into-thats”).

Characters are unlocked using tickets, which can be obtained randomly via chests that are earned by playing or purchased in the in-game shop with the game’s premium currency, Gems. You can level up characters by collecting enough tickets, giving them a boost to their HP and damage output. Smash Legends also sells a battle pass, which works as any regular battle pass does -- coins and minor rewards are earned by gaining battle pass levels, but you can get better rewards for each level gained by purchasing a pass. Gems can get quite expensive, with some of the promotional skins going for roughly the equivalent of $20 in Gems.

Smash Legends is a great addition to the multiplayer brawler genre, with great visuals and satisfying combat that’s second to none. It borrows elements from some great games (most notably Super Smash Bros. and Power Stone) for thrilling group brawls with an unexpected depth that’s rare on mobile.

By Andi Nuruljihad for Gamesforum