Lucina adds female representation and fans who hopped on with Awakening like her for some reason. If the audio situation wasn't an issue (switching voices), she really should have just been a Marth alternate costume.
She was. Like dark Pitt and doctor Mario, they were all alt costumes for their respective character. But the devs team felt they were unique enough to be their own fighter and had a little extra time so they separated them all, and before someone complains about them "taking up character slots" sakurai has already explained that it took minimal time to develop them, and that if they weren't in the game, 3 different characters wouldn't have taken their place, we'd just have three less characters.
Shovel knight and Shantae are both popular American games, but Japans barely knows them, so that's expected as well. I did expect shovel knight to get in bc of the amiibo, but I guess not?
Never understood this logic. The SK a amiibo isn't even in the smash amiibo line, it'd totally screw up the smash Amibo if they just allowed it's SK amiibo to be used and not remake it's own smash one, which seems like a pointless move and a waste of time. Why not just delay the SK one and release the smash one with SK compatibility which would be announced alongside it's reveal, I know they did this with Mario for smash and MP lines, but Mario isn't a third party character.
As for the characters, I don't really care for any of them. But I guess Corrin was included as like an homage to marth and Roy in melee who weren't going to be included in the west because no one knew they were but they yolod and then the FE series became popular in the west because of their inclusion so I guess Corrin is just them paying homage to that which is rather fitting IMO. I am a little annoyed at another FE character, but his style is unique enough for me to not care. Bayonetta looks cool, but her inclusion seemed kind of obvious. I'd have rather the character be someone unexpected, but w/e.
Like Tao said, I was under the impression the ballot was to include a few characters, and not just one. I'm not that disappointed by her inclusion, but I'd just rather they took more than one suggestion.
Minor addition: people saying that she won the fighter ballot, and that it wasn't a suggestions box is annoying. She didn't win the ballot, she "won" in Europe and ranked within the top 5 most suggested characters world wide, and was included because she was the most realizable character they could have in smash. She didn't win, it was still a suggestions box.
