The Ultimate Super Smash Bros. Character Guide: Sheik

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Sheik Changes It Up!

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is huge. Not just in terms of hype and importance and sales potential, but just in terms of sheer stuff. The Nintendo Switch mascot fighter features over a hundred stages, nearly a thousand songs, and too many Pokemon and items and Assist Trophies to think of crammed onto a cartridge you can plan on the go or on a TV. When you have as many big franchises as Nintendo, putting them all in one game will make that game is very big boy indeed.

But the biggest, most exciting thing about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is its mind-blowing, heartwarming roster of playable characters. Fighting games pride themselves not just on the strength of their mechanics but the strength of its fighters, especially in a crossover fighters like this. And Super Smash Bros. Ultimate crushes all rivals by including every single playable character from the across the four previous games in the twenty-year-old series. Include the new combatants and so far we have over 70 fighters to wrap our heads around. We’re excited, but we’re also intimidated. So to get ready for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, every day, character by character, we’re creating the ultimate guide to all of its characters. Today’s fighter: Sheik.

Who Are They?

One of the cooler underappreciated aspects of The Legend of Zelda series is the touches of Japanese weirdness Nintendo brings to an otherwise vaguely Western medieval fantasy world. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time deserves a lot of credit for translating the epic adventure to 3D. But we don’t praise it enough for teaming up Link with basically a ninja, Sheik, who turns out to be the princess in disguise.

Smash History

By the time Super Smash Bros. Melee came out the cat was out of the bag and everyone knew Princess Zelda and Sheik were the same person. So in their debut appearance you could actually shift between both characters in the middle of battles, and this was carried over into Brawl. However, from Smash Wii U/3DS onwards, Zelda and Sheik were made wholly separate characters, which was just fine for folks who always preferred playing as Sheik anyway.

What Looks New in Ultimate?

With her blazing ground and aerial speed, needling projectiles, and ability to vanish and reappear with an explosion, Sheik has consistently been one of the best characters in Smash Bros. Right now we don’t see that changing in Ultimate because if anything most of her moves have been buffed. She carries over her great new tools from Smash Wii U/3DS including Burst Grenade and Bouncing Fish. And she even has a snazzy new Raging Demon-esque Final Smash and an outfit inspired by Breath of the Wild.

Our Hopes?

Historically Sheik’s biggest weakness in Smash has been a lack of a consistent kill moves. But her ability to quickly rack up damage is so effective her lack of a finisher is probably for the best. As with most already great characters, we just hope Sheik isn’t so great as to make the rest of the characters less interesting.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate releases Dec. 7 for Nintendo Switch. Until we can play more for ourselves, changes we talk about here are mostly speculation. For more thoughts check out our Smash hands-on as well as cool Switch games to play that aren’t Smash Bros., because those definitely exist.