I played, SSB: Brawl for the first time today, and fell in love with it. Although I had hoped to play it earlier (before it came out :p) I still had fun in my six hour marathon. The lack of wavedashing, lightsheilding etc barely phased me, I was too overwhelmed by awesome. Whilst there are definitely many characters worth playing, Metaknight stands out with his awesome agility and flight making it easy to combo and go after the smashball. Sonic, who I was looking forward to handles like...well...a hedgehog. Glad to say the clones aren't too similar, although the assist trophies and final smashes fall into pretty clear categories -_-. FS's include "Instant KO on one player" and "Swarm" and assist's "Sword/fist", "Distraction" and "AOE" with the occasional oddity. Still, that's my only gripe, otherwise it's the best damn fighter EVER and possibly the best GAME ever as well. ^ ^ Oh, and they toned down some of the characters awesome, but they destroyed Marth T.T. Can't have everything, but Brawl comes pretty close ;) .
Updates may follow my next play session Thursday week, not that anyone reads this :p.