Chibi-Robo (Super Smash Flash 2)

Chibi-Robo is a newcomer starter character in Super Smash Flash 2. He was announced along with and  at the McLeodGaming's booth for Super Smash Flash 2 in APEX 2014. He is accompanied by his best friend, Telly Vision, to give him "support on battles", though Telly is not part of Chibi-Robo's moveset.

Chibi-Robo is currently ranked 14th out of 39 on the current the tier list, placing him in the mid B+ tier, a noticeable rise from his last place position of 25th on the last tier list. Chibi-Robo's strengths include a disjointed range and good priority in most of his attacks, as well as some reliable finishing moves in his up aerial, back aerial, first part of neutral aerial, up smash, up tilt, forward smash, back throw and down smash (when sweetspotted, most notoriously finishing off opponents with his sweetspotted up aerial). He has a good reflection in Pick Up, which allows him to store a projectile and release it whenever he wants, thus allowing for some good projectile shenanigans. Chibi's Toothbrush is a good recovery move that covers a large horizontal distance at the cost of a rather neglegible height loss, which is easily compensated by both his double jump and his up special, the Chibi-Copter. He has a fast projectile, the Chibi-Blaster, that can be aimed freely, limiting his opponent's approach options. Chibi has a great grab and throw game too, due to possessing a long range grab with throws that can lead directly into his finishers via DI traps or kill the opponent straight up. His combo game is also potent, if straightforward. Common combo starters and extenders include his down tilt, forward aerial, neutral aerial, up tilt, and his up and down throws that can often combo into each other and finish with a sweetspotted up aerial, Chibi-Robo's most reliable KO move.

However, Chibi-Robo has a high fall speed, which makes him combo fodder at most percentages. His horizontal recovery move, Toothbrush, is fairly linear, thus limiting its effectiveness at high level play. To top it off, Chibi has below average weight, making him one of the easier characters to KO in the game. This makes it more of problem that he is easy to combo, since he will be KO'ed early horizontally, thus making him relatively easy to zero to death. Another hindrance is that while Chibi has plenty of finishing moves and even more setups into them, most of those setups also require the Chibi player to successfully read the D.I. of his opponent in order to net the stock. In addition, Chibi's out of shield game is fairly weak, making him ineffective at dealing with strong shield pressure outside of rolling or committing to a laggy up smash or up tilt, which has less ending lag but also a much smaller hitbox. Chibi also notably suffers from opponents that can take advantage of his lacking mobility such as or Captain Falcon or outrange him with superior disjoints. His reflector, Pick Up, also tends to be glitched, causing most expelled projectiles to be useless in battle.

Historically, Chibi as a character has had a small playerbase, and even less noteworthy players that actively use him in tournaments outside of the now somewhat inactive Drarky and Cookies. Despite this, Chibi jumped up to B+ tier where he is no longer considered the worst character in the game on the second tier list, his strenghts now being apparent, making him a high tier character.

Attributes
Chibi-Robo has disjointed range in the majority of his attacks that can help him out-space his opponents. His attacks are also possess a good amount of priority. Chibi-Robo has finishers in his back aerial, sweetspotted up aerial, up smash, forward smash, back throw, sweet spotted down smash, his neutral aerial at higher percents and Pick Up, if the projectile captured was powerful. He has a spammable projectile in Chibi-Blaster that can help punish approaches, anti-air opponents or gimp opponents when they are trying to recover. He has a long recovery move in Toothbrush, which has high priority.

In terms of a grab & throw game, Chibi-Robo's is among the best in the game despite having a somewhat laggy tether grab, the second longest grab range after. His up and down throw are great for starting combos, getting great follow ups and being able to get kill confirms, if the D.I. is read correctly. This works on characters of all accelerated falling speeds. His forward throw can set up techchases on characters with high acclerated falling speed or even confirm into a kill with up or down aerial if the throw is DI'ed poorly, which can easily happen due to the speed of the throw. His back throw is a strong kill throw that can kill characters as early as 80% close to the ledge but is heavily hampered by proper DI, in which case opponents can live up to or even over 140%.

Chibi-Robo has one of the strongest air games in the demo, with each aerial being useful. Neutral and forward aerials are great for approaching and starting combos, with the latter arguably being Chibi-Robo´s best combo tool outside of his throws. Back air is strong and has good range, while also being a great spacing tool. Up air is one of the strongest up airs in the demo and has a good hitbox that can be combo'ed into from a majority of Chibi's other moves. Down air has the weakest knockback of all his aerials, but is a strong combo starter on grounded opponents and boasts impressive vertical range, making it a big threat to any offstage opponent.

On the other side, Chibi-Robo also has some significant flaws that hinder him greatly.

For starters, most of his KO confirms can be avoided by proper DI, mostly seen when he tries to get a kill confirm off of his throws, where if he misses grabbing the opponent, it will lead to Chibi being punished hard. Even if he gets the grab, he has to read the opponent's D.I. correctly in order to net a stock. This issue can be migitated by the sheer number of DI mixups that can all lead into a KO, but against players with proper DI and knowledge of those setups (or even just a missed input), it can be surprisingly difficult to seal the stock nonetheless. He cannot reliably combo into his smash attacks outside of a few select setups that are avoidable, and his forward and up smash also are notorious for not properly connecting on opponents.

His main means of recovery, Toothbrush leaves Chibi-Robo wide open from all sides but his front and travels rather slowly, making it easy to intercept for skilled edgeguarders. His projectile, while being spammable, also has massive lag on startup if grounded and very little hitstun, what weakens it's utility. Chibi's range in some of his attacks leaves him open to characters with disjoints in the majority of their attacks. He is also a high faller (the lightest of all the high fallers), which makes him susceptible to combos and chain grabs, with the combination of his below average weight makes him easy to zero to death horizontally.

Changes from v0.9b
Chibi-Robo was buffed in that he gained a better vertical recovery and more kill options.

Tier placement history
On the first tier list of v0.9b, Chibi-Robo was placed last on the tier list of 29th in C tier, showing a really weak standing compared to the other two characters who introduced with him. On the second tier list, Chibi-Robo was bumped up to 25th of C+ tier, showing that Chibi's metagame had improved over the time between the two tier lists. However, on the third and final tier list of v0.9b, Chibi-Robo bumped down to 26th of C tier, making him a bottom tier character again.

Trivia

 * Chibi-Robo was unfinished during his initial reveal, with many of the sprites unshaded or unfinished. It was built off of Samus as a base, and had unfinished attacks still showing her sprites or using her idle animation.
 * The Nintendo Direct on December 18, 2013 that showcased Chibi-Robo!: Photo Finder for the Nintendo 3DS made the devs decide to release him in demo v0.9b. This is most likely the reason his model was incomplete when he was revealed.
 * Chibi-Robo is the first 2nd party newcomer in to be introduced in Super Smash Flash 2, while other newcomers were 3rd and 4th party.
 * Chibi-Robo is currently the only character to be able to catch projectiles.
 * Chibi-Robo is the only character with a long-ranged grab not to have a tether recovery.