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. His sprites are custom-made and 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 42nd out of 47 on the the tier list, placing him in the C tier, a noticeable drop from his last place position of 15th on the previous 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 aerial attacks, smash attacks, up tilt, and back throw. He is able to reflect using Pick Up, which allows him to store a projectile and release it whenever he wants, thus allowing for some good projectile shenanigans. His Toothbrush is a good recovery move that covers a large horizontal distance at the cost of a rather negligible height loss, which is easily compensated by both his midair jump and his up special move, Chibi-Copter. He has a fast projectile, Chibi-Blaster, that can be aimed freely, limiting his opponent's approach options. Chibi-Robo has a great grab and throw game as well, due to possessing a long-ranged grab with throws that can lead directly into his finishers via DI traps or simply KO the opponent. His combo game is also potent, if straightforward. Common combo starters and extenders include his down tilt, forward aerial, neutral aerial, up tilt, up throw, and down throw 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 high gravity, 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-Robo has a 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 can be KO'd early horizontally, thus making him relatively easy to zero-to-death. Another hindrance is that while Chibi-Robo has plenty of finishing moves and even more setups into them, most of those setups also require the player to successfully read the DI of their opponent in order to net the stock. In addition, his 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-Robo 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-Robo as a character has had a small playerbase with few noteworthy players that actively use him in tournaments outside of the now somewhat inactive Drarky and Cookies. Though his strengths are apparent, his significant weaknesses make him a low-tier character.

Attributes
Chibi-Robo is a relatively lightweight character who has disjointed range in the majority of his attacks that can help him out-space his opponents. His attacks 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, and neutral aerial, as well as 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 and throw game, Chibi-Robo's is among the best in the game despite having a somewhat laggy grab. He has the second longest grab range in the game after, and the grab can uniquely be angled up or down. His up and down throw are great for starting combos, getting great follow-ups and getting KO confirms, if the DI is read correctly. This works on characters of all accelerated falling speeds. His forward throw can set up tech chases on characters with high accelerated falling speed or even confirm into a KO with up aerial 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 throw that can KO 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 also has one of the strongest air games, with each aerial being useful in its own way. 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. His back aerial is strong and has good range, while also doubling as an effective spacing tool. His up aerial is one of the strongest in the game and has a sizable hitbox that can be comboed into from a majority of his other moves. Though his down aerial has the weakest knockback of all his aerials, it is a strong meteor smash and combo starter on grounded opponents that boasts impressive vertical range, making it a big threat to any offstage opponent.

Despite these numerous strengths, Chibi-Robo also has some significant flaws that severely give him a disadvantage.

For instance, most of his KO confirms can be avoided by proper DI, mostly seen when he tries to get a KO confirm off of his throws; if his grab misses the opponent, it will lead to Chibi-Robo being wide open for attack to the move's ending lag. Even if he manages to connect it, he has to read the opponent's DI correctly in order to net a stock. This issue can be mitigated 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 take the stock nonetheless. He also 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 horizontal recovery, Toothbrush, leaves Chibi-Robo completely open from all sides (except his front), and travels rather slowly, making it easy for skilled edgeguarders to intercept it. Additionally, though Chibi-Blaster is spammable, it also has massive lag on startup if grounded and very little hitstun, which weakens its utility. Chibi-Robo's range in some of his attacks leaves him open to characters with disjointed hitboxes in the majority of their attacks. He also has high gravity, 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.

In the end, Chibi-Robo is a character who runs hot and cold. He has several powerful strengths that can make him a formidable fighter in the hands of an experienced player. However, his flaws are significant enough to outweigh them, making him a low-tier character.

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. He 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 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 and are the only characters with a long-ranged grab, who lack a tether grab.