Ness (Super Smash Flash 2)

Ness is a playable veteran starter character in Super Smash Flash 2. His moveset is based on his attacks in the Super Smash Bros. series. His sprites are custom made and based on his appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. He is a starter character which is recurring change in the main Super Smash Bros. games where his availability status switches between starter and unlockable. His voice clips are from Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Ness is great on air, having a strong aerial game unless there's no surface. His aerial attacks have good range, power and the ability to double jump cancel hence gaining you momentum and acceleration. Having these acrobatic abilities gives you an advantage over a lot of characters and give you multiple combo options, Ness fully utilizes his air game in stages like Battlefield and Dracula's Castle stage he can hop on different platforms and follow up aerials easier. After weakening your opponent with the aerials, Ness has strong finishers such as his back throw, up smash, down smash, back aerial, up throw and forward smash. However there are some characters that can counter Ness' aerials, so Ness can also play defensively with his projectiles and follow up with his ground attacks. It's really easy for Ness to play defensively since most of his attacks have good range, can use his down special (PSI Magnet) to absorb projectiles and has his own projectiles such as the PK Fire and Thunder.

Unfortunately, if there's no surface for Ness while he's in the air his mediocre and predictable recovery is easily punishable and very easy to edge-guard. Being a light character doesn't help either since he can be knocked out stage and then edge-guarded which is why Ness has to play very cautiously on air and defensively when on ground.

Ness appears to have a small player base and poor representation in online tournaments. This is not surprising, given that Ness is one of the most vulnerable characters when taking lag into account. However, Nstinct and Appley, who are the two most notable Ness players, tend to place high in tournaments with him.

Attributes
It's difficult to generalize Ness due to his diverse attributes. He has finishers in his forward smash, PK Flash, PK Thunder 2, back throw, back and up aerials.

He has a great air game with fast and powerful aerials combined with his ability to double jump cancel which gives him a great flexibility in the air that most other characters don't posses.

He has a good grab and throw game, despite possessing the sixth shortest grab in the current demo. He can chain grab certain characters with his down throw or use it to start combos. His back throw is one of the strongest throws in the game, that can KO opponents at around 100%. His up throw sets up for good air combos.

He has a good projectile in his PK Fire which can help him rack up damage by trapping the opponent while also being useful for edge guarding and can create shield pressure. He also has multiple different options to deal with other projectiles. He has the ability to absorb energy-based projectiles with PSI Magnet, healing himself in the process, and can reflect most of them with his forward smash.

However, Ness's major flaw is his poor range which leaves him vulnerable to characters with disjointed hitboxes (ex. and ). Another disadvantage of his poor range is that most of his finishers requires Ness to be close to his opponent while his only finisher with reach, his forward smash, is slow and predictable.

Ness's second major flaw is his recovery, which will leave Ness as a sitting duck until he sets up the PK Thunder 2. During this time, his opponent can get easy hits, cancel out the thunder (thus gimping his recovery), or even hit Ness into his own thunder, causing him to rocket off at a bad angle and die.

Ness has average weight, but below average accelerated falling speed, which allows him to be KO'ed vertically early.

Ness also has problems dealing with projectiles that he is unable to absorb, which makes him struggle against characters like and.

Misc.

 * On-screen appearance: Teleports in using PK Teleport, then shakes off the soot he gathered upon impact.
 * Taunts:
 * Standard: Ness nods and says "Ok".
 * Side: Points his baseball bat forward.
 * Down: Fires a series of sparkles in front of him. The pattern in which he fires the sparkles may be a reference to PK Rockin.
 * Victory theme: Remix of Victory fanfare from Melee.
 * Win: Jumps around twice, then nods his head two times.
 * Lose: Simply claps for the winner.

Changes from v0.9a
Ness has received a string of buffs. His KO options and recovery are overall better. However, Ness appears to not be more effective than he was last demo.

Notable players

 * Nstinct
 * Appley
 * WRXJoey

Tier placement history
Ness was seen as a bottom-low tier character when he was first introduced in demo v0.7. In the tier lists for demos v0.7; Ness was ranked 14th of D tier on the first list and 13th of E tier on the second list. In demo v0.8b; like, Ness had a huge tier leap with ranking 2nd of S tier. In demo v0.9a; Ness had a huge tier drop(the biggest drop between demos v0.8b and v0.9a) by ranking 22nd of what can considered C tier where he is now viewed as a low tier character. In demo v0.9b, Ness rose up one position where he is currently ranked 21st of B tier and is seen as a middle tier character. However, the changes in the metagame led to Ness's drop to 24th place of C+ on the second tier list for demo v0.9b.

Trivia

 * Ness along with ,  and are the only characters so far to wear their default costumes in team battle when they are on the red team.
 * Ness,, , , and  are the only characters who had an unlockable status in the main Super Smash Bros. games to be starters in SSF2. While  and  are also starters; they had to be unlocked in the demo they debuted in.
 * Ness is the first character in SSF2 to receive custom made sprites.