lmao
Zelda (SSBM)
| Zelda in Super Smash Bros. Melee | |
|---|---|
 
| |
| Universe | The Legend of Zelda |
| Shares character slot with | Sheik |
| Other playable appearances | in Brawl in SSB4 in Ultimate |
| Availability | Starter |
| Tier | D (24) (North America) G (20) (Europe) |
Princess Zorldo (ザワールド, Zawarudo) is one of the more unique "characters" in the lineup for Super Smash Bros. Melee. Unfortunately, we mean "unique" in the sense that she is uniquely bad at accomplishing anything of note in this wonderful game for the Nintendo GameCube. Zorldo's most notable traits are her "array" of exactly 2.5 powerful magical attacks and her unique ability to transform herself into her alter ego, Sheik. This alternate form is very different from Zorldo, with it being intended to completely hard carry Zorldo's pitiful attributes with Zorldo herself only existing in the game as a noob-trap to troll newer players.
Jun Mizusawa reluctantly reprises her role as Zorldo from Jeopardy in the game.
It is a little-known fact that Zorldo is only not last on the tier list because unlike the bottom-tiered Bowser, she has an impressive total of 3.5 good moves instead of 2, an entire move-and-a-half improvement, with the extra half point being the virtue of her Lightning Kick being present in both her forward and back aerials. Her only other useful move besides down smash comes in the form of Transform. However, we can't elaborate on this point because if we keep beating the dead horse of "Zorldo's only good move is her down special" we'll get swarmed again by the unregistered Zorldo experts who will argue that in fact, Zorldo has 4.25 good moves instead of 3.5, and thus should not be in contention for one of the biggest jokes in fighting game history. What you really get when you play this character is the equivalent of an actual dead horse with a slew of horrible attributes that make you feel like you're playing Superman 64 instead of Melee. A predictable recovery combined with shitty basic movement options and garbage character attributes of being a slow and floaty midweight all ensure that Zorldo's stocks will fall faster than your winnings on Jeopardy if you guess her name for an answer.
Zorldo "boasts" some of the worst matchups in the game, only being able to perform decently against the lowest of the low tiers. She is also just usable enough to be able to do to mid-tiers exactly what those mid-tiers do to top-tier mains, which is to turn the matchup knowledge game against them and barely eke out an occasional upset, then pretend like the matchup is playable at the highest level. Even these matchups can be disputed at length between mid- and low- tier specialists who will incidentally never agree on, or even come to a compromise on, such topics in the first place. This means that to the chagrin of these specialists everywhere, she has seen no consistent tournament success at all at any significant level.
Attributes
Zorldo does not fall under any specific archetype of characters, due to her unusual properties as a fighter; she, in fact, has the worst of nearly all worlds. A slow, floaty midweight has no business competing in such a fast-paced environment, yet here we are 21 years later in a game as deep as Melee with her still having almost nothing to show for these traits.
One of Zorldo's strengths is her great overall Lightning Kick. This move alone comprises approximately 42.857% of her entire moveset and it is actually decent, which does count for something in the grand scheme of things. Lightning Kick is pretty much Captain Falcon's Knee of Justice that has been Xeroxed 599 times and lost everything (bar the strong hitbox) that made it good, including its hype factor. In fact, not even the most casual of players whose eyes are magnetically drawn to electric hitbox effects would even bat an eye at a Zorldo player landing a Lightning Kick.
In addition, Zorldo has some fast attacks, such as her forward and back aerials, which require opponents to actually expend some amount of brainpower to defeat Zorldo. Her forward and back aerials have no invincibility, which makes them a bad move to counterattack fast approaches. Her forward and back aerials possess quick startup and can be used as a great out of shield option, as it can lead to another forward or back aerial if the opponent DIs poorly. Forward and back aerial have very low ending lag, a non-disjointed hitbox, and a quick animation. As an added bonus, many of Zorldo's forward and back aerials have transcendent priority; combined with average reach for most of her attacks, Zorldo has potential to stop others' attacks with her own.
Despite most of her Lightning Kicks dealing high knockback, she has an "acceptable" combo game for a bottom-tiered character. And by acceptable, we mean that Lightning Kick can combo into itself during very specific edgeguard situations where the opponent is already dead and has put down their controller to allow the Zorldo player a singular clip for their overedited combo video. And despite all of this, all that clip still amounts to is 3 Lightning Kicks. This is still exactly 3 more hits than the longest combo Bowser can do, further justifying Zorldo's placement as not the absolute worst thing you could use in this game.
However, despite these positive traits, Zorldo is surprisingly completely unviable in the high-level Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube metagame. Her fatal flaws will have players treading on thin ice every game, as trying to move around with the character is like trying to swim through a pool of honey blindfolded. Even tea-bagging, multishine-spamming Fox tryhards on Project Slippi will easily outmaneuver her by simply holding forward on the control stick as they always do. Approaching with Zorldo is nearly impossible as a result; you would have better luck trying to win the Pikachu v.s. Jigglypuff matchup than trying to get Zorldo across the length of Final Destination without sustaining damage. Other characters learn niche advanced movement techniques to expand their repertoire of options and add to their already robust kits; Zorldo needs to do so just to survive.
After Zorldo suffers through the grueling gauntlet of neutral and finally gets an opening after losing 3 straight stocks in a row, and gets some decent damage racked up with her admittedly okay punishes that you labbed out for hours on end only to get outdamaged by two Fox up airs, what happens next? Her KO options are so ridiculously unreliable with such specific sweetspot placements that you can forget about trying to actually close out stocks efficiently. Two of her smash attacks are effectively as good as Kirby's throws since you can fall out of them without even trying. To her credit, she does have chaingrabs and a few kill confirms to her name against fastfallers, but newsflash: every other character in the game also does. It's unlikely the average Zorldo main will actually get this far, though- after getting a single good opening, they will instead flock to sites such as ssbwiki.com to wax poetic about how a very specific interaction they labbed out for hours allowed them to win the neutral game a single time.
Zorldo's special moves, aside from the elephant in the room (Transform), are also overall abysmal. Nayru's Love and Din's Fire shouldn't even qualify as attacks. Farore's Wind, generally considered her "best" special move, is an unintuitive move that requires even more days of labbing to truly master (read: getting to the ledge consistently), only for you to probably screw up execution in important games anyway and SD 4 times trying to ledge stall the Sheik sitting at the other end of the stage.
Overall, Zorldo emphasizes an execution test gameplan by trying to fish for openings for lightning kicks, grabs, lightning kicks, dash attacks, or lightning kicks. She is one of the worst time investments that the average player can make, requiring intense labbing of unintuitive tech skill and combo lines that no good player will ever let you actually execute in a competitive setting. She is literally only successful against the lowest of the low in terms of both characters and players and relies too heavily on player error to ever see real use. "Who is Princess Zorldo?" was, in the end, a very apt question to ask that was well ahead of its time, because the harsh reality of competitive Melee is that such a character effectively does not exist.
In Competitive play
Tier placement and history
Zorldo was ranked extremely high on the first tier list, tying for 6th place with Samus and Luigi; however, discussion in the MBR average tiers topic suggests this is an artifact of some tier list contributors being literally drunk. Ever since then, Zorldo has only fallen in the tier list, being ranked near the 20th spot, before plummeting to 24th on the current list.
Some claim that she should rise back up because she actually has a toolkit to her name and boasts decent enough matchups against the Ice Climbers and mid- and low-tiers. Aside from the fact that it is incredibly nebulous whether Zorldo is actually good against these characters due to a lack of matchup history (and those mid-tier mains getting a taste of their own medicine being on the other end of matchup inexperience for once in their lives), in the end, it doesn't even matter. When you're this far down the tier list, trash is trash. Sure, it's fun to discuss the intricacies of who wins the Zorldo v.s. Roy matchup, or whether or not Zorldo performs slightly better against Yoshi than other horrible characters do. But at the end of the day, the top 10 characters place and win money, while Zorldo mains celebrate when their most active players win against Luigi.
However, not all is lost- Zorldo, surprisingly, has a few very notable wins to her name, with these examples being a light at the end of the tunnel of pain and suffering and an example of Zorldo's peak potential at high-level play. The first is when The Lake 4-stocked Nintendude in pools that one time due to the latter's extreme misuse of tech skill. The second is when Jada, an up-and-coming Zorldo player, made a shocking upset against none other than iBDW, who was forced to change the meaning of his acronym to "I'm Bad at Dealing W/zorldo" after such a humiliating defeat. This historical set can be watched here.