Falco Lombardi

## General

Falco Lombardi (ファルコ・ランバルディ) is a main character from the Star Fox series, and has been a veteran of the Super Smash Bros. series since Super Smash Bros. Melee. He is well-known for his brash, egotistical personality and position as the "Ace Pilot" of the Star Fox crew to accompany it. Despite this, though, he still often seems a bit annoyed at his subordinate status to his leader, Fox.

## Attributes

Like the other Star Fox fighters, Falco is a middleweight and speedy fighter with a diverse moveset, featuring a plethora of powerful and long-ranged aerials coupled with great smashes and a versatile group of specials that augment all aspects of his gameplay. Highly combo focused, he utilizes his great hitboxes and neutral special in order to catch opponents and open them up for starters that can either quickly rack percentage or carry the opponent looking for a kill.

His Blaster is a fantastic projectile, able to rack up minor damage and stun foes with high range and very little commitment when properly auto-canceled, and his back air is one of the best of it's kind with the range and lingering hitbox to almost shut down low-range characters alone. Additionally, his Reflector both possesses an almost instantaneous hitbox that can be cancelled immediately and another usage with the Reflector kick, which gives a lingering disjoint capable of shutting down almost any approach. This combined with his fast jab and down smash gives Falco supreme control over the neutral few characters can boast, with tools to combat almost every other archetype in the game.

Possibly stronger than his neutral, however, is his combo game. His Reflector is at the core of it, giving Falco a quick, powerful extender that's easy to follow up, complimented by set of fast and potent aerials that effectively chain into the rest of his moveset well. His massive jump height informs this, giving him an easy way to follow up on the number of upwards-launching attacks he utilizes. His forward aerial is unique with an autocancel and mult-hit that can drag opponents along with it, giving Falco an option to pull opponents back down onto the ground for further followups if the opportunity allows it. His neutral aerial is another multi-hit, but is weaker at early percentages and ends faster, being a quick, effective way to rack percentage that doesn't require any particular followups. Besides just as a spacing tool, the weak hitbox of back aerial has hitstun and an autocancel, allowing Falco to easily catch grounded opponents and setup for his other moves, on top of the low initial knockback of it along back aerial strings to carry opponents across the stage or even kill opponents at low percentage. His grounded options to combo are more limited, but among them is his great up tilt, an upward launching double hit with a great hitbox and low recovery that can be used to prop up opponents for further followups.

Among his amazing aerials is his signature down aerial, which, while very usable in the midst of combos to spike opponents against the ground for resets, shines strongest as one of his finishing moves. If he can successfully knock an opponent off stage, his down aerial's early hitbox is a powerful spike almost always assuring a KO if it connects on an edgeguard. Besides this, his back aerial has high scaling and shine can form a strong kill option if he can catch an opponent at the right range, capable of chaining together multiple to KO opponents off of low ceilings. However, Falco doesn't purely need to rely on these tools for KOs. He has a set of Smash Attacks that kill incredibly early, and possess a mix of large, lingering hitboxes or high speed that can easily catch opponents on reads or punishes.

Falco's more middling or weak qualities are apparent when he's not controlling the game, however. While his recovery is far from weak due to his high jump height, usable side special that does not incur helplessness, and additional tool in the Crusade airdodge, it is still somewhat lacking in distance overall and relies on resources like the double jump and airdodge to patch up it's poor qualities rather than simply being solid on it's own merits, rendering lengthy edgeguards capable of depriving him of them. Additionally, his light weight and high falling speed cause trouble on the receiving end of combos, as it allows him to both be killed early and effectively juggled with how often he stays in follow up range of his opponents. Additionally, characters more specialized with disjoints like swords or projectile gameplay can cause trouble or outshine Falco in his normally dominant neutral.

Still, Falco's strong traits are very apparent and an experienced player can often circumvent these disadvantage weaknesses with careful and commanding play.

## Moveset

* Falco can **wall jump**.

*For a gallery of Falco's hitboxes, see here.*

## In competitive play

### Notable Players

**Jape**

**NastyKactus**