Roy

Roy.png

**Roy** (ロイ, *Roy*) is a playable character in *Super Smash Bros. All Stars*. He was formally revealed after Lucas and released alongside him and Ryu on August 23rd, 2018. Jun Fukuyama reprises his role as Roy's voice actor and provides new voice clips and ones that mimic those from *Super Smash Bros. Melee*.

Roy is currently ranked 44th out of 58 on the *SSB4* tier list, placing him in the E tier and making him the lowest ranking DLC character. This is a noticeable improvement from his placement in *Melee*, where he was ranked 20th out of 26. Two of Roy's greatest perks are his overall mobility and attack speed: his ground and air speeds are among the fastest in the game, while a few of his key attacks also boast quick start-up overall, allowing him to react quickly to an opponent's openings. This complements Roy's inverse tipper mechanic, with large, easy-to-land sweetspots near the hilt of his Sword of Seals, while his fast maneuverability provides him many opportunities to deal powerful hits by simply being close to the opponent.

His combo game at low to medium percentages is also extremely damaging due to his throws, neutral attack and first hit of neutral aerial being able to set up into his other moves. Coupled with the power of his sweetspotted attacks, most of which are capable of KOing at realistic percentages despite their quick speed, Roy's throws and attacks are generally very rewarding to land, and he has no trouble sending damaged opponents off-stage.

However, Roy's playstyle is risky due to several factors. Despite his speed, he has an ineffective approach due of his high commitment aerials and poor horizontal attack range. Furthermore, despite his very fast air speed, he has very slow air acceleration, forcing him to be committal to his approaches in general, and makes him very open to retaliation if he whiffs a move since he is unable to retreat once he begins an approach. Roy has poor range for a swordsman, and while he has an inverse tipper mechanic, it essentially rewards him for playing in a risky manner. This is further compounded by his aerial attacks being incapable of autocanceling from a short hop. Altogether, these traits force Roy to be a lot more committal in comparison to other sword characters.

His throw combos are also inconsistent due to his throws' low hitstun, and his combo game past low percentages is poor, largely due to the knockback of his sweetspotted moves being too high to allow follow-ups. This makes him heavily reliant on reads and thus giving him few KO set-ups apart from his neutral attack and neutral aerial at high percentages. Roy also suffers from a poor recovery: Blazer's predictability and low vertical distance makes him vulnerable to semi-spikes, which is made worse by his very quick falling speed also making him an easy target to combo.

Overall, Roy is a "high-risk, high-reward" character who relies on finding openings using his speed before converging into highly damaging close range combos, while walling opponents out with fast attacks. However, he has to be more committal in comparison to other sword characters, forcing the player to limit his approaches without being overly aggressive. As a result, while he has improved overall since *Melee*, buffs to other veterans have also allowed them to fare better in the metagame. Due to these factors, Roy has below average tournament representation, though he has achieved some degree of competitive success, thanks to the efforts of Hyper Kirby.