Over the last few days, I’ve trained an Isabelle amiibo, an Inkling amiibo and a Greninja amiibo. These results are preliminary, as I haven’t yet had the time to flesh out each amiibo and their training, but so far it’s looking like Greninja is actually a solid amiibo.
Bear in mind that all three of these amiibo are trained by me, and aren’t necessarily the best that their kind can be. Also bear in mind that I am not overly familiar with any of these three characters: I main Ganondorf and Jigglypuff. The possibility that these amiibo could be trained differently and turn out better is always there.
That being said, Greninja is a very good amiibo. I put him on a training regimen of up smash, up air and down air, and started him fresh instead of transferring over my old one. I chose his up smash because of the sweetspot, and because it can easily KO an opponent on the platform above him. If he hits an opponent with at low percents, he can follow it with an up air, which combos into itself. I never countered against him, and he has never used his counter move. This is what I observed while training him:
- Greninja knows how to use his aerials properly. Multiple times he used a down air to back air combo that I didn’t teach him.
- If demonstrated to him, Greninja can chain up airs together at low percents.
- He knows how to sweetspot his up smash automatically
- He doesn’t gimp very well, instead choosing to run off the stage and use his up special to recover. At low levels he likes to use his up special randomly, but that wears off quickly.
- Greninja learns faster than any amiibo in Smash 4. He adapted to Isabelle in one match: after that first match every game was close, with a pretty even victory spread. Both of them had learning turned ON.
I think my hunch on Greninja was partially correct. He’s a lot better than the other amiibo I’ve trained, save for possibly Isabelle. They seem to be roughly evenly matched, but results vary significantly depending the type of stage. Isabelle has the absolute advantage on flat and flatter stages, while Greninja has the advantage on smaller and platformed stages. Isabelle’s air-savvy attacks do give him a hard time.
Greninja’s smash attacks seem to be the key to victory for him. If he can get under his opponent, he can sweetspot them with an up smash and net massive damage, or a KO. If he is next to them, he can use his greatly-improved forward smash and do noteworthy damage and knockback. By the nature of DI, it’s better for him to KO vertically, and this effect is doubled when his vertical KO moves are taken into consideration. He doesn’t appear to have any glaringly obvious AI tendencies, either.
In conclusion, I suggest that you train a Greninja. Tell me what you think and how he compares to your other amiibo. If he ends up being too powerful of an amiibo, then I suppose we had better nerf Greninja.
Amiibo Doctor 