Pyra and Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are finally present and powerful in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. These legendary blades are powerful artificial beings that are used as sentient weapons in the world of Xenoblade - and they also have pretty huge personalities, too, as we can see from their reveal trailer.
If you log in to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate today you will be met with both Pyra and Mythra, and unless you watched Sakurai’s Pyra & Mythra livestream in painstaking detail, then you may have missed what is actually so different about the pair. Well, as it turns out, a lot of things, despite them being the same character.
You may be able to flick between both at will, but that doesn’t cover everything you can do with these two characters. As you swap between them you should also be swapping between your strategies and making sure you’re at the optimal distance to make the most of your abilities. For all of those differences you need to keep in mind, just read on below.
Attack Speed And Power
Attack speed and attack power will ultimately be the two big deciders between how you will play as both Pyra and Mythra. Pyra’s attacks come out a fair bit slower, giving your opponent more chance to block, but when they connect they do much more damage, and more knockback, making you more likely to score a kill. Mythra is the opposite; her attacks are fast, but don’t actually offer that much damage or knockback.
You’d think this would make one clearly better than the other, but that attack speed difference is huge. You will be able to interrupt enemies before they hit you as Mythra, whereas Pyra will almost certainly be taking a lot more hits when they actually connect.
Movement Speed
Attack speed is a big difference, but in Super Smash Bros., movement speed is even bigger - and you won’t believe it until you have these characters in your hands. Mythra is much, much faster than Pyra, and Smash players who gravitate towards speedy characters like Sheik will love her.
Mythra can easily weave in and out of the line of fire, and a quick spot dash can send her a good distance, making it simple for her to close the gap and launch a quick attack. It’s for this reason that Mythra will probably be the one of the pair that you play as the most. Deal damage and put your opponent at a disadvantage with Mythra’s speed, and then swap to Pyra to land a finishing blow.
Attack Hitboxes
Many of the attacks the pair have are similar - you’ll be hard pressed to notice too much of a difference between their tilt and aerial moves. But the differences are there. For example, some of the hitboxes will have slightly different properties, in addition to slower speeds for Pyra’s version of the attacks. Down air has a spike hitbox on the tip of the blade for Pyra, while Mythra’s doesn’t have a spike hitbox at all.
Pyra’s attacks, in addition to being stronger and slower, are also typically a bit longer, giving her slightly more range, especially on that devastating side-smash. This will be excellent for keeping foes off stage, unless they recover low.
Special Moves
The range of special moves the pair has are almost entirely different. They all have different names, for one, but their use cases are also slightly altered. The down special swaps between the pair, of course, but there are bigger changes.
Pyra’s neutral special, Flame Nova, makes her sword spin around her in a fiery light. Mythra’s Lightning Buster equivalent stretches out far in front of her, and although a fully-charged version of the move does have rear hitboxes, only small ones. Their up specials are probably the biggest difference though, with Pyra’s Prominence Revolt practically being a death sentence while off-stage - just like Cloud - and Mythra’s Ray of Punishment giving her more mobility while falling, in addition to a rain of arrows when the move is charged. Nice.
Final Smash
Finally, the final smashes are different, of course. In both attacks Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 joins in on the action. With Pyra he helps raise a column of flames from the ground in Burning Sword, and with Mythra they rain down light arrows with Sacred Arrow. They’re both very cool, but hey, who even plays with final smash attacks turned on anyway?