Jun Mizusawa reprises her role as Zelda's voice actor from Ocarina of Time, Melee and Twilight Princess, with some voice clips recycled from Melee, along with ones newly recorded.
Having previously appeared in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Zelda reappears in Brawl as a character utilizing strong magical attacks, but despite many of her attributes being strongly buffed, her tier position is a slight drop from Melee at 37 out of 38 compared to 22 out of 26 in the earlier game. While Zelda possesses fast, powerful attacks, some of the most powerful aerials in Brawl, and a fast and powerful multihit up smash that is nearly impossible to SDI out of and covers the area around her, Zelda suffers from a combination of severe character build flaws. These flaws include a very inconvenient combination of attributes similar to Mewtwo (slow, light, tall, and floaty), her almost non-existent approach options, possessing a moveset that consists nearly entirely of unreliable finishers (which makes it difficult for her to KO despite her abundance of powerful attacks, and leaves her with an almost non-existent comboing game, with her down tilt being her only move that can set up well), a rather situational projectile that cannot force approaches, and her predictable and unreliable recovery (her primary recovery move suffers from major angular issues, and she does not have access to an alternate recovery move nor the air speed and jumping abilities to make it back without using a recovery move). This has left her with terrible tournament results and having terrible matchups against many higher tiered characters, ultimately clocking her in F Tier right above the worst spot (with Ganondorf being the only fighter ranked lower than her) - although the combination of her and her transformation, Sheik is higher at 24/38, placed in the D tier (though this is based on theory rather than actual practice). While Zelda is ranked as one of the worst characters in the game in the American and European tier list, in Japan she is ranked significantly higher, 16th in the high tier along with Sheik, as they are considered as a single character.
Zelda is a floaty, lightweight character with poor momentum canceling (making her very easy to KO but difficult to chain throw) with strong, graceful attacks, usually augmented with magic. Many of her moves hit multiple times before causing knockback. This allows her to easily deal large damage to multiple targets, but it also means that these attacks can be DI'd out of fairly easily. She has very good defensive options, with her up and side smashes having fast start-up and multiple hitboxes, her down smash having almost no start-up lag, and locking opponents with her down tilt. She can juggle at lower percentages thanks to her up smash's fast, multiple hitboxes. Her directional aerials are single, powerful blows that cause a lot of damage and knockback if landed properly, but they are extremely weak and have low stun when sourspotted. Many of her moves make powerful finishers, including her smash attacks, her up tilt, and aerials. Her strong defense is counterbalanced by her generally poor mobility (very slow dash speed and low aerial speed). Her grab is long ranged, but very slow (especially for a non-tether grab) making it hard to land without set ups, and it cannot be used out of shield in most cases like a normal grab. Zelda can be described as a glass cannon: she can pump out a lot of damage if the opponent approaches her, but she will not survive long once she starts getting hit.
Her special attacks are also assets to Zelda, granting her a projectile, reflector, a teleport with large range and the ability to transform into her alter ego, Sheik. Din's Fire is long ranged, has a large hitbox when and deals good damage when fully charged, KOs at high percents, cannot properly be reflected, can be controlled, and be used for edgeguarding. However, it is predictable and avoidable against skilled players (easy to spot dodge or air dodge), being difficult to camp with against most characters (with few exceptions, like the Ice Climbers and slow characters). Nayru's Love is a decent duration reflector attack and spacing tool but suffers from high ending lag. Despite her defensive game, it is easy to force her to play offensively and she has terrible approach options, because of her poor approach aerials and very slow dash speed and grab. As mentioned before, she cannot always camp with her Din's Fire either. This means despite her defensive game, she gets very few chances to use it and instead is forced to play with her horrible offensive game due to her very limited approach. Farore's Wind is a long distance recovery/attack, but her linear recovery is below average (falls almost straight down after it, and she has a small ledge sweetspot range) among cast members because of its low reliability as it's also easy to hit her before she disappears due to its slow start-up.
In the end, Zelda relies on her strong defensive game and potential power to overcome her weaknesses, which is usually hard to do. Zelda is a character that has hard time to approach her opponents, but once she does, she can be a devastating character. Transform can also shore up some of Zelda's weaknesses by turning into Sheik, and vice-versa.
Zelda has been given major, direct buffs from Melee to Brawl: her already high power has been increased from Melee due to her gaining several, new powerful finishers like her down smash, down aerial and Din's Fire. Her moveset deals slightly more damage overall and she benefits from various additions including SDI multipliers and the fact that stale move negation no longer affects individual hits of multi-hit moves. The universally decreased falling speeds also further improve her KO power as none of her vertical finishers received a nerf to their power.
However, changes to the mechanics have mitigated these buffs and harmed Zelda overall, making her arguably even worse relative to the cast than in Melee: her flaws from the previous game remain and were exacerbated by the physics changes due to her below average weight being lowered further (although this benefits her matchup against King Dedede) and her slower falling speed and lower gravity making her even floatier. Her poor mobility while improved also remains very slow despite the increases to her walking, dashing and air speeds. Despite her moves doing more damage, her poor damage racking game has been further weakened: her powerful moves are harder to hit with due to their smaller hitboxes and the introduction of several sourspots, while her grab game was greatly weakened despite the improvements her grabs received due to the slower falling speeds and the introduction of hitstun canceling no longer allowing her to chaingrab with her up throws or removing many of her previous follow-ups with her down throw. Lastly, Transform takes a lot longer to perform and Sheik has been significantly nerfed in her own right making transforming into Sheik a much less effective strategy than in Melee.
Overall despite her improvements, Zelda still remains one of the worst characters in the game and she still heavily struggles against much of the rest of the cast.
Zelda dashes faster (1.1 → 1.224), no longer having the slowest dashing speed.
Air dodge has a longer duration (frames 4-19 → 4-29) no longer being the worst in the game.
Spot dodge has less startup lag and a longer duration (frames 3-20 → 2-20). It also has less ending lag (FAF 33 → 26).
Zelda's traction is significantly lower (0.1 → 0.054), especially when comparing with the returning veterans, now going from being tied out with other three characters for the highest traction to one of the lowest. This makes it harder for her to punish out of shield and provides almost no benefits due to the removal of wavedashing.
Zelda has slightly faster air speed (0.95 → 0.987).
As with the returning veterans, Zelda's falling speed is slower (1.4 → 1.13). Compared to the returning veterans, however, Zelda falls faster.
Zelda is lighter (90 → 85), which when combined with the previous point, worsens her already poor endurance.
Her lower weight however does allow her to be knocked down by King Dedede's down throw preventing her from being chain grabbed by it.
Zelda's gravity is lower (0.073 → 0.067), making her floatier and reaching her maximum falling speed slower. However, this doesn't compensate for her worse endurance than in Melee.
Zelda's glide toss covers more distance especially her backwards glide toss.
The first two hits now uses set knockback instead of base knockback (10 (base) → 0, 0 (set) → 50/43/30/7), allowing it to more reliably connect into the third hit.
Down tilt has a longer duration (frames 5-7 → 5-11) and less ending lag (FAF 30 → 25). It now has a 40% tripping chance further improving its follow-up potential.
Up smash has larger hitboxes and connects significantly more reliably. It also deals more damage due to changes to stale move negation (14% → 15%), has more KO potential due to universally decreased falling speeds and the multi-hits now have set knockback and can now trip opponents.
Its looping hits have a lower SDI multiplier (1.0x → 0.1x) making it harder to escape.
It has more startup (frame 5 → 6) and ending lag (FAF 51 → 57).
It hits one less time, hitting eleven times instead of twelve.
Down smash has more knockback scaling, improving its KO potential especially the front hit due to its increased damage (90 (front), 80 (back) → 95/85). This, combined with its improved semi-spike trajectory (30° → 20°), makes it much better for gimping characters with poor horizontal recoveries and setting up edgeguards. The back hit also has less startup lag (frame 13 → 12).
Both hits have a shorter duration (frames 4-7 (front), 13-16 (back) → 4-6/12-14) and it has more ending lag (FAF 32 → 40). It also has less intangibility (frames 4-16 → 4-14).
Down smash's front hit deals 1% more damage (11% → 12%), but the back hit deals 1% less (11% → 10%) with its knockback compensated (80 (scaling) → 85).
Sweetspotted Lightning Kicks are now takes priority over the sourspots (ID 2 → 0) and now have significant amounts of hitlag and can no longer be SDI'd. This grants Lightning Kicks greater followup potential.
Sourspotted Lightning Kicks are significantly weaker and deals drastically less damage (10% → 4%). The sweetspots now last for only 1 frame as opposed to 4 in Melee, while the rest of the attack's frames deal the same damage a sourspotted Lightning Kick would deal. The sweetspotted hitbox's size is also significantly smaller (5.2u → 1.7u) , being around a third of the size from Melee (although their increased priority somewhat compensates for this). They also have more landing lag (18 frames → 22) which is further exacerbated with the removal of L-canceling.
Forward aerial:
Forward aerial's sweetspot had its knockback adjusted (30 (base)/96 (scaling) → 34/95) increasing its KO potential.
It also has a longer duration (frames 8-11 → 8-12).
It has more ending lag (FAF 36 → 40), preventing Zelda from performing two forward aerials in a short hop.
Back aerial:
Back aerial's sweetspot deals more base knockback (30 → 40).
Up aerial deals more damage (13% → 15%) and has its knockback values adjusted (0 (base), 120 (scaling) → 30/110), improving its KO potential to the point where it is now the strongest up aerial in the game. It also has less landing lag (25 frames → 22).
It has a smaller hitbox and can also no longer auto-cancel out of a short hop due to it a later auto-cancel window (frame 45 → 56).
Down aerial has gained a clean sweetspot for 1 frame, which is similar to that of her Lightning Kicks, dealing much more damage (7% → 16%) and knockback (5 (base), 85 (scaling) → 50/90) powerfully meteor smashing foes with a slightly different angle (275° → 270°). However, it cannot land on a grounded opponent.
The sourspotted hit can now trip opponents and has a longer duration (frames 14-17 → 14-24) and less landing lag (24 frames → 21).
Its late hits deal less damage (8%/7% → 5%/4%).
It has more ending lag (FAF 43 → 45).
Down aerial's animation has been altered. Zelda's body is more upright when stomping down with her left arm placed a bit more to her side.
Grab range is longer, now being the 3rd longest non-tether grab in the game.
Dash grab has less startup lag (frame 12 → 11) and Zelda now lunges forward when using a dash grab giving it more range. Both it and standing grab also have less ending lag (FAF 31 (standing), frame 41 (dash) → 30/40).
Down throw sends opponents higher due to universally decreased falling speeds and has had some of its follow-ups removed which when combined with the changes to hitstun weakens its combo ability.
Nayru's Love can now be used to perform a "Love jump" increasing its utility. It also has a higher maximum damage output due to changes to stale move negation (13% → 15%) and the final hit can now semi-spike improving its edgeguarding potential.
The move has more startup lag on its hitboxes (frame 6 → 7) and invincibility and reflect periods (frame 4 → 5).
Zelda has a different voice clip when using Nayru's Love.
The size and power of Din's Fire now increases as it travels further, can be controlled easier, detonates quicker, deals more damage (7%-13% → 8%-16%), has less lag, deals more knockback, and is faster to use.
Zelda no longer vocalizes when detonating Din's Fire.
Stale-move negation now resets when Transform is used meaning that if Zelda transforms, all of Sheik's moves will be fresh rather than carrying over the staleness from Zelda's moves. This is especially beneficial as stale-move negation now effects knockback.
Due to the game disc no longer automatically loading Sheik and Zelda's data at the same time rather than having it loaded at all times as in Melee, Transform takes much longer to complete and no longer takes a consistent amount of time. This allows the opponent to set up a punish on Sheik for simply performing the move, and makes Transforming into Sheik for a faster, more reliable playstyle a much larger risk.
Zelda has a Final Smash, Light Arrow. Zelda pulls out the Bow of Light and shoots a Light Arrow. The Light Arrow deals high damage and incredible knockback, and will usually one-hit KO anyone who gets hit by it. Sheik also has Light Arrow has her Final Smash, albeit with slight differences.
Zelda steps forward and slashes one arm in front of her, with a trail of sparkles. The attack has moderate knockback. The tip of the attack hits backwards, while the base hits forwards. Can be angled.
Zelda crouches and kicks her foot in front of her, hitting opponents low. The tip of her foot meteor smashes grounded opponents and launches airborne opponents upwards. Can make the opponent trip, allowing for multiple follow-ups.
Zelda shoves her arms in front of her and pushes foes in front of her away with a boost of magic power. Any foes caught in the sweetspot of the move will shocked and knocked upwards.
Zelda charges magic energy in her right hand and flashes it in front of herself, hitting opponents multiple times before knocking them away. Can pressure shields and deals great knockback. However, it can be SDI'd out of (though it requires good timing).
Zelda charges magic energy in her left hand and waves it above her head twice, hitting opponents multiple times before knocking them away. At low percentages, especially against heavy characters, this can combo several times with itself, and is also easily followed by an up tilt.
Zelda quickly kicks on both sides of herself, knocking opponents away. It is the fastest down smash in the game (tied with R.O.B) with good semi-spike knockback. The leg Zelda strikes with is intangible.
Zelda quickly kicks in front of herself, dealing great damage and knockback if the opponent is hit at the beginning of the move and just the tip of her boot. Otherwise, the opponent is hit with low damage and knockback.
Zelda stomps her foot below herself, meteoring opponents. The initial hitbox deals a powerful meteor (the 3rd strongest meteor smash in the game, whereas later hitboxes hit opponents with less force, albeit still a meteor.
Zelda forces her opponent under her and shoots magic from her hands at them, before knocking them behind herself. Can be followed up with a Bair if well timed.
Zelda pulls out a large magical bow and light arrow which she fires in a straight, horizontal line across the stage. It can strike multiple opponents with one-hit KO power, but the damage decreases for each successive target. Launches opponents at a 45° angle.
Zelda has one of the weakest matchup spreads in the game. She counters one character, Ganondorf, has four even matchups, soft countered by eight characters, countered by fourteen characters, hard countered by seven characters and has two nearly unwinnable matchups.
Zelda was initially seen as a solid middle tier character, being ranked 20th on the first tier list; her significant buffs in Brawl made her a very powerful character that was able to compete decently with the then inexperienced playerbase, who did not utilise much camping and were not as capable of evading attacks. As the metagame progressed however, it became realized Zelda's buffs did little to address the very significant problems of her character design; Din's Fire was still a rather difficult to land projectile that could not easily force approaches while Zelda herself was still very slow and incapable of initiating approaches, and her moveset still consisted of unreliable finishers that made it very difficult for her to rack up damage as well as reliably KO when the opponent is in KO range. As Brawl became more defensive based and camping became more prevalent, Zelda's problems were significantly exacerbated, and it gradually became clearer that Zelda was a poorly-designed character that could not remotely viably compete.
Zelda's decline started slowly, with her only falling two places on the second tier list. But it picked up on the third tier list with her falling four places, and then she took a nose dive on the fourth tier list to 35th in bottom tier as the fourth worst character. She fell even farther to being ranked the second worst character on the fifth tier list, and has been stuck there since, which is also the largest tier drop any character experienced in Brawl. Nowadays Zelda's position is just as low, and there are some players who even think that Zelda is the worst character in Brawl and not Ganondorf (similar to the disagreement between both Pichu and Kirby's placements on Melee's tier list). While Zelda does have a few players dedicated to using her, her overall playerbase is very small and makes virtually no impact, so it is unlikely Zelda's competitive prospects will ever improve in Brawl.
While Zelda performs poorly in Brawl singles, she performs a bit better in doubles, where her significant flaws are less exploitable, and her strengths are a bit more advantageous. Riot, for example, routinely places well in doubles events in his region, while he usually performs mediocre in singles, if he enters singles at all.
In the Subspace Emissary single-player mode, Zelda and Peach have two different storylines, depending on which one is saved from Petey Piranha.
Zelda and Peach in the Subspace Emissary.
At the start, she and Peach are watching a friendly match between Mario and Kirby. After the Halberd appears, she and Peach rush from offstage after the stadium is attacked by the Primid. The player can choose out of the four to fight off the Primids. When the Ancient Minister appears and drops a Subspace bomb, Mario is blasted away by a cannonball when he tries to stop it. Zelda and Peach are captured by Petey Piranha. The player, as Kirby, must save either Peach or Zelda by destroying one of their cages.
If Zelda is saved, she joins Kirby as they both escape from the stadium on a Warp Star. They are pursued by the Halberd, and land on top of it. Soon they fall off and reach the ground, fighting along through hordes of Subspace foes. Later on, Kirby leaves Zelda behind, and Bowser appears from the sky and turns her into a trophy.
The Shadow Bugs (which came along with Bowser) make a clone of Zelda while he takes the real Zelda. The clone proceeds to ambush Link and Yoshi with a Dark Cannon. However, Pit destroys the Dark Cannon and he and Mario fight and defeat her. When the clone is defeated, Link witnesses her trophy disintegrating into Shadow Bugs and, believing it was the real Zelda, proceeds to attack both Mario and Pit with Yoshi’s help. Mario and Pit defeat them and turn them into trophies and then Link and Yoshi fall into a state of unconsciousness as trophies. Kirby then revives them as King Dedede snatches them with his cargo (already hauling Luigi, Ness, and Peach). The five heroes chase after Dedede to his castle which is in ruins after Bowser stormed it and took Peach's trophy. The group then catches up to Bowser at a cliff but he escapes with Peach's trophy and flies to the Halberd where Zelda is already being held.
If Zelda was not saved, Wario appears whilst she is trapped under her wrecked cage. He blasts her with a Dark Cannon and turns her into a trophy, before fleeing the stadium with her. She is later captured by King Dedede when he ambushes Wario and steals his Cargo along with Ness. As he passes Link and company, Link spots her on the back of the Cargo, and Pit shoots the Cargo, slowing it down so that they can pursue Dedede.
Dedede puts his own Dedede brooch on her, but when Bowser attacks his castle, he finds her trophy and takes it. However, he is pursued by Mario and Pit, and when Pit fires an arrow at Bowser, the Dedede brooch falls off and is found by Kirby. Bowser escapes in the Koopa Clown Car and takes her trophy up to the waiting Halberd.
After this point, the storylines are the same regardless of who was rescued.
At a later part of the story, Zelda and Peach are discovered by Lucario, Meta Knight, and Snake in cages aboard the Battleship Halberd, stuck in their trophy form. Shadow Bugs of the princesses then fight the trio. After being freed, Snake tells both Zelda and Peach to stay in the room that they were being held captive in. Zelda transforms into Sheik, and both she and Peach make their way to the deck of the Halberd, against Snake's orders.
When Fox attacks the Halberd against and nearly hits Peach by accident, Sheik uses Vanish to appear on top of Fox's Arwing. She then breaks the cockpit and Fox ejects, and they both fall to the Halberd. Just as they begin to fight, Peach holds up a hand and yells, "Hi!" Both Fox and Sheik look over, and find Peach has just offered them both tea. Fox, looking confused, looks to Sheik, to find she has already begun to drink. Fox accepts the tea and they do not fight again.
Zelda/Sheik helps Peach, Fox, Lucario, Snake and Falco defeat Duon. She is on the Halberd when Meta Knight lands it and meets up with the two other groups. Sometime between the Halberd's retaking and before the Subspace Bomb detonation at the Isle of Ancients, she returns to Zelda's appearance.
During the fight against Tabuu, Zelda (along with all the other characters) gets turned into a trophy. If she is revived, she, along with Link, revives Ganondorf and points out what happened. She then aids the heroes in defeating Tabuu at the end of the story.
Zelda, like Luigi, doesn't have the trophy form pose of her collectible trophy. She instead has her arm in front of her rather than behind, as in her down taunt.
Almost all of Zelda's moves are magic attacks. A magic sticker covers all of her moves except for down tilt, down smash, Din's Fire, sourspotted forward, back and down aerial and all ledge and floor attacks. A leg sticker covers all of those moves, except for Din's Fire and her slow ledge attack, the latter being an arm attack. Din's Fire is boosted by explosive stickers, and along with up aerial and the second hit of Farore's Wind, flame stickers. Her forward tilt, Nayru's Love and Farore's Wind's first hit are boosted by slash stickers. Lastly, Zelda also benefits from electric stickers, as these will cover her neutral attack, up tilt, dash attack, up smash, forward smash, neutral aerial, Lightning Kicks, down aerial and down throw.
The princess of Hyrule. In other games, her role changes between titles. In Ocarina of Time, she was hunted by the would-be conqueror, Ganondorf. She deceived him, however, by adopting the persona of Sheik. In Twilight Princess, she surrendered to Zant and was held as his prisoner.
Princess Zelda's Final Smash. She wields a mighty bow of light with which she can attack from afar. Her arrow travels in a straight line and flies through all characters unlucky enough to be in the way. This attack cannot be blocked. The more enemies there are, the higher the chances to get them all with one shot. More is always better!
In the Super Smash Bros. Brawl manual, Zelda is referred to as a "queen" even though she is commonly referred to as "princess". This is because her Brawl appearance is based on the Zelda of Twilight Princess, who is queen de facto, but does not officially bear the title as her coronation was prevented by the events of the game.
Though Zelda's recovery goes farther than Sheik's, Sheik can actually go higher vertically from the ground.
The amount of transformation lag can be shortened by pausing the game during the transformation; doing this, however, causes a replay of the match to lag at the point of where the player transformed.
Unlike in Melee, where completing Classic mode with either Zelda or Sheik would get both Zelda and Sheik trophies, Brawl makes one play both characters separately at the end to retrieve their trophies.
During Zelda's down smash animation, there is a small rendering error where her arm twists the wrong way near the end of it. It only lasts for about one frame, however, and is nearly impossible to see in a normal match; in Training mode, where the player can set the game's speed at 1/4 and zoom in, the error "blinks" shortly. This error was fixed in SSB4.
Pikachu, Zelda, and Snake are the only characters in the game where all three of their taunts temporarily make a held item disappear.
If one looks closely at Zelda's boots, both sides on each via the buckles show metal studs styled akin to the Triforce seen in her home series. This aesthetic element is not part of her original design from Twilight Princess. The studs were removed from her model in SSB4.
Zelda and Sheik are the only two characters (in this game only) to share a character select icon. Melee only shows Zelda on its character selection screen despite her ability to turn into Sheik and vice versa being introduced in this game, while Smash 4 onwards splits the two into their own characters.
For some reason, Zelda's red alternate costume, unlike her other colors including her default, doesn't seem to be wearing gloves. SSB4, however, does give her her gloves.
Zelda's design is now based on her appearance in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
Zelda 
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