Falco (PM)

Falco is a playable character in the Brawl mod Project M. He was remade to be nearly identical to his Melee counterpart in terms of attack hitboxes and animations.

Falco ranks 22nd out of 41 on the official tier list, near the lower half of the B tier, a significant drop from his 4th out of 26 and 7th out of 38 positions on the Melee and Brawl tier lists, respectively. His standing is slightly improved in Project+, where he ranks 20th in the, at the end of the A tier.

Attributes
Falco retains his strength of having an above-average on-stage game, as he possesses a rather powerful and formidable comboing game in his repertoire.

However, Falco has some major issues with his survivability, which compose most of his weaknesses. He is among the lightest characters in the game (he weighs as much as, , and ), and is therefore easy to knock off the stage horizontally. Additionally, his recovery continues to be one of the worst in the game; this is due to a few factors, including a very low air speed, an extremely fast falling speed, and his two recovery options, Fire Bird and Falco Phantasm, not providing enough distance.

In addition, other characters have been buffed in Project M to the point where Falco's matchups are not as favorable as they were in Melee.

Given that Falco was among the best characters in Melee however, and has transitioned better than other Melee top tier characters (such as ) he remains a significant threat to most of the roster.

Changes from Melee to PM
Falco was slightly nerfed overall in the transition from Melee to Project M. He was reverted to become a clone of Fox again, rather than a semi-clone (as he was in Brawl). While he gained situational options from his Brawl incarnation, he lost a fair amount of his camping prowess due to the damage decay of lasers. Additionally, the strong hitbox of his down aerial now lasts less than half of its duration from Melee, forcing Falco to time his down aerial far more precisely than he had to before to approach, pressure, and KO with it.

Overall, Falco is still very strong and has the tools to take on any character. However, he is less effective in the metagame because he must now contend with not only his nerfs, but the prevalence of more floaty characters that he cannot combo as easily.

Moveset
Up to date as of version 3.6.

Notable tech
Labbing Discord Tech Post

Most historically significant players
Any number following the Smasher name indicates placement on the PMRank 2019, which recognizes the official top 50 players in the world in Project M during 2019.

See also: Category:Falco players (PM)
 * (#37)
 * - Ranked 8th in Arizona.
 * (#27)
 * (#23) - The best Falco player in the world. Currently ranked 4th on the Massachusetts Project M Power Rankings.
 * - 9th at and . Formerly ranked 3rd on the SoCal Project M Power Rankings.

Project M
Falco now has an alternative costume based off of his appearance in Melee, and Star Fox 64. There are four variations of this costume: the original and the three team colors used in Melee.

Project+
Falco has three new recolors for his default costume; a sky blue one similar to one in Smash 4, a pink one loosely inspired by Katt Monroe from early Star Fox titles, and a purple one inspired by his rival Panther Caroso from Star Fox Assault. The pink Melee outfit is similar to a hidden costume in the 20XX Melee training pack.

Z-Secret Costume: Star Fox Adventures Falco

R-Secret Costume: Star Fox Assault Falco

Trivia

 * Oddly, Falco's Melee portrait in the Character Selection screen is mirrored, with his reflector and holster being on the wrong positions, and he faces right. Whenever any of his costumes is used in battle, his portrait shows him facing left, which is the correct position.