Castle Siege

Castle Siege (, Castle Siege) is a Fire Emblem stage in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It was first revealed for Brawl at E3 2006. It is based upon themes and motifs from the series as a whole, rather than one particular title, due to the stage not resembling any game of the series. The stage takes place at an unnamed castle, transitioning between the castle's roof, its throne room and an underground lava cavern.

In Brawl and Ultimate, Marth is fought here in his unlocking battle and and  are also fought here in their unlocking battles in the latter.

Stage overview
The match begins on a small section of the roof of the castle, which has two elevated platforms. The castle itself is being bombarded with catapulted fireballs, but these do not affect the match.

After forty seconds, the ground begins to rumble, and the stage transitions into the throne room of the castle. It is a walk-off, as the floor reaches both of the lateral blast lines. There are four platforms, two of which are supported by statues. These statues can be attacked, and each one will break if it takes enough damage, which destroys the platform it is supporting. In Brawl and Smash 4, these statues can be hit by projectiles, potentially blocking their travel, but in Ultimate, the statues are intangible to indirect attacks.

After forty seconds in the throne room, the ground begins rumbling again, and the stage transitions to an underground cavern. It consists of a single large stone platform which balances on a stone spire, tilting in both directions.

After forty seconds in the underground cavern, the ground begins to rumble once more, as the stage transitions back to the first segment on the castle roof, and the cycle repeats.

While the stage is transitioning between segments, it is a temporary walk-off. This can have the effect of saving a character who would have been otherwise unable to recover, as the ground comes from beneath; for example, Bowser players attempting a stalled Flying Slam or Ganondorf players attempting a stalled aerial Flame Choke. However, players must make sure to move to the center of the stage if it is not transitioning to the throne room, as when the stage is done transitioning, players that are on the sides of the ground will fall rapidly with the ground, easily causing a self-destruct.

Ω forms and Battlefield form
In Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, the Ω form is set on a completely flat version of the first segment of the regular form, the castle roof. The stage does not transform.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Ω form and Battlefield form are set in the first segment of the normal form, and the main platform is similar in design to SSB4's Ω form; however, it does not extend below the blast line, and it is resized and reshaped to match and, respectively. The three soft platforms of the Battlefield form bear the design seen on the platforms of the second segment, the throne room.

Hazards Off
With hazards off in Ultimate, the stage never transitions and remains in the first form atop the castle.

Origin
Throughout the series, the main objective for many chapters is to seize a castle, which is the inspiration for the theme of this stage. The Fire Emblem games typically depict castles as immense fortresses surrounded by woodlands, which provide extra defense for surrounding units. The first segment of this stage depicts one of these castles, where attacks are being launched from a forest in the background.

A common motif throughout the Fire Emblem series is that many of the villains belong to a draconian race, or use s and s in battle. The flags in this stage depict a dragon; while not identical to any particular flag in the series, it bears similarities to the flags of and, the main antagonistic nations in ' and ', respectively.

In various Fire Emblem games, appear as ranged weapons. Specific varieties known as and  are used by a class known as s in ', ', and Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. These projectile weapons launch flaming or explosive missiles at their targets. The weapons in the background of the stage are presumably similar, but are described as catapults, and are launching fireballs rather than explosives.

The second segment of the stage resembles a throne room; many major chapters in the Fire Emblem series involving seizing a throne from a powerful boss, such as a. In the background of the indoor area, a General can be seen sitting on a throne; the Brawl and versions bear a resemblance to the Black Knight from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and , while the Ultimate version wears more distinct red armor. Other s with red armor also appear throughout the indoor area; the opposing armies in Fire Emblem games traditionally wear red. These soldiers wear full body armor and wield swords, similar to that of enemy units in Radiant Dawn.

The collapsing statues that appear in the throne room may have been inspired by the destructible terrain in various other Fire Emblem games, specifically being introduced in . The Binding Blade also introduced stages that take place in underground areas surrounded by magma, which have become a recurring theme throughout the series. The final segment of Castle Siege is designed to represent one of these areas.

In Brawl
This stage is generally a counterpick, but may be a starter in less restrictive rulesets. Though the stage has mostly unobtrusive hazards, the layout changes can give advantages or disadvantages to certain characters. In particular, the second segment has walk-off blast lines; these can allow easy or early KOs, especially for characters with chaingrabs, such as the. The statues in the second segment also block projectiles, which can limit approach options for characters such as or.

In Smash 4
Castle Siege was formerly included in rulesets as a counterpick, due to chaingrabs being non-existent and therefore not being abusable on the walk-off edges on the second segment. However, the second segment still has issues with the statues (which block projectiles and increase hitlag), as well as an unusually high top blast line. Combined with the walk-offs, the stage is seen as unfairly beneficial to characters with poor recoveries, such as ; as a result, it was seen as too strong of a counterpick and has been banned in major rulesets since GENESIS 3.

In Ultimate
With the introduction of the stage hazard toggle, Castle Siege doesn't transition past the first segment. Because of this, it was proposed as a legal stage during the earlier phases of the Ultimate metagame. However, it quickly proved to be controversial due to its asymmetrical layout and small size, as well as the slanted floor giving a disadvantage to projectile-focused characters, and the camera on the bottom right sometimes obstructing the view and hindering recovery and edgeguarding attempts. The stage was legal early on at tournaments such as, but it quickly fell out of favour with it being one of the least played stages in the tournaments where it is legal.

Trivia

 * Pokémon Trainer stands in the little parapet on the right when he's on the first scene of the stage; if there are 3 or 4 Pokémon Trainers, 2 will stand in the parapet on the right, while the others will stand in the smaller parapet in the background.
 * In Brawl, pausing the game while the stage is going through a transition will allow the transition to end more quickly, since the game continues to load the stage while the game is paused. When viewing a replay of a match with such a pause, the game will slow down during the transition to accommodate for the lost time. A similar effect happens with special moves that involve character-switching. This was fixed in Smash 4 by having all segments of the stage loaded at once.
 * If a match on Castle Siege goes into Sudden Death, it will begin on whichever segment the match ended on instead of always starting on the first section. This is likely done so the game doesn't have to reload the top level before Sudden Death.
 * In Smash 4, there is a visual bug on the regular form of this stage: once the stage has transitioned, the sun in the background of the first scene no longer has its blue glow during subseqent visits, for the rest of the match.
 * In Ultimate, the following Assist Trophies can only appear on the Battlefield and Omega forms of this stage: Burrowing Snagret, Color TV-Game 15, Devil, Dr. Kawashima, the Squid Sisters, and Knuckles. The Moon, Andross, and Nikki cannot be summoned on this stage at all, likely due to some of the dark backgrounds.
 * In the Fire Emblem Heroes-styled illustration from the Smash Bros. Countdown depicting Castle Siege, the original flag emblem in the background is replaced with the emblem of.