A Princess that appears to be getting better and better each game, Peach is a sought-after character for competitors. However, with great result and character ability comes the difficulty in playing her. Discussions on the ability to play Peach have had some result in saying she's a fairly difficult character to play because she is a technical character. Like every character, she has her strengths and weaknesses in both match up and moveset.





Neutral and Movement

Peach has always been fairly unique in her movement ability. Her ground speed has never been the fastest, which means she has to make up for this with her fantastic aerial mobility. Her double jump and float become her saving grace. Despite her movement options being a little difficult to use in respect to the other characters, when Peach does have an opening, her punish game makes up for it. In the meantime, Peach has to be extremely clever on her positioning, as not only does she have to be at a particular range to be successful, but she also has to avoid the characters who challenge that range exceptionally well.

LloD says: “She can compensate for her slow ground speed with aerial mobility, especially the up-down mixups she has with float into immediate fastfall, allowing her to utilize mixups like tomahawks and fall-through-platform bairs. She's not afraid to trade with multi-hit moves, as she would take a few percent in return for doing 15% in return. Her float mixups, shield pressure, huge bair, threats of side-b and toad, and combo potential make her really really strong once she gets in that close range."

With her float cancel, Peach has the ability to send out a flurry of aerials, each with high damage potential. This of course, is a huge problem for opponent’s approaching as the risk is very high. Unfortunately for Peach, this isn’t a huge issue for characters that use projectiles. Peach has a difficulty against zoning opponents as projectiles, 'get off me' options and disjointed hitboxes make it hard for her to get to an ideal distance from her opponent. If they have a large disjoint like Corrin, Lucina and Marth, it proves difficult for Peach to get to that ideal close/mid range that she needs. The 'get off me' options are really hard for Peach to deal with, especially as she had difficulty getting through a barrage of projectiles in the first place. For example, Pacman, Megaman, Villager give her a difficult time as well as the sword characters that are also blessed with projectiles. This would include Robin, Mii Swordsmen, and the Link trio. Mostly, Peach needs to be at close to mid range to be at her most effective.

Some of the downsides of Peach's movement include her approach with turnips. Sadly, her turnips can be counterplayed with a wide array moves from aerials, dash attacks and tilts. These moves will catch out Peach's turnips and also throw out the intended hitbox in one swoop.



LloD says: "This makes it harder for Peach to approach with turnips. with moves such as full hop turnip throw into nair, as well as use turnips defensively like dash back into turnip throw. This is because the opponent can more freely throughout moves to eat through the turnip and hit her in her turnip-throw-animation lag."

It's not all doom and gloom for Peach in the neutral. Though the aforementioned characters give Peach a hard time, they are a small portion of the roster. Most of the cast can struggle with her neutral options. Her best matchups are characters that can't outrange her or camp her. She does well against rushdown characters, as she can catch them out with her floating aerials and tilts easily. As well as this, she does exceptionally well against characters she can repeatedly edgeguard such as Snake and Olimar.





Combo Potential and Damage Output

Peach has an incredible potential in her punish game. Her down tilt is exceptionally useful when followed with float cancelled aerials. Down tilt sends the opponent at a large trajectory which means it’s easy to follow into her float cancelled aerials. For example, if Peach down tilts her opponent and it send them forward, she can follow up with a float cancelled neutral air or if it sends them more of upwards and forwards angle, Peach can use up air as the first hit of her up air drags the opponent back down towards her and positions the opponent right in front of her. Unfortunately for the opponent, Peach has a scary number of tools from her move set that she can continue with, be it her down tilt again, grab, dash attack or even another float cancel aerial. With this many options and an insane combo extension ability, Peach proves to be terrifying to counterplay.

Her punish game isn’t limited to only her aerials. Peach still has some very scary turnips; in the opponent's worst scenario, there's the dreaded Stitchface but her Mr. Saturn also breaks shields easily. A fantastic option is using turnip out of shield into down tilt. As previously mentioned before, down tilt is a wonderful combo starter that breeds the possibility of starting a combo at a better percent. Turnip out of shield is a great option if you’re playing on the defense and need to flip the gameplay to the offensive. The slight downfall is that you must already have a turnip in hand to do this.

LloD says: "As well as her punish game, Peach also has a wonderful shield pressure game. If spaced well enough, her floating aerials are 'safe on shield' as she has a fast double jab, a multi-hit dsmash, toad, down tilt, and many other options to challenge the opponent's out of shield options. Other important shield pressure options include her side-b on shield, which places her close enough to the opponent afterwards to challenge their out-of-shield options with another floating aerial, as well as mid-height float down air on shield, which combos into double jump forward air/neutral air if the dair hits. Alternatively, it can be followed up with a falling neutral air if the opponent shields all 4 hits of the down air."

Peach is very much a hard hitter which gives her the gift of early kill potential. Her forward air has massive knockback, often killing at the 90% range with rage, and sometimes even earlier if you can land an offstage forward air or they're a lighter character. With heavier characters on larger stages, her forward air is still likely her go-to kill move, if possible. Fortunately for Peach, she has many other options for killing the opponent which include her side-b, up smash, dash attack, Toad, and her floating kill aerials like back air and neutral air. Even back throw is useful as a kill option. As a last resort, Peach could refer to her smash attacks such as down smash and forward smash. Up air and forward throw are ideal if it's hard to get the first few options listed, though Peach would benefit more from a combination of edgeguarding and forward airs off the stage. In addition to this, though it's not outright a 'kill move', Peach’s bread and butter grab combo usually includes down throw into either back air or up air. This tends to work around low to mid percent on the majority of the cast and sets them up for some big damage.

Fortunately for Peach's opponents, she's not a completely broken powerhouse. Her options out-of-shield are fairly limited. This is because her hitboxes on her good out-of-shield options, such as floating short hop neutral air or back air, are relatively small. This means Peach must have a good understanding of her opponent's spacing after they've hit her shield. Naturally, some players will pull away after an attack on shield, so sometimes there has to be a read on Peach's part as to whether they'll continue the pressure on shield or back off. Turnip out-of-shield is great, but it requires Peach to already have a turnip at hand. Finally, Peach can upsmash out of shield and it will work on tall characters who are hitting her shield in an unsafe way. This will potentially get a kill sometimes too!



LloD says: "Peach is likely one of the best characters in the game, though she requires extremely tight execution due to the nature of her float-canceled aerials. She also doesn't have many multi-hit nor lingering moves that she can throw out in neutral compared to the rest of the cast, meaning that her move choices need to be made with much greater intention and precision. That being said, if one has complete control over her movement and is able to throw out intelligent furies of hitboxes, then she can out-damage anyone in the cast."





Edgeguarding and Recovery

Peach's scary turnips can play a huge role in edgeguarding if Peach chooses to not go offstage to kill. The reasons for that maybe that certain characters have a fantastic recovery that may outspeed Peach or potentially spike her while she's leaving the stage. Turnip snipes are certainly not a bad option if the Peach feels uncomfortable going offstage against those particular characters. However, beware of using only turnips as an edgeguard option as opponents will learn to dodge them, especially if there's no mixup to how their thrown.

LloD says: "She has no difficulty running off stage and utilizing her float, double jump, and large hitboxes of her aerials to confirm the edgeguard. She can sometimes go for hard reads with wild side-b's, but generally she has more success with the rest of her toolkit. Her ledge trapping is pretty good too, with her quick floating aerials covering multiple options, and her full hop forward air can kill tournament winners."

Last but not least, Peach essentially has the ability to fly. Characters that are offstage will have a disadvantage as she'll be able to float out to the opponent, secure the kill, and make it back with next to no problems. Peach should remain wary of the characters that will challenge her float techniques well and characters that are recovering high. Peach can absolutely still deal with high recovery but, with the majority of the cast having a spike, it's good to keep in mind. Peach can drift out of the way easily, providing the player is aware of the offstage dangers of the opponent character. The same bonus applies to when Peach is recovering. Peach can make it tricky for the opponent to edgeguard her as she can wait offstage with a float. Many opponents will commit to moves trying to edgeguard her. What this means is that Peach can wait for the right opportunity for a whiff and either recover or recover and punish, depending on if she has the time.

Peach seems to be a very complex character and has been in the previous Smash games too. Peach players will have to win the execution test each and every time to be successful in winning the set. This said, though she's seemingly harder to play than many of the characters on the roster, the reward for maining this character is a sweet reward. With high level players such as Samsora taking her to her highest possible potential, it's exciting to see exactly what Peach will be able to do in these existing matchups and any new characters match ups that may be unveiled in the future. With the game still relatively new, we can look forward to more intricate techniques being discovered for Peach. Good luck in your pools, and don't let the Princess down!

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