Douglas Jay Falcon, or Captain Falcon, is everything defining about melee turned up to 12. Fast as lightning, nigh impossible to control at first, almost always jumping around, and incomparably flashy. There's a reason he's a fan favorite. He has a simple, strong toolset with some of the best moves in the game along with being able to tank a lot of hits due to his weight. His noticeable flaws include a lack of powerful grounded moves, slower than average start up on his otherwise incredible aerial attacks, along with the weakest defensive options of the top tiers. In other words, he’s Melee's gorilla. A character of extreme strengths and weaknesses.
Given his relatively linear moveset, he has to creatively use his movement to dance around his opponent and position his moves appropriately. This is made all the more difficult by how unwieldy his excessive speed, both in the air and on the ground, make him. However, no character is able to take a little momentum in a match and run with it quite like Falcon. Once he gets a solid hit or grab, he can feel truly unstoppable. And, like all melee characters, he has limitless depth with new tech and strategies being discovered to this day.
Make no mistake however, when zoomed out far enough Falcon's plan is quite simple. You run around spacing his gigantic aerials or try to grab the other guy. Then hit them really, really hard. Like a wise man once said, everyone has a plan until they’re kneed in the face.
| Strengths |
Weaknesses
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- Extremely Fast and Mobile - Unrivaled combination of ground and air mobility allows for Falcon to fly across the screen and reposition nigh instantaneously, allowing for him to exert threat from far distances while being difficult to whiff punish himself
- Powerful Combos - The Captain has some of the deadliest and most explosive combos in the game off a full combo starter, giving him significant comeback potential
- Heavy Fast faller - His combination of high weight and fast falling speed makes him one of the most resilient characters to stray hits in the game, making dropped edge guards vs him particularly punishing
- Massive Aerials - Very few characters can consistently directly beat Falcon's aerial attack hitboxes, forcing many characters to instead call out his jumps or pressure his landing instead
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- Linear Toolset - Falcon's lack of powerful grounded moves can make him predictable in how he approaches various situations and forces Falcons to think outside of the box to get an opening
- Defense and Recovery - Falcon has notoriously limited options when forced to block pressure as well as being very limited in recovering once he's knocked offstage, even at low %s
- Startup - While Doug himself is quite fast, his moves have a significant amount of startup, leading to them having a propensity to be interrupted before the hitbox has come out. This emphasizes the need for proper positioning
- Low Profile - Falcon heavily struggles to deal with low profile as his grab often whiffs and his aerials that hit low to the ground take a long time to startup and can be blocked on reaction. Often, low profile has to be defeated indirectly, by reading what the opponent will do after it, or preemptively covering it
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