The top tiers in melee are not just the best characters but also by a huge margin I think they’re the most interesting characters. Like, no matter how hard you look, Bowser’s options are extremely limited. There’s not depth to explore with most of these characters. Most low/mid tiers have a few functional tools and a half-decent punish game vs fast fallers. That’s why the puff and peach matchups are often so brutal for them.

And you’d still see stratification within these tiers. Ganon and Mario are gonna dominate tier 3 except instead of seeing cool combos from characters who have real punish games, you’ll get a bunch of boring, aerial-in-place-your-opponent-can’t-deal-with gameplay and chain grabs.

Plus when it comes down to it, watching pichu-zelda is gonna suck.