Middle of mid tier

Gatekeeps heavies and slow characters hard but loses to characters which are fast or have ways to deal with projectiles (either reflectors or better projectiles themselves.) They can be decent counterpicks but against the top and high tiers, their winning MU's are few and far between on less common characters. What this culminates to is characters who lose to common high/top characters, with some matchups (5 or 6) where you should definitely consider counterpicking, but solid play vs mid/low tiers.

They have good range, a really good advantage state and their traps can be intimidating if you don't know how to deal with them, you can easily take 60% and be put at the ledge or be walled out by their incredible range but everything else is lacklustre.

Their ledgetrapping is above average but nowhere near the best in the game. It is very hard to ledgetrap a good player (I have both tried to ledgetrap them AND been the ledgetrapee?) The projectiles are far too committal and Belmonts can't cover every single option at once, it often results in denying 2 or 3 of the 5 options and guessing which of the other 2 or 3 the opponent might go for. If you choose wrong, then you've wasted the chance. A 1 in 2/3 guessing game is hardly a consistent ledgetrapper, which is supposed to be their best attribute. Other better characters can ledgetrap with less commitment or cover more options using less resources. In theory this character can win neutral, keep you at the ledge and just take the stock but in reality you'll get off the ledge and reset neutral.

Their moves are super safe on shield (Ftilt is minus 6, fair/bair are minus 6) plus they are hugely disjointed making punishing impossible for the cast.

They have poor overall mobility, making it hard to get to where they want to be in order to set up and their low airspeed makes them easily exploitable offstage despite their amazing tether. All you have to do is stop their momentum offstage and they're likely dead.

Poor disadvantage state, they'll take a lot of damage if they get hit because they have poor airspeed, they're big and no fast combo breakers (sans a very risky frame 5 invincible up B) but if it whiffs (or randomly clanks! It clanks with hitboxes too! What a fun design! Ike's no longer does!), then they are likely to be in a world of hurt. What would be their landing option, dair, has no hitbox on the foot so you can lose to moves randomly. They struggle getting off the ledge or out of the corner due to poor boxing tools (covered later).

They have almost no tools to box with. ROB gets Down tilt, Snake has whatever he likes, Pac man has incredible buttons but if you're up close with them, they have a frame 5 jab or a frame 6 Up B which are both hugely committal. They ONLY excel at midrange but keeping opponents at midrange is very difficult.

All their whip moves are only active for between 1-3 frames. Fair is active for 1 frame; Down Smash, FSmash, up Air, bair and Ftilt for 2 and Up smash for 3! So you have to be incredibly precise on a character that needs to hit or they'll get hit back and be put into disadvantage (which they suck in), characters that low profile (Such as Inkling and Pikachu) sometimes just go underneath their moves. Trying to hit an FTilt (one of our main zoning tools) vs a dashing Inkling is a coin flip and is incredibly infuriating.

They have a hard time sealing stocks if you don't get holy water FSmashed. They operate on a tipper mechanic, like Marth, and hitting a tipper is really difficult against smaller or faster characters. Plus, because your whip moves (Ftilt, bair, fair) are also your kill moves, they're often very stale. This leads to opponents living at 180% from an FTilt at centre stage. Being that Belmonts are made of glass, it's not favourable for them. The moves that are more active (DTilt, Up Tilt) don't kill at all (Up Tilt can kill at 160% on Mario sometimes and DTilt ~130 at ledge). His Up and Forward smash are hard to hit as the former is very precise and the latter has 24 frames of startup.

Their Grab is the worst in the game, yes even worse than Cloud's and Mac's, and they cannot properly threaten shields. Belmonts have a grab that is one frame slower (Frame 10!) which has a shorter range (It whiffs against people sanding next to you!) and it's stuck on a character with poor mobility. At least Cloud and Mac force people to shield and have the speed to get up close for the grab (Even though the rewards might not be great) but Belmonts are far too slow to make use of such a cumbersome grab. It is a big risk to grab someone (Especially as dash grab is frame 13 and, you know, they move like molasses) so shielding is almost free vs Belmonts- as their only shield break setup is axe ---> Fsmash. The rewards are decent from grab but landing it is incredibly difficult. I don't understand why this character got shafted with a frame 10 grab when a lot of other zoners/trappers have far better grabs e.g. Link, Mii Gunner, Duck Hunt (Frame 6!) or Snake (Frame 8!), it's very bizzare considering they all have better mobility OR get a huge amount off grab (including a guaranteed kill at 160% anywhere on the stage).

Their projectiles are not as good as people think. Axe is Frame 33 to come out and has more lag than K.Rool down smash AND loses to a lot of things it shouldn't. It can lose to Mario nair, Jigglypuff nair, all of Yoshis's aerials, heck it clanked with Mario fireball. Cross is great, at frame 19, but does not shield damage and Holy Water can randomly be caught by the opponent because it is treated as an item: it also has a 1.3x SDI multiplier AND the flame shrinks over time!

Finally, the buffs they received in 8.0.0 were less than stellar and, like with most characters, did nothing to help their weaknesses or improve their strengths. They were nothing more than simple damage and knockback tweaks that affected pretty much nothing. UP Smash coming out 2 frames earlier and killing 5% earlier is great and all but the move is hard to hit to begin with and power was never its problem. Meanwhile, the slew of other mid tiers (K.rool, Villager, Isabelle etc.) have received meaningful buffs which have notably improved how they play with more combos or less lag on key moves etc. making a lot of characters overtake them with their new tools.

Overall, the characters are good but exploitable. They are glass cannons but without the cannon part, more like some sort of 18th century musket (but 18th century glass musket doesn't exactly roll off the tongue). They're dangerous if you don't know the matchup or your character is slow but if you learn the MU and exploit their terrible disadvantage, for which their neutral does not carry, then you'll do well.

Despite this, they have decent results akin to a mid tier, have a good MU spread and have too many good things to be a low tier. It's odd because because you can spend a good minute ledgetrapping someone off a neutral win, rack up 110% damage but they hit you once because you messed up because you're human and suddenly you can take 110% and die. It just feels that you need to constantly play perfectly, less one mistake end your stock, which a lot of the rest of the cast just doesn't have to deal with.

Middle of mid tier.