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WarioWare: Get It Together! Character Rankings

Contributed by DJMMT

WarioWare: Get It Together! (WW) is a recently released collection of mini-games on the Nintendo Switch. It is the 9^th game in the series, spanning all the way back to the Gameboy Advance in 2003. What I really like about it is the fast-paced nature of the game. You can pick it up and put it down quickly, even just to play a few minutes at a time. I often play it while waiting for Noctis and his friends to drive to the next location in Final Fantasy XV, because I’m too cheap to pay for the fast travel. In the few minutes those car rides can take, you can easily play 5 – 10 games in WW. While this post is not a review, I highly recommend giving the free demo a try. It’s great fun for players of all ages.

WW has 20 playable characters, though technically speaking it only has 18, because two of the characters are clones that only become playable in multiplayer mode. Each of these characters have different abilities that can vary in numerous ways. Some characters are way more useful and manageable than others. Some aren’t bad, but also aren’t particularly good. And some of them are just flat out terrible. It’s important to note that these characters shouldn’t be judged in a vacuum. Their usefulness is defined by the mini-games featured in WW and how easy it is to beat them with each character. This becomes important, because completing the challenges requires you to use all the characters at times and allows you to select which characters you want to use at others.

Another thing to note about the characters is that the game relates each character to specific types of games, but this has nothing to do with their effectiveness at beating said games. It’s merely a storytelling device for the game’s plot. So I’ve taken the time to categorize the characters into three distinct groups (easy, medium, hard) based on how difficult it is to use them as well as ranked them as a whole for their effectiveness in the games. Be aware that I have ranked them based on their general effectives across all the games in WW rather than differentiating them by specific games, for the purposes of time. I’ve ranked them from worst, starting at 20^th, to best, ending at 1^st.

WarioWare: Get it Together! Character Ranking List

20. Penny (Hard)

Without question, Penny is the worst character in the game, because she’s the hardest to use. While there are a few games she excels at, she requires a level of skill and precision to wield effectively that eclipses any usefulness she might have had compared to literally every other character in the game. She has the ability to fly and shoot water. She can even float in place and shoot water in any direction. But her flying ability requires you to aim her water in the opposite direction you’d like her to go. You often overcompensate and end up missing your target. Given how fast-paced the games are, you also often forget to activate her hover in place ability and end up accidentally moving unintentionally. Penny is the worst character in the game by a landslide.

19. 9-Volt (Medium)

9-Volt is not hard to use so much as he’s hard top use effectively. His maneuverability is extremely limited, as you can’t control his movement. He constantly rolls back and forth while you use his yo-yo to hit things. While the developers have created a number of interesting ways to make this character playable in every sort of level, using him effectively can often come down to luck. If you miss your target, you have to wait for him to roll forward, reverse, and come all the way back before you can shoot again. It’s easy to lose games with 9-Volt for reasons that are out of your control.

18 – 17. Kat & Ana (Medium)

When playing in single player, you’ll use Kat almost exclusively, but the two characters are exactly the same save for their mirrored direction. These ninja sisters jump non-stop and fire shuriken when you press the action button. Like with 9-Volt, luck can play a factor when using these characters, though to a much smaller degree. In the case of Kat & Ana, you at least have full control of their horizontal movement. As these games are fast-paced and have little room for error, it’s easy to lose with these characters while you’re waiting for the next jump without wanting to overshoot your target. I will say that the gap in useability between these two and number 19 is quite large.

16. 18-Volt (Hard)

18-Volt can be very effective in certain games, but his limited mobility and requirement for near perfect aim make him a liability in a great many games. He cannot move on his own, but certain games allow him to move by shooting special objects. His disc throw is very fast, but you have to aim it completely manually. In a different more tailed set of mini-games, he could be really useful but in majority of the games in WW, he’s at best not the worst and at worst a hindrance to the player.

15.  Pyoro (Hard)

Pyoro might be the second hardest character to use in the game, but the nature of the games in WW make him way more manageable than Penny. Pyoro can walk left or right manually slowly, but easily and precisely. His actual power is his Yoshi-like tongue. The player can spit it out on command in the direction he’s facing, but the angle of the tongue cannot be changed and the tongue ricochets off other objects. This makes its trajectory very difficult to predict. Often you accidentally hit things you didn’t mean to, because of the ricochet. And if you happen to miss your intended target on the first try you have to wait until the tongue comes all the way back, aim again, and then relaunch the tongue. Pyoro can struggle in many games, but some of the games were built perfectly for his abilities.

14. Jimmy T (Medium)

I was on the fence about whether or not I should categorize Jimmy as Medium or Hard. He has the ability to move about freely through the air, but his movement is sporadic. You have to move him in bursts with an aimed direction. It’s easy to miss or overshoot your target. Making precise movements is rather difficult with Jimmy and his usefulness is very limited. His saving grace is the fact that many of the games require less than precise movements.

13. Master Mantis (Medium)

Mantis can be controlled manually and has the power to jump. He can also stick to the roof and jump towards the floor. With a different button scheme I might place Mantis higher up the list. But with the single button command system, his ability to stick to the roof can often be a liability. It’s easy to accidentally stick to the ceiling and then struggle to switch back down to standing on the ground. And often when you want to stick to the roof you fail to. There is some sort of mechanism to control this precisely but in the heat of the moment of the fast-paced mini-games, this is often the cause of many errors.

12. Lulu (Medium)

Lulu operates like Jimmy but her movement is a little less sporadic and she has the ability to rapidly fall to the ground. While not a perfectly precise character, she’s way easier to use and more effective in the grand scheme than Jimmy. That being said, her instant drop rarely comes into play as a necessity.

11. Young Cricket (Easy)

Cricket is possibly the most traditional character in the game. Not the easiest, but very simple in the grand scheme of things. He can walk freely in either direction and jump on command. Simple classic platforming gameplay. While he is limited in his effectiveness in many of the games, using him generally is far from challenging. That being said, there’s also not really anything special about him. He’s probably the most generic character in the game.

10. 5-Volt (Hard)

5-Volt would actually be classified as Easy if not for the nature of many of the games. She can warp to any location instantly with pretty much no limitations. The problem is that once she has warped, it’s often hard to predict how things will go. Especially If the level has moving parts. For instance, there’s a level where you need the character to land in a moving train. So you warp her to above the train and she falls towards it but since the train is moving it’s easy to end up falling into the wrong car even if you’re initial warp point was good. There are also some limitations on how close to objects you can warp. She’s definitely a useful character but many of the games make her power a liability.

9. Wario (Medium)

The big W is the first of the free flyers. He has full maneuverability, but he’s the bottom of the barrel for the free flyers because his power is fairly basic. He has the ability to attack but only horizontally. The problem is that he can’t attack up or down but he seems like he should be able to. So you often attempt to attack in the wrong directions and make losing mistakes because of it. He’s definitely not a bad character, but there are several better free flyers in the roster.

8. Dr. Crygor (Easy)

Crygor the cyborg scientist is a free flyer, but technically he’s more of a free swimmer. By holding the action button, he can freely swim in any direction. Assuming you remember to hold the action button, he’s very good for most mission types. But his motion moves in a swimming like motion, which isn’t as smooth as the other free flying characters. What’s cool about Crygor is that he’s unaffected by gravity. While some of the other free flyers can fall, he just floats in place. Crygor is a good character for first learning how to play the game, but he’s average at best when you get to the point of trying to master the games.

7. Mona (Medium)

Mona has the potential to be the best in the game but her abilities are a bit convoluted and can often lead to mistakes during the fast-paced gameplay. She can freely fly in any direction and also throw a boomerang that you can freely fly in any direction for an unlimited amount of time. The boomerang can be used to attack things. But you have to use the boomerang for attacking and her for physical placement games. So sometimes you accidentally throw the boomerang when trying to move her and sometimes you accidentally move her when trying to throw the boomerang.

6. Orbulon (Easy)

Orbulon is the smoothest free flyer in the game. He can maneuver freely and isn’t hindered by gravity. His problem is that he can’t directly attack. His power is to attract items from directly below him. In attacking games this can be used as an attack but having to be above the target can be really inconvenient. For certain games, he’s amazing but for many games his lack of sideways or upward attacking makes him harder to use successfully. His attack is also a bit slower than other free flyers with an actual attack. He’s good but not great.

5. Red (Easy)

Red is similar to Orbulon in that he’s a free flyer that can only attack from above, but he drops bombs. This gives him a much longer attack range and allows him a bit more precision in his attacks. His body shape is probably the same as Orbulon's as far as measurements go, but he appears a little smaller on screen which makes him easier to fly through tight spaces. Red can fly a bit faster than Orbulon as well. This character is definitely on my short list.

4 - 3. Dribble & Spitz (Easy)

Like with Kat & Ana, you will only use one of this pair in single player mode. Dribble and Spitz are clones of each other with Dribble shooting to the right and Spitz shooting to the left. Dribble is a free flyer with great flight speed and attack speed. While he may seem similar to Wario at first glance, his attacks are projectiles giving him the benefits of both distance and speed when attacking. He is without question one of the best characters to use in the game but his inability to shoot in both directions can be his downfall in a number of games.

2. Mike (Easy)

Mike is the equivalent of Dribble save for the fact that his attacks only shoot upward instead of to the right. He’s a free flyer affected by gravity with both good flight speed and a fast projectile attack speed. I prefer him to Red because his attacks are faster than Red’s bombs and the games always start you in the bottom left corner. Meaning that if you need to attack something then Red has to spend time flying above the target before attacking while Mike can immediately start shooting from below.

1. Ashley

Without a doubt, this witch is the best character in the game. She’s a free flyer that can fly and shoot in any direction. She’s essentially the perfect character with skills that make her the ideal choice for at least 90% of the games. There are specific games that specific other characters might excel at but in general Ashely dominates the largest assortment of random games.

These rankings are important because the game has a number of challenges that make you pick a small group of characters from the total list. With these rankings, you can now make the right decisions about who to choose. You should definitely try WarioWare: Get It Together! and now you have the knowledge to make the experience easier.

• Console Gaming
• Nintendo Switch
• Wario Ware
• Wario Ware: Get it Together!
• Ranking