yep, I was just as surprised.
I actually like bowser here than I do in mainstream games tbh
rawr

Bowser received some animation updates in this patch (1.0.2). Most are cosmetic, but you'll find that Usmash was adjusted pretty significantly. I believe that's the only change that directly affects his moveset. Try to find all of the changes!

Double jump animation changed for sure...still searching for others though
Rawr

So far I'm think Bowser might be the best character in the game, at least top tier, in the early days of this games meta anyway.
He's not much for combos, but his strength to attack speed ratio is incredibly good. If Bowser gets a stock lead before the opponent, he has at least 3 different easy ways to get a suicide kill for an amazing trade-off, not to mention REALLY good edge-guarding tools.

As much as I like Bowser in this game, top tier (let alone #1 in the game) is far from true. It is Bowser with a projectile and a very potent punish game, but that still does not fix his glaring flaws. Bowser is arguably the easiest char to combo, his recovery is pretty poor and his landing options are also kinda limited (especially on FD. Seriously, thats an auto-ban for every Bowser in tournament). Bowser also has some very poor MUs (all characters that start with F, MM for instance), and you cant be top tier if your top tier MUs are utter trash I think the main issue is that Bowser is too volatile for his own good, he either completely destroys his opponent or gets turned into a semi-sentient punching bag and 4stocked. Propably going to be a decent counterpick character (unless youre like me who mains a character that hates rushdown), but not that much more. Still a super fun character though, dont get me wrong.

i dont think hes top tier but i also dont think falco is that bad of a mu tbh, mega man is much worse

Yeah, my opinion has changed since the writing of my previous post as I've been playing Bowser more and more, and Isaac less and less. I'm seeing plenty of bad matchups. He is definitely not in top 5, but I can see him being top 10 easily.

Discovered that if you RAR while performing Fireball and hold down and back directly after the fireball, you get mass amounts of aerial momentum (enough to cover half of ToS). This could be used both defensively and offensively. The video below shows what it looks like:

Can we have a moment of silence for the Falco matchup? From the Falco side, I don't know how you're supposed to win besides hard reads in neutral followed up by 0-death punishes (which is the easy part, surprisingly). Laser is so good, and Falco's vortex of hitboxes can swallow Bowser whole. Falco has a tough time killing, but dair is easy to combo into so it's not a problem.

I actually beat a decent Falco once, using Bowser, it was incredibly suprising.

Fair->Fair->Fair, His trajectory sent him horizontally and he couldn't shorten Side-Special and make it back, but I was covering the area so he couldn't use it fully, forcing him to drop and attempt Up-Special, where I dropped and used Dair, then made it back to the edge. He died. Those were the only hits I got on him so far in the match. I was at around 100-110%. It was a 2-stock match. Some footsies and pillar combos later, I managed to to Fair him near the edge, sending him off stage, where I RAR Side-Special and Bowsercide. He won all the other games though

Also G&W match-up is almost as cancerous as the falco matchup.

The spacies really wreck Bowser, its actually kinda sad. Punish game is absurd on both sides, but Bowser gets absolutely crushed in any other situation. Really not fun to play until you land a hit lol, and even then its still mostly "get the 0Death from every random hit to keep things remotely even or get completely bodied". I actually feel more comfortable as Chibi against Fox and Falco, which is a sad MU on its own.

G&W doesnt seem that bad actually. He has big hitboxes, but from my experience Bowser can bait&punish a swing of the turtle/keyblade/mastercard, and then go to town on G&W. Him being very light also does help quite a bit here.

I did not know that can grab you right after he hits you with dair. I just got bodied by a bowser in a tourney today (sadly 1st round, but it was to a really good player imo).

His range is really good too, i'm not saying he's the best in game, but my question is, why are some people dropping him again? If he's not good to be a main, he imo is at-least a very good character to counter pick with.

But anyway, him being able to grab you right after a dair was a surprise to me lol.

If you get someone offstage, RAR Side Special works suprisingly often, I think it's because most people expect a Bair or Dair, but it also makes it easier to pull off because people usually hold towards the stage, moving them into your grab box

Is Bowser's side b completely in his control? cause everytime I try to move towards the stage while being in the side b (the victim of the side b), it doesn't seem to work?

I'm fairly certain it's fully in Bowser's control otherwise Bowserciding wouldn't be so easy. All you can do is not get hit.