I don't care about what people say about Brawl and how bashing it feels like some sort of a "meme" to these lunatics, and I will openly say the following; Brawl is the BEST Smash game SOLELY because of the Subspace Emissary.
It may not be the best in the series in terms of gameplay because of its successors, but I still found the mechanics to be massively improved from Melee, minus the annoying tripping. The customizations that you could make in matches, the new items and Final Smashes were also massive improvements from Melee.
Just think about it for a minute, how much fandom did Brawl make in contrast to how much Ultimate made? Ultimate made even less fandom (fan-made animations and fan arts) than SSB4 did because of how "meh" Ultimate actually is; SSB4 was more celebrated than SSBU merely because of the fact that it was released around the time when internet became more accessible in the early/mid-2010s and people wanted to share their nerdy (cool) creations on the internet back then.
But Brawl? It literally ignited the biggest crossover fandom all the way back in 2008, and even to this very day no other game ignited more crossover fandom than Brawl did solely because of Subspace.
Even if you don't agree that Brawl is a good game (I totally respect that), the only thing that should be agreed on that it's the last TRUE Smash game unlike the weeb cringe fest the series has became after Brawl because of how nowadays they just keep stuffing as much cringe weeb characters.
I miss the old Smash when they used to add obscure characters like Ness and Lucas, not only because it helps boost their popularity, but even they are actually good characters, unlike nowadays how they basically think "quantity over quality." Stuffing as much "popular" characters solely because they are "popular" (even if they are so unfitting for Smash like Steve) while ignoring obscure ones just because they are obscure is like making the rich even richer and making the poor even poorer.