Person with a odd opinion
I'm going to agree with you that Brawl Single player blows the socks of Melee's Single player. Extra options are Also way better than melee.
However Competitive Scene, Brawl is a step down. Brawl Lost A LOT of things Melee had. Allow me to list them.
1.) Powershielding (To reflect projectiles)
2.) Light Shielding (To cover body better, and for spacing when hit)
3.) L-cancel (To lower the lag on aerials so your not shield grabbed EVERYTIME you aerial someone who has their shield up. Especially awsome for characters with little range.)
4.) Wave Dash/Waveland - Coolest tool used for baiting, traps for approaching, on ground level.
5.) Dash Dance - nearly same uses as Wave-dash and even better combined for baiting, fake approaches, tricks. Sure it's still in brawl, but it's so small it's nearly useless, and you can trip doing it now.
6.) Ledge stalling - To keep yourself safe from people coming back from the dead who are invincibile. Or waiting for an opening to safely come back into the stage.
7.) How useful can fast fall be after short hop, if you can't lower the lag on landing anyways.
8.) Triangle Dodge - the act of being able to control your airdodge to dodge a smash attack and punish after landing on the ground immediately.
9.) Edge Teching? - Not sure, but I don't think someone can tech the wall after your smashed attack away from the wall. Like Falco's and Fox's have to learn vs marth when he's Fsmash happy on fox's and Falco's who fail to sweet spot.
Now for the THings Added in brawl that make it less competitive.
1.) Tripping (Who wants to lose a match, because you randomly trip when you are about to combo your opponent on his last stock into your f-smash only to find out you trip, and he nuetral air's you to your doom. and thousand dollars were on the line cuz it was the last match in the brackets.) NOTE: This addition would not be so bad if you could SOMEHOW keep this from happening. say like RIGHT when your about to trip hit like L or something and continue forward. But nope, no power over it. Atleast in Melee when peach randomly pulls a turnip you have power over NOT getting hit by it.
2.) Multiple Air dodging: Sounds cool at first. But all we are doing here is making ledge guarding more of a useless technique. It's like you might as well just wait for you opponent to come back in. Now it's not really THAT bad. But it does limit ledge guarding tactics quite a bit. Ledge Guarding is also gimped because of how easy it is to sweet spot with alot of characters.
3.) Infact sweetspotting is so much easier. How can you appreciate someone's skill when everything for him is made easier?
4.) In Melee when you made a mistake, you get punished hard. Not so much in brawl because of the low combo-ability. Sure brawl still has a few nice combos.
I don't get how you can really think, taking away competive tools, and adding non-competitive ones, Can constitute for brawl > Melee. Because we all know Fighting games are most fun against people, not mindless CPU's that suicide (Yes they still do this in Brawl, I won Even match 41 with jigglypuff by hanging outside the stage as mario snake killed themselves, Not sonic though his recovery is too good.)
IMO Brawl is a fun friend party game. Ment for friendlies. It's fun when I play with my friends with items ON. Because funny silly things happen, and it makes me laugh.
In Melee, IMO it's most fun when playing 1v1 with someone who is nearly as good as you are, or better. With ITEMS OFF. Even though melee still has it's funny/fun item matches as well.
Your tool shed is more fun to use when you got more tools in there. Not when you build a BRAND new tool shed with less tools in it. Sure it's a new tool shed, But it's missing alot of it's tools.