There are NO defining characteristics concerning him which Animal Crossing Bells warrent the addition into Brawl. None. I'm not familiar with the FE series, but gimme Hector, if you gotta have someone. Or an INTERESTING swordfighter.

Could one of those Ike fans please point out to me what makes Ike distinct? What makes Ike so unqiue that he needs to be contained into what could possibly be the very best figthing game of all time?

That is your opinion, and you're entitled to it. Don't make the mistake of assuming it to be some rule for SSB, however. We have absolutely no sign that Sakurai is at all concerned about the weapons employed by every individual persona -- and if anything else, the fact that novices are using swords in larger numbers now (see Pit, Meta Knight, and Ike; and that is with barely over half of the anticipated roster revealed) is an indication that he is not very concerned about it. Super Smash Brothers is not Street Fighter -- theres no"unwritten rule" restricting weapons use to a minimum or providing fist-fighters a taste over weapon-wielders.

If anything, it may be argued that the prevalence of unarmed fighters are best balanced out from the addition of more weapon-users, swords or (that's not an argument I would make myself, but it might be produced with much more merit than the argument that there are too many swords-users). Anyway, the simple truth is that swords are the most common weapon offered to video game heroes, since they are the archetypical epic weapon -- have been since the Samurai of Japan along with the myths of the knights of Europe. There is no good reason to penalize characters such as that. The character's weapon or fighting style of selection is not a good reason to restrict them out of SSB; its nothing but pure personal bias.

You know, I get this nowadays most of us recognize Ike and Marth as using entirely different playstyles, but as a player who began occasionally playing Brawl at my friend's home, I had a whole lot of trouble telling apart Marth out of Ike. With Byleth, even casuals could tell them apart thanks to their strong bow, lance, Warlock Punch-like down special, and alts, but as a complete casual, the only thing I remembered about Ike and Marth out of utilizing them at Subspace was that among these felt stronger and a bit more fun.

Even though Ike is not a Marth clone, I believe that it can be trying for total casuals who've only played with them to articulate what makes them different. I believe Sakurai realized this, which explains why he decided to go with Robin since the brand new FE rep for Smash 4 instead of Chrom and not one of Animal Crossing Items For Sale those non-echo FE characters have relied entirely on sword moves since then.