The percentages are basically inverse HP. The higher the percentage, the further you get knocked away by an opponent's attack. While there are tons of alternate ways to customize the rules, in Smash, you normally get KOs from ringouts only. You wanna get that percentage high and then knock the opponent off of the stage. If the percentage is high enough and you hit them hard enough, they'll go flying right out. But you can also push them outside the edge if it's a stage with ground just leading straigh out to the edge of the stage, or if it's a stage floating in the sky, you can just get them off the edge and try to keep them away from coming back with attacks. That's what people mean when they say edgeguarding.
Your moves are relatively simple, but numerous. You've got attacks for all positions of the stick on ground plus the normal attack button(neutral, tilting the stick in a cardinal direction, smashing the stick in a cardinal direction and hitting the button at the same time, that last one being the Smash attacks that are powerful KO moves that can be held and charged). Then you've got holding up, down, back, forward(relative to which direction your character faces during a jump) or neutral position plus the normal attack button in the air.
You've also got your special attack button. It does a different attack depending on if you hold the stick neutrally, to one side, up, or down, and tends to do the same whether you're on the ground or in the air. These vary wildly depending on character, but neutral is often a projectile or powerful blow of some sort while up special is almost universally for recovery and will move your character long distances in the air so you can use it to get back onto a stage.
Adding to this is a guard button, which does a dodge if you tilt a direction while holding it and an air dodge if you use it while in the air. Guarding too much will make it break and stun you. You've also got a grab, which can also differ depending on the direction of the stick. Throws you do over your back has a tendency to move the opponent further away, and grabs go right through guards as in any fighting game.
The intuitive part of smash is that your character moves more like a 2d platforming character than a regular fighting character. All characters can double jump with a jump button(or pressing up with the control stick if youre that attached to it), jumps with quite a bit of freedom, and will turn away from their opponents if you move in the other direction from them. You can normally jump twice and then use your up special to cover huge distances, getting back onto a stage you've been knocked over the edge of. Tapping twice left or right on the stick will enter a run, from which you can do a dash attack with the regular attack button.
The other part of the intuitiveness is that the direction you hold your stick normally corresponds to what direction you will attack. You attack backwards in the air, the character attacks over their shoulder. A smash forward will hit forward. A tilt downwards will hit down in the air, or low to the ground if you're on the ground. It's easy to feel out that way.
I don't think there's much of a tactical way to use items. Just pick 'em up as you see them and use them, and if they aren't doing the job, drop them for something else with the throw button. When I played a ton of Smash with my friends or siblings, we usually played 30% with select(non-annoying) items on, and 70% items off, and usually one on one. Obviously this depends on your preferrence, but the more items and players you get the more random nonsense out of your control happens. For us it was fun, but in short bursts, while straight up no items duels was more in line with regular fighting games. That's fun because you actually feel like you're in control and competing against this other dude rather than being at the whim of whatever item the computer throws at you. Some people like painting it as the no fun brigade because it removes some of the party game aspects but it's literally the same appeal as any other fighting game. When you look at 3+ players, all items on high Smash and think "wow, that's a chaotic mess" it's because it is, and that is fun in some contexts but not all the time, that's for sure. The answer isn't to develop a higher awareness but to turn that shit down when it gets annoying.
In terms of tactics, as complete amateurs, we just tried dodging and blocking the attacks we saw coming and getting our opponent hurt through a mixture of weaker attacks to build up that percentage hit-and-run style mixed with the occasional big strong moves to knock them around. Once he's hurt enough you do a big smash attack and try push him the remaining distance with follow-up moves(projectiles, jumping after and hitting him) if it fails.
I'd recommend just trying out all the characters until you find someone that you like. There are tons of single player content if you don't wanna jump into multiplayer with a new one, too.
That's all the basic explanations I've got stored away, I haven't had a Nintendo console since the Wii so some of this might be out of date since I mostly played the first three Smash bros. games. Looks like they've kept this stuff intact from what I've seen though. I wouldn't worry too much about it. I laid out a bunch of stuff here, but Nintendo's stuff is as usual pretty approachable. Even old Melee had a tutorial video or two walking you through it.
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