Brawl is a lot of fun! My best characters keep changing, but I think it may be Falco. Kirby, Diddy, Shiek, Samus, Luigi....I'm good with a lot of them. Meta Knight is also really good, but takes some getting used to.
If you want a fairer fight, just turn smash balls and dragoon pieces off.
Aside from the absurd idea to stick with individual friend codes for Wii games, Nintendo's servers seem to be having a lot of problems. You will get randomly disconnected and experience patches of lagg off and on. I can play the same person for two hours straight without any problems and then get hit left and right with them. It needs some work. However, it is still a lot of fun to play with my friends across the country.
I spent more of my time playing Melee than any other video game, ever. I see Brawl surpassing that over the coming years.