Welcome to the official discussion thread for ARMS on the Switch!
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Amusingly Ridiculous Mania on Switch
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That's right friends and fighters, Nintendo's newest IP is finally out. The Testpunches are punched and the games are in the mail. Mine arrived today and any moment I'll be diving into the full experience. With a launch that held mixed receptions, Nintendo has done a great job at building the hype around this title and the hype is planned for many months to come. With planned free DLC in the vein of Splatoon, they'll be supporting new characters, stages, and maybe even modes for the rest of the year. With a starting roster of 10 awesome characters, who takes your heart in particular? Ribbon Girl was tied in first for both of our Testpunch polls with Min Min sharing the spot for the first round and the curvaceous Twintelle sharing it in the second. Mechanica and Ninjara were not too far behind.
I plan to be dabbling in a little bit of single player to explore that a bit, but you'll all be seeing me online soon enough! Have fun out there! Wear your mouth piece!
Haven't played a bunch, but it has been mostly with randoms online. I really dislike non-motion controls, and unfortunately that is how I have playing more than not. I do expect I will marginally improve, but that is completely incidental to my enjoyment of the game. I think it is brilliant and am having a blast, despite my terrible record so far.
@PogueSquadron If it's any consolation, I'm terrible too. I managed to beat the Grand Prix on level 3 with Mechanica, but not with anyone else. And level 4 gives me trouble even with her. The more I play, the more it seems that I just don't have the appropriate skills/tactics to deal with opponents in general, and it also seems that I need to study the differences between various arms and characters a bit more. Maybe this is just me trying to deal with being so bad at the game, but it seems to have quite a few subtle aspects that make a big difference in the grander scheme of things.
It'll come, I swear. I was exactly like that a few days ago but the more I play the more it clicks. I'm not at the epiphany stage or anything, I still get my ass (frustratingly) kicked online but switching to standard controls was the revelation and seriously, just keep trying. Suddenly GP lvl 4 isn't that big a deal.
@Super_Conzo I'm slowly getting better; I've beaten the Grand Prix with Kid Cobra and Byte & Barq now too. Still only at level 3, though. The biggest problem for me is having enough patience not to go in trying to punch the living daylights out of my opponent without an opening. I mean, you don't necessarily have to wait for them to make the first move, but leaving yourself exposed with your arms all over the place isn't exactly a winning strategy either. I know that, but I just can't help myself.
By the way, have you guys noticed Nintendo using the HD rumble to produce sound effects? When I had my TV volume down low earlier I noticed how my pro controller not only rumbled but made specific sounds for certain actions. Like, there was this thwip thwip thwip noise as I shot my Retorcher at Ribbon Girl, and a soft, rubbery bwump when my Megaton hit her shield. Also a cartoony pwoooooh as she threw me across the stage.
I almost never notice HD Rumble, unless I really, really try. I usually forget about it in the thick of things. Maybe it is subtly enhancing my experience, though. I dunno.
@VofEscaflowne We should totally set up an ARMS night and have a NW-only Party Room! With no grabby Ninjaras!
Level 4 is so weird. I can get perfect on the final bosses sometimes and other times I'll lose like 6 times in a row. Level 4 is mostly pretty easy at this point minus those weird spikes. Probably ready to do Level 5 soon. I've completed (from left to right) all characters including Master Mummy on Level 4. Sometimes a random character will be super tough, sometimes I'll destroy em. I don't really get it.
@Anand@VofEscaflowne Not feeling the unfolding effect either, or haven't noticed it. Then again, I'm playing with the pro controller, and maybe it's less noticeable then. Dunno. Gonna have to investigate later. So far I've been most impressed with HD rumble in Blaster Master Zero. It does a few pretty cool things, like having specific parts of your controller rumble to indicate where explosions are, or making the rumble travel from one end of your controller to the other, increasing in intensity the closer it gets to the middle and fading out as it passes to accompany a tidal wave passing you by on screen.
@carlosrox That's something I've noticed too. Sometimes even the first opponent is too hard. Does anyone else think the AI seems to 'learn' your tactics ever so slightly? Feels like I can't do the same trick too many times in a row to my opponent, at least not during the same match.
@VofEscaflowne Well I for one haven't even tried the online yet. It's just the way I like to play games. I try to get some single player in before I jump into the online. I'll take my first shot this weekend though. I look forward to it. I can sense frustration in my future though if I run into really good players. I mean, even the CPU can be super annoying on Level 4.
@r_hjort Well that's another thing, the AI in the game is actually really really good. It doesn't play like some dumb AI, it somehow manages to feel like a real person, it's hard to describe. It does many clever techniques. That's not how I'd describe Smash CPU, that thing just plays like a computer. The ARMS CPU plays "like a person". And yeah part of that seems to ge its ability to adapt and respond intelligently to what you're doing. I imagine it's even better on higher levels. Level 4 is a pretty good balance of tough but fair...mostly. Sometimes the CPU is just on a roll and will destroy you.
@PogueSquadron If it's any consolation, I'm terrible too. I managed to beat the Grand Prix on level 3 with Mechanica, but not with anyone else. And level 4 gives me trouble even with her. The more I play, the more it seems that I just don't have the appropriate skills/tactics to deal with opponents in general, and it also seems that I need to study the differences between various arms and characters a bit more. Maybe this is just me trying to deal with being so bad at the game, but it seems to have quite a few subtle aspects that make a big difference in the grander scheme of things.
This sounds like me and Splatoon. I wanted so badly to be good/enjoy it, but darn it it never clicked!
Took a chance on this game even though it's a little bare bones on content. The promise of future free updates is reassuring because Nintendo nailed this model with Splatoon.
Never been into fighting games much outside of smash because I don't like the memorization of specific inputs to pull of moves/combos, those games just feel so rigid to me. Smash allows for so much more freedom and different approaches. I feel like ARMS hits this note to some extent. Although I'm still warming up to the game, and went through of serious period of "I hate this shit" at first, once you learn the mechanics and how to move around the stage efficiently it becomes such a strategic fighter. I've beaten grand prix 4 when 3 seemed impossible at one point, so I'm definitely progressing. There is so much that the game DOESN'T tell you, though. It all comes down to practicing and experimenting.
I love the character designs and the animations, and how colourful everything is. Really nice game to look at and the action is fast and fluid at 60 fps. I've been playing with joy con motion controls, but the button controls work just as well, even when joy cons are held sideways. The online party mode is highly entertaining and I think where I will be spending most of my time eventually. Unless I get really good and decide to hit up ranked, we shall see about that.
I've found one thing I really don't like about ARMS. Biff. Or, more specifically, Biff's fake language. I'm all for nonsense speak a la Banjo, Zelda or Splatoon, but fucking Biff has one word that he keeps repeating, and it gets on my nerves so bad. If giving him full voice acting was too much, then they could at least have made him said something more than just "baneh baneh" or whatever he's on about in between matches. I have a disliking for Biff the likes of which my Nintendo fandom has never seen.
EDIT: Good thing the game itself is so good though. I'm having more fun with it for each match I play. Still haven't dared dabbling in online very much, but still.
He still doesn't talk much though, does he? I mean I didn't pay much attention but I thought he just made a slight noise with every screen of text. I was kind of thrown off, expecting more. Or at least some voice acting similar to the Directs.
@VofEscaflowne Yeah, he does his noise once or twice for every screen (and I know I can skip it), but that's still too much for me. The writing is alright, so I wish they'd have given him VA like the Directs, like you say. In general, they could have done so much more with the presentation in this game. But I'm not saying that because I don't like the current stuff; what's there is really good! The character designs are great, the stages are cool, the menus and interface are slick, but there is so much potential for extra content that we didn't get.
Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me as much as it does if it weren't for the fact that they clearly have thought a lot about character backstories and relations, the history of the world and both big and small events, but choose to use all that in random tweets or instagram posts instead of expanding the actual game content. Some unlockable art work or a short text on the ARMS ability after beating the Grand Prix with a character would have done a lot, and wouldn't barely have been any extra work at all. It's a waste, IMO.