ARMS review by Tyson
Overall
Buy
Looking at ARMS its very easy to come away confused as to what is going on with this game. You have this part boxing and part fighting game hybrid. Thankfully this weird game design ends up working out very well and I found myself really enjoying this game. I would recommend any Switch owner to add this game to their gaming collection.
Gameplay
The story in ARMS is setup like any basic fighting game. You have a collection of characters who have entered a tournament to prove that they are the best. While this story isn't going to win any awards it's character designs on the other hand are top notch. There is something awesome about character designs like an undead mummy, or a girl in a giant robot suit, or some weird slime like creature. One of my personal favorite characters is Twintelle who was this french movie star. Just like in any good fighting game not only do each of the characters have a distinct look to them but they also play differently as well.
The meat and potatoes of the ARMS plays a bit like boxing with some fighting game mechanics thrown in. The boxing part of the game is that you use punches to attack your opponent. You can punch with either your left or right arm. You can throw out basic punches straight at your opponent or you can curve your punches as well. The games fighting game mechanics come in with things like throws, charge moves, jumping and dashing. What I found most surprising how was deep these mechanics were. You can equip different weapons on your characters arms that modifies your attack as well. Using a basic boxing glove will give you a good overall punch but then using this giant mallet weapon might be slower then the boxing glove but deal more damage. You can also mix up what each arm is using as well which adds a lot of depth to this fighting system. Overall I kept finding the fighting system in ARMS to have a lot more depth in it than what I thought it would have.
ARMS also has some pretty good gameplay modes as well. You have a Grand Prix mode that acts as an arcade mode in other fighting games. You go through this mode by picking a character then fighting all the other characters, then a boss, then get a small ending. You have some versus modes where you can fight against a CPU controlled character or play online against other people. I was also surprised with how well the online play worked in this game. I never had a game with any latency problems. Each game I played online was silky smooth which was really impressive but I did have a few games that had the connection drop at the start of the match which sucked. There was also a few gameplay modes that I didn't enjoy though. My least favorite gameplay modes were the sport themed ones. I never really enjoyed the volleyball, basketball, or bull's-eye target destruction mini games as they never felt as fleshed out as the main game.
Control
Like any Nintendo made game ARMS will allow you to use a wide selection of controller options. You can play the game using a more motion controlled setup or something more classic like using the pro controller. My only gripe with the control setup is that throwing had to be activated by press both the left and right punch buttons at the same time and that blocking was done by pressing in the analog stick.
Graphics
ARMS has a lot going for it in the graphical department. Each character in the game looks cool and animates very well. I really enjoyed the look of characters like Twintelle or that slime thing Helix. The games various arenas look great and many of them have lots of little details added to them such as how the crowd looks in the background. I also don't recall any frame rate issues while playing which was nice as well.
Sound
The audio and sound effects is another aspect of ARMS that is well made. Each character has their own voice and I found the background music to be very enjoyable to listen to.