(This review was originally written for my Retrorendum blog, so some things are outdated.)

ARMS is Nintendo’s second new IP since the Gamecube, and it has given the people who haven’t actually played it with a mixed set of reactions. After the original reveal trailer back during the Nintendo Switch press conference in February, many people thought that it was just a gimmick game to show off the joycon’s power, and wouldn’t end up being much deeper than Wii Sports boxing. Will ARMS hit it’s mark or take a punch to the face?

Title: ARMS
Available On: Nintendo Switch
Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch
Info: Nintendo, 2017

WARNING MINOR SPOILERS FOR ARMS

Story: ARMS takes place in a world where a mutation exists that allows the effected individuals to stretch their arms out to almost unimaginable lengths. According to the ARMS Laboratory this “ARMS” mutation has existed for around 1500 years, and effects a very very small slice of the population. No one knows how the mutation occurs, those who receive it just wake up one day and have extendable arms. Of course with a mutation such as this it is natural to create a world famous championship fighting show, and that show is what you play in ARMS. As of the day this article goes live there are 13 characters/ fighteres in the world of ARMS, as well as a secret boss character that I’ll leave out for spoiler reasons.
Spring Man - A classic upbeat pretty boy fighter
Ribbon Girl - A famous pop star turned brawler to please her fans
Master Mummy - An undead freak seeking revenge for his family
Mechanica - A genius young girl who built a suit with extendable arms to participate in the league
Ninjara - A ninja student who joined the fight as his graduation project
Kid Cobra - A popular streamer and snakeboarder who was born with the ARMS mutation
Twintelle - A well-known actress who uses her stretchy hair to fight
Byte and Barq - A robot dog and cop duo
Min Min - A ramen shop girl with noodles for arms
Helix - A green gooey failed experiment from the ARMS Lab
Max Brass - The reigning champion of the ARMS league (also planned to be the first new playable fighter)
And finally,
Biff - The friendly announcer for the ARMS League who has one hand on the top of his head.
Each character has their own signature arms, backstory and goals for winning the ARMS League, but aside from what I’ve mentioned there isn’t much story. This might not be the case forever though, because Nintendo has stated that they will be releasing free fighters, stages and ARMS as DLC later on, with included lore tidbits alongside. ARMS’ story and lore is pretty interesting, but it really is bare bones at the moment, so I can’t rate it any higher than 6/10.

Visuals/ Music: The art style and tone of ARMS is one that feels like is was custom tailored to the springy, colorful world the game takes place in, and never leaves you bored while you’re experiencing it. Each locale you visit while brawling is bright and vibrant, and no two stages feel even remotely similar in tone, shape or lighting. There aren’t any texture problems in the game, and the only thing that ever bothers me while I’m playing is Spring Man’s character select model (if you play the game you’ll see what I mean, but that’s just a personal gripe). Aside from that, every character is beautifully modeled and the unique character design rivals the likes of Overwatch and Pokemon in creativity and detail. Even the menu system is slick and bright for the most part, the only exception being that the main menu (which you don’t spend too much time on) is pure black and yellow which some people find obnoxious. ARMS also has the single smoothest and most satisfying Party lobby system of any multiplayer game I’ve ever played. Each stage has a special theme to accompany it as well, and while you probably won’t hear them much during the fights, listening to the soundtrack outside of gameplay is great. My only complaint with the music is that it’s really obvious they wanted the main theme to be integrated into the game everywhere, because chunks of it are woven into over half the stage themes. It’s a great main theme, and very catchy, but it annoys me that it shows up everywhere. The visual and audio design of ARMS gets a 9/10.

Gameplay: Finally, we can talk about ARMS gameplay. ARMS is a fighting game unlike any other, so much so that I honestly don’t know what to compare it to. 2-4 players are thrown into an arena, each equipped with extendable springy limbs and a set of 3 different fists or “ARMS” to choose from. Each character has different stats in speed, strength, and health, as well as an interesting ability ranging from self heal and time slow to quadruple jumps and an arm turning into a dragon. These differences allow you to really find a character that fits your playstyle, and along with every character being able to equip any ARM eventually by spending currency in a minigame called the ARMS getter, any person can customize their own fighter. The main focus of the single player content is the Grand Prix, which is essentially the Arcade mode of ARMS, you play through ten consecutive battles against AI opponents, with the occasional minigame mixed in. Through the Grand Prix you can learn a little about the lore of each character, as Biff tells small snippets before each match starts. There are currently 7 game modes in the game that you can play single player with bots, local multiplayer with up to 4 players, or online in a rotating lobby. Of course you have 1V1 battles, which is the core experience of ARMS, but you also can play 2V2 with each team tied together to force teamwork and communication, and 1V1V1 which is unbalanced and annoying. On top of the fighting there are also 3 different minigames to choose from, Hoops, V-Ball, and Skillshot. The final gamemode is 3 players versus a boss, which can be incredibly fun and challenging on the higher levels. The fighting of ARMS is fast-paced and addicting, but isn’t perfect. It’s difficult to play two player local online, as the lobbies don’t always have room for an extra player, 1v1v1 always ends up with one person being ganged-up on so the other two can just play a normal fight, and grab spamming is definitely an obnoxious (but effective) tactic many people use online. Despite these issues and a lack of a true campaign/ story mode, ARMS delivers some of the most intensely gratifying gameplay I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in the last few years. Gameplay receives an 8/10.

Verdict: ARMS is a game that I can only hope will grow. It’s in very early stages now, so it’s not clear whether or not it can climb up to be a major franchise for Nintendo, but things are looking pretty good for this wacky fighter as far as the first week goes. I’ll definitely be playing it for a while with my friends, and I should be dipping back in every time a new character, game mode or map is released. ARMS has surpassed Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as my second favorite Nintendo Switch game, and will likely hold that spot until Super Mario Odyssey and Skyrim come out in the winter this year. I can’t recommend ARMS enough, but if the lack of single player content is a let down for you, you should still consider picking it up maybe in a year or at christmas when more content has filled in the gaps. ARMS gets a solid rating of 8/10.

Side Note: Since this review I played over 120 hours of the game, played all the post-launch content and collected literally every item in the game, and my opinion has gone wayyyyyy up.
(Reviewed on June 23rd, 2017)

Arms seemingly had everything it needed to be a hit. A unique gameplay conceit, a fun cast of characters, and a colorful world. Arms looked like it could be to the Switch what Splatoon was to the Wii U and Nintendo seemed to be banking on it, capitalizing on its prospective success by announcing a graphic novel based on the game published by Dark Horse comics. At first, Arms did become the success Nintendo was hoping it’d be, receiving positive reviews from most publications and eventually going on to sell over two million copies. This success wouldn’t last because as it turns out, the game was called Arms because it had no legs.

Unlike Splatoon, which retained a very dedicated fanbase, once the hype died down people just kinda stopped talking about Arms. It’s easy to understand why. It’s a fun game for the first few minutes you play it, but it’s far too gimmicky for hardcore fighting game players to have any interest and is too lacking in content to keep the attention of casual players, a problem which would go unsolved as the game would receive only a few content updates in the form of characters and stages before support stopped in December 2017, just 6 months after release. With that, the Arms franchise basically died before it got the chance to even become a franchise. The graphic novel went radio silent for years before being officially canceled in 2021, and there’s been no talks of any sort of proper sequel. The most Nintendo would acknowledge Arms after 2017 was putting Min-Min in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, a move which angered millions of people who believe Smash’s roster should be populated entirely by characters from video games they played when they were 6.

For all its faults, Arms had a ton of potential and it’s a shame that potential has gone unfulfilled. There are some crazy good character designs here and some really whacky lore that I could easily envision a sequel expanding on. On the other hand though, Arms will be lost to time and I can’t really say it doesn’t deserve to be.

This is a good, fun game, but just low on content.

I don't understand why Nintendo seemingly gave up on so much potential this easily.

The gameplay falls under easy to play, hard to master. High skilled matchups can get really intense and are just a blast to play.

The characters are all bristling with personality and charm, there's distinct levels, I mean everything in this game is good. But the problem is, there's simply not enough in this game. The lack of diverse characters and different arms to choose leads to the game getting pretty stale after awhile.

A good time, but only for a short time.

ARMS is a game that really shows how important it is to have a good amount of content to make a great game. I would by no means call it a bad game, it has a good OST, characters, and is charming in its own way, but it doesn't provide nearly enough content to be a $60 Nintendo game. For the price of about four copies of Hollow Knight, one would expect a game to have sufficient content to keep the player entertained, but ARMS fails to deliver. It's a fun novelty, but the glaring lack of things to do makes it wear off fast. There is potential for a sequel which takes everything good about ARMS and make a genuinely great game however.

i remember when this game first was announced i didnt care about it at all but i realized i owned like 3 games on switch and this was the next big release so i got it and actually found it to be pretty fun, and i will say the game's overall style and character designs are pretty solid overall. then i played this games ranked mode and stopped having fun. this isnt on some scrubquotes shit but at a point you pretty much had to play on stick or else you were just throwing. the cool gimmick of playing with two joycons was essentially a debuff. i think from the point onward playing the game with stick, the level of fun just depreciated and i stopped liking the game because the arms shit got too serious and it was never meant to be played that way and it just made the game boring. not even the content updates with new chatacters could bring me back. also i remember single player content just being arcade mode stories for each character and after that was done all you had was playing online. i cant remember if there was actually more to it than that but thats just how i remember it since i ended up trading this game with a friend for his copy of wonderful 101 in like 2018. i still havent even played wonderful 101 yet but i feel like i made a good trade

Man, I wanted to like ARMS so much more: it hs an incredible presentation, amaing soundtrack and fantastic character designs. I think Nintendo wanted to sell it as "Splatoon's Switch cousin IP", since it was a cool IP at launch and it add free bonus content released over the upcoming months.

It was a cool idea to begin a new series..... too bad Nintendo dropped the ball on it too quickly.

THe gameplay is interesting and considering I am a big fan of Punch Out Wii, I really liked it and each character had a cool enough gimmick to make them stand out, even though there is not the same amount of gameplay variety compared to other fighting games.

And tdespite the incredible roster, the game really misses a story mode that ties everyone together, or at least gives more depth to this charming world.
I think one of the reasons Splatoon got so successful is the fact that it combined a cool gmeplay and online matches with an interesting setting and a story full of secrets and enthrilling lore. Here we got the great gameplay and online.... but in terms of the story there is not a lot going on: each character got a comment and artwork after finishing the arcade mode, you got some story about Dr. Coyle, Max Brass and Hedlok, and some cool arts to collect.... but honestly I kinda wish for so much more. I kinda wish the planned manga of ARMS was able to be released, because with what we got I don't think I am able to completely immerse myself into this new cool IP.

I remember trying this game thanks to the nintendo switch online, who made the title free for like a week.... and I personally felt that 1 week was just enough to enjoy all of the content ARMS had to offer..... which is kind of a shame.
It's not a bad game, if you are a fan of Punch out (or Wii sports Boxing) giving it a shot will be worthy..... but man I wish there was more to it.... Hoping for an ARMS 2!