Thursday, June 25, 2020

ARMS 2 Suggestions

Lola Pop fighting Ribbon Girl with the ARMS logo behind them

After selling over two million copies and getting into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, there is a good chance that ARMS will eventually get a sequel. Whether this will be happening on the Nintendo Switch or a later Nintendo system is a different question, but when it happens there will be a couple of things that can be improved over the first game.


1) Individualized Grand Prix


The "Grand Prix" in ARMS is a bit of a letdown, where you keep playing the same basic set of fights with every fighter. What ARMS 2 needs are unique ladders for every fighter, preferably also with cinematic cutscenes that tell us more of their stories.

The trailer for Min Min in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate already showed us more about the character than the original game did. And ARMS needs this kind of stuff to make more out of its excellent characters. It would also add to the replay value of the mode, where it should be more interesting to play the Grand Prix with every single fighter.


2) Getting ARMS


One of the things that adds really to the depth of ARMS is the fact that you can use every weapon with every fighter... Given that you have unlocked them. This was done via the "Get ARMS" mini-game in the first game, which resulted in a near endless grind in a Gacha fashion. And this way too random and exhausting.

The sequel can improve tremendously here by letting you pick one of your opponent's Arms when you beat them in a match. This way you would have an incentive to battle against every fighter with every fighter multiple times. And this would allow for a direct way of obtaining Arms.

You are maining Ribbon Girl, but want to use the Megawatt? Well, simply go fight Min Min with Ribbon Girl, then...


3) Guest Star


If the first game is any indicator, every fighter added to the sequel will probably turn out great. It will be a delight to see with what new character designs the developer come up with... And of course the focus should be on increasing the roster.

However, to really get the attention of the masses and modern pop culture, there needs to be something more. Fighting games like Mortal Kombat or SoulCalibur often achieve this with their ambitious guest stars and not just from other video games, but all media. Negan from The Walking Dead made it into Tekken 7 for example...

And when it comes to ARMS, there really is only one super star this game needs: Monkey D. Luffy. The protagonist of One Piece with his stretchy rubber arms was basically made to appear in the ARMS League, where ARMS might as well be called "Gum Gum Pistol, the game" (though, "ARMS" is definitely the better title).

One Piece Treasure Cruise Artwork of Luffy in his Davy Back Fight outfit
© One Piece Treasure Cruise


He even fought with boxing gloves during the Davy Back Fight, where Luffy would have tons of fun participating in the tournament and could come with his own set of One Piece inspired Arms, like cannon balls.

One Piece is by far the most popular and successful manga and anime out there, where not only Japan would go nuts over this. Many would buy ARMS 2 for Luffy alone. And this is really what could bring the franchise to a much bigger success.

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