Splatoon 2 vs. Arms

Nintendo online shooter versus Nintendo online fighter. Which is the better game?


Click here to donate to my Patreon! If you read my reviews and want to see more and want to be a Patron for a site I love, please donate and become a supporter!

Man I've been sitting on this one for a while. I've been meaning to talk about both games for a long time, both as individual reviews, but as time went on, I realized that both games have a ton in common. They're both relatively new Nintendo IPs, they're releasing on the Switch in the first few months of its lifespan, and each game is more focused on having a solid online mode for matches between friends and foes. Look, I may not be the best in terms of online games, but I wanted to give both Splatoon 2 and Arms a go just because of how much I enjoyed Overwatch last year and to do a little compare and contrasts between games. And the more I played of both games, the more I came to love one game, and kind of feel blase about the other one.

And this review would have been up sooner, but I wanted to make sure that I gave each game their time to shine. That means play online modes for a while (I'm rank 5 in Arms and level 11 in Splatoon 2), and let some patches, DLC, and events come on by to see how the online communities felt after a few weeks of release. Plus I actually wanted to try and get good with the mechanics and learn them to I can fairly judge them instead of try a mode and hate it because I just wasn't good enough.

So ladies and gentlemen, here is my dual review of Splatoon 2 and Arms!

To start things off, I want to talk about the most fundamental thing about each game; their genre. Oh sure, Nintendo has done fighting games before with Smash Bros. and the original Splatoon launched in 2015, but these are still genres that Nintendo isn't really masters at. They're trying so hard to make these two games viable for MLG, or Major League Gaming if you're not in the know, to which I reply... "Eh?" I mean, it's great that Nintendo is making games to appeal to competitive gamers and all of that, but that's not what I am. I'm just a gamer that likes to play online every now and then in between games. So I'm a casual online multiplayer fan. If you're interested in that, then I can guarantee you one thing; Arms is going to frustrate you fast.

Arms is a fighting game where you play as one of a small group of fighters that have stretchy arms. These arms can be outfitted with different weapons and attributes to attack opponents. Some arms can be fast, some can be heavy and cause a lot of damage, some can freeze you, some can shock you, you get the idea. The twist is that after you punch an opponent, you can move you arms mid punch to try and hit a dodging opponent or lure them into another attack with your other hand. It's a game of cat and mouse that should have a lot of depth to it, but there's a problem, and no it isn't the motion controls that are implemented in the game. It's grappling.

If you press both buttons at the same time, or swing both Joy-Cons at once depending on how you play, you can launch a grapple that can ensnare your opponent, do a major amount of damage to them, then continue to fight. Over the course of a bunch of play sessions, and even against CPU's, the only reliable way I've found to win is to grapple your enemy whenever you get the chance. If you fail, they will grapple you and lay the hurt down on you. Online matches quickly devolve into grappling fights, and the only way I've been able to beat high level opponents was solely to grab them.

I even did a little experiment while playing online. I was playing online against three random opponents, and during those fights I resolved to only grapple them to see if I could win just by grappling. I barely lost any health in all three of those matches as I just trounced them. I wished it wasn't that easily, but it really was. Yes you can dodge, jump, and pull off a whole array of fancy moves and abilities in a fight, but when the basic mechanics can be circumvented by one move, why wouldn't I just spam the hell out of that one move?

Thankfully that fundamental problem isn't present in Splatoon 2. Like in the original Splatoon, the goal of online matches isn't to kill opponents, but to ink the most area. Your goal is to shoot the ground and whichever team has the most ground covered wins. There's a healthy variety of maps, and there are a bunch of weapons that all feels unique and can accomplish different goals. You have a normal blaster, twin pistols, a paint roller, a paint brush, a bazooka, a sniper rifle, and a couple of other weapons, and that's not even including sub weapons and special moves. Plus because the matches are determined by which team inked the most, it's very possible for a team to make a surprise comeback and win the match in 10 seconds. Lord knows it's happened to me a couple of times.

Matches in both games are quick and simple. They last in Arms for about 2 minutes and 3 minutes in Splatoon 2. I don't have any problems with either time limit, but both online modes have their own little flaws to them. For Splatoon 2, I can't switch weapons between matches. I have to physically leave the servers, go back to the hub world, change my gear, and then I can go back and play online. I can change between modes like Turf War, Rain Maker, Tower Control, and Splat Zones. Each mode offers its own unique take on the formula of "ink everything you see", but why can't I switch my weapons before going into each new mode? Some weapons are better suited for other modes, so what gives.

Meanwhile over with Arms, while it's fairly easy to switch between fighters and you'll have plenty of arms to choose with in the first place, I don't have any control over the modes I play. There are standard fights, but sometimes I'll get thrown into a Volleyball match, a Target Practice match, a team battle, of a grappling basketball contest without any say in the matter. I just simply get plucked into a match and I have to go through with it. Target Practice is fine, but there was a point where I've had three grappling basketball matches in a row and I just wanted to end myself after that. Bad luck for sure, but it got annoying fast.

Thankfully those are the only online gripes with each game that I can have, but if you were to take a random guess at which game I like more, you'd probably say that I liked Splatoon 2 more. And just to make things simpler for everybody reading this, yeah, I do think that Splatoon 2 is the better game, but we'll get into why in a little bit. Instead, I want to talk about a new mode that was introduced in the game called Salmon Run. Salmon Run is a co-op Horde mode that appears at select intervals (why Nintendo?), and can be an absolute blast to play with others. The action is fast, frenetic, it includes 8 original bosses, and is a great time to play whenever I'm actually allowed to play it (again, just why Nintendo?)

So let's recap with Splatoon 2; we have a robust online multiplayer games with several different modes that all feel unique, a large assortment of weapons to use, constantly updated stages, a co-op horde mode, and even a single player mode that last for about 4-6 hours and is a simple, yet fun time. What does Arms has? It has a bunch of weapons to be used for a few modes that I can't select when I want, but it does have a simple single player mode that is pretty much just 10 random fights. When I say Arms is bare bones, I mean it's bare bones.

When I was playing Arms, I felt like I saw everything the game had to offer by the end of my fourth or fifth day of the game. There was nothing new being added to the game. It was a fighter that had little going on besides just people fighting online. In Splatoon 2, you at least have stages changing every two hours for online matches, Splatfests where players join one of two teams and fight in a heated war that lasts for a day or two, and Salmon Run being as infrequent as it is. There's simply just more of a reason to check in on what's going on in Splatoon 2 than there is with Arms.

And at its most basic level, Arms is a much more frustrating game than Splatoon 2. Now I'm not saying that I'm an expert at both games, because I'm not. Dear lord I'm not. But when I was playing Arms, I never felt like I was getting better. I felt like I was just spamming buttons and moving wildly until I won or died. I raged at enemies, both online and offline, to a point that I don't think I've ever gotten before as a gamer. I felt like I was actively fighting the game itself. I never felt like I was fighting the game in Splatoon 2. I may have died a couple of times in a row because of people camping, but I never thought a match was unfair when I lost. I just shrugged it off, said better luck next time, and went on my merry way.

I don't know if that has anything to do with the overall mood of the two games, but Splatoon 2 always felt a lot more open and accessible than Arms is. I felt like I was a part of a community with Splatoon 2, but Arms was always an eat or be eaten community. Oh, you lost your fifth fight in a row against Ninjara? Too bad. Git gud. I'm all for difficult games, but it's hard to get good a a game where you can win all of your matches by just grappling your enemies into submission.

Both games do look gorgeous though on the Switch, boasting some impressive visuals with even more impressive colors and aesthetics. I can just look at a screen shot of either game and fall in love with what I'm seeing. Plus the soundtracks are both excellent. The one thing that Arms does do better than Splatoon 2, in my humble opinion, is its soundtrack. The theme of Arms is catchy beyond belief, and Ribbon Girl's stage theme is to die for. Splatoon 2 does have some good tracks, but they're all a bit too samey for my taste. They're all good, but after a while each song starts to blend in with each other, especially in the single player stages.

So here we are. We have two new Switch games that are doing fairly well for themselves, but have two vastly different experiences. Arms is an eat or be eaten fighter that is brutally difficult to get good at as well as boasting some questionable design decisions and a few too few modes to fight in. Splatoon 2 is the exact opposite. It's an open shooter that anyone can get good with and has a lot of modes for player to choose from. I'll always say that the more accessible game is the better one, even more so when the game in question was already a proven success. Arms isn't a bad game, but I can fully admit it's not my type of game. I got frustrated with it too easily, so I couldn't enjoy it. I don't think it's broken by any means, but when I'm too angry to play your game, something has gone horribly wrong, and I'm someone that kept a death tally while playing Bloodborne. I love hard games, but only when they're fair. I'm sure that if Arms had another sequel, all of these problems can be ironed out and Arms can be just as good as Splatoon 2 is now, because my God Splatoon 2 is a ton of fun.