So I just finished playing through and beating Arcade mode using Fleet on Easy, Normal and… Hard as well, and I can defs see why people seem to be quite frustrated, particularly with the Hard difficulty due to it doing the same thing that Smash Bros does where on the harder difficultiers it increases your knockback substaintially while reducing enemy knockback, which means they take longer to KO, so you usually end up relying hard on keep away and spammy tactics just to survive…
I’m not neccesarily against the Hard mode being a 1 stock mode, but also carrying over Percentage Damage across each round from previous matches seems like overkill, I mean in the very first match I took enough damage to get to 100%, which means on the very next challenge I was pretty much sent flying and instantly KO’d by being hit by a clair dull Smash (not even a tipper hit).
Since this is the only PvE mode currently outside of that one bot mode where the bot levels up and down depending on Wins/Losses (so it’s not a bad warmup mode), it makes the Arcade mode feel very lackluster because it’s basically a Survival Mode, which tend to be sweatier than your typical Arcade Mode for any Fighting game, Platform Fighters included…
While it would be nice to set the stocks for all difficulties like in Smash Bros., I’m honestly ok with how the Stocks currently function based on Difficulty selected, but I defs think the Damage transferring between rounds needs to change, it’s just too much, even on normal mode. The Final Boss of Arcade mode is clearly at level 9 cause he clearly input reads, so while it’s probably next to impossible for the average player to actually 1 Stock Clear the game on Hard, it should at least be possible to get far without continuing on all difficulties for Arcade mode, so healing the player would be a nice compromise…
You should defs add the Targets mode (especially if there’s one Target stage per character) as a seperate mode to do in order to try and get best times for it, just like smash…
One more suggestion would be to add either a Tabuu, Galactus or even Light/Dark style hidden boss to the arcade mode if you can complete it without losing a stock (this would at least be doable on normal for most people) and it would also add a less lackluster final fight to the Arcade mode that would be more mechanically engaging than an alternate skin for Emperor Loxodont that just has 50 Armor and higher knockback (and loves to spam smash attacks)…
Overall I’m defs gonna be… somewhat enjoying trying to get the Hard Mode achievements for every currently available character, but I’d defs like the Arcade mode to be a bit more enjoyable, and I think those changes defs would help it a lot… Maybe even allowing me and a friend to play through the Arcade Mode Co-operatively locally would be nice too…