Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise

Genre: Boxing / Sports (Exercise) / Music-Rhythm

Players: 1-2 (Local)

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Review:

Fitness Boxing 2, like its predecessor, is a motion-controlled Exercise game with a focus on Boxing movements and making use of Music-Rhythm mechanics, and along with its predecessor, as well as Ring Fit Adventure (and arguably even more so than that game), it’s the closest that Nintendo Switch owners have gotten to an updated version of Nintendo’s Wii Fit series, with its focus on maintaining a daily workout, rather than on gameplay goals. With Fitness Boxing 2 releasing on the Nintendo Switch in late 2020, nearly two years after the first game, one would hope that a lot of time has been taken to make improvements over the original. However… well, suffice it to say, you shouldn’t get your hopes too high.

As with the first game, gameplay in Fitness Boxing is controlled through the Joy-Con controllers’ motion-controls, with players throwing jabs, straight punches, hooks and uppercuts in time with a beat. The game’s built-in tutorials (which to some extent never end) ensure that the player keeps proper form, reminding players how to stand, how to move, and even how to breathe as players throw punches at the air in time with on-screen prompts.

In my review of the first game, one of my criticisms was about how inaccurate the Joy-Cons’ detection of movement is, and I’m sad to say that this doesn’t seem to have changed at all in this installment. Jabs, hooks, and uppercuts are all still apparently interchangeable as far as the Joy-Cons’ sensors are concerned, and the Joy-Cons still sometimes detect your movements incorrectly even when you’re not throwing a punch. I can’t fully pin the blame for this on the game’s developers, as it’s probably a hardware limitation more than anything, but it’s disappointing nonetheless.

With the core interaction here being roughly the same, at the very least some effort has gone into renovating the presentation and feature set, though I have to say I have mixed feelings about this.

The presentation this time around is a good deal more distracting, with a variety of odd backgrounds now accompanying your 3D boxing trainer (which this game adds three more of in addition to the characters from the original). One particularly strange choice is a background with a bunch of sugary sweets, which seems like the absolute last thing you’d want in a game about getting in shape. Thankfully you can at least choose your preferred background.

And of course once again we have a list of synth covers of 20 popular songs, now joined by three original beats created for the game that you can select. And again I have to take this game for charging a full $50 for a small list of knockoff covers without vocals. Especially in a post Ring Fit Adventure world, that price tag is just absurd.

At the very least there are improvements here throughout in terms of the game’s options and a few quality of life features, although not all of these improvements work all that well. On the one hand, you now have a readout showing which foot you should be putting your weight on, which is nice, and the game tries to address my complaint about the first game that this is more of a fitness tool than a game by adding a charge meter that you can use to score bonus points… but players have no real utility over this meter’s use, making the score feel like just another metric of your workout rather than a challenge to be surpassed by skillful play.

There’s also now a slew of new options settings, including the ability to turn off certain types of moves (if you’re like me and have bad knees, this is a godsend). There’s also an improvement in the way trainer outfits are unlocked, with players now being able to choose what to unlock, rather than milestone unlocks from the first game. This definitely isn’t just a copy-paste of the first game… but at the same time, the improvements here all feel marginal, and don’t address some of the biggest flaws the original game had.

Chief among those flaws? This is still clearly a workout tool, not a game. Make no mistake, just as with the first game, this is still a great tool to keep you moving, give you a good workout, and keep you honest about maintaining a workout regimen. There’s just no fun to be had here. While I absolutely appreciate the game tracking my progress and adjusting my workout accordingly, I really wish this game took a few more cues from Ring Fit Adventure and did more to gamify the experience. And what’s really unfortunate is that this game’s title seemed to hint that it would. “Rhythm and Boxing” makes it seem like this was supposed to be more of a Music-Rhythm game, and seeing the charging meter gets me thinking that maybe this game’s creators intended it to be, but it is such a throwaway addition that it simply doesn’t go as far as this game needed to.

In the end, Fitness Boxing 2 is still a decent Fitness game that is a marginal improvement over the first game, but even a marginal improvement is hard to be enthusiastic about when we’ve seen Nintendo embrace making exercise fun with Ring Fit Adventure, and it’s an even tougher pill to swallow when they’re still insisting on charging $50 for the privilege of doing so, and still with a paltry selection of knockoff music. If you’re a workout junkie looking to up your game, this may be worth a look, but if you’re a gamer looking to incorporate exercise into your fun, you’re still better off finding Ring Fit Adventure.

tl;dr – Fitness Boxing 2, like the first game, is an Exercise game that has players using the motion controls of the Joy-Cons to deliver different types of punches in time with the beat of the music. And like the first game, this game is plagued with problems – it’s overpriced, the soundtrack is too small and too low in quality, the motion controls are terrible, and the game has zero interest in being an actual game. Yet despite all of these problems, it somehow still manages to deliver an entertaining experience and a good workout. This sequel is only a marginal improvement over the first game, and Ring Fit is still the best Exercise game on the Switch right now, but those looking for a routine workout regimen still may find some use out of this.

Grade: C+

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