Fitness Boxing 3 review — great exercise, adequate game

Fitness Boxing 3 will get you into a routine of rhythm, movement, and sweat, even if it annoys you a little along the way. Part rhythm game, part workout routine, FB3 uses the Switch Controller’s Gyroscope function to track your actions and build a score in time to the background music, all while receiving tips from a series of inhuman, dead-eyed instructors. I’m going to spend a lot of time in this review detailing the technical and design limitations of this game, but I can’t ultimately say that I disliked my time with it. Whatever complaints my critic-brain can enumerate, they don’t detract from the fact that it gives me a reliable, engaging cardio routine that will definitely see me coming back for more. As a game, there’s a lot to be desired here, but those flaws don’t always blunt my enjoyment of the experience or the sweat it helps me work up.

Fitness Boxing 3 comes with a pleasant array of options to keep you coming back and stave off boredom. Each day and week come with challenges above the normal gameplay. Ranking up will net you new routines and cosmetics for the instructors. The daily training modes start out with basic jabs and get more complicated over time, introducing different strikes, ducking and weaving, building upon one another to subtly challenge your stamina. You can also unlock mitt drills which train directional strikes, and a seated option for travel or those who can’t maintain long periods standing and moving. It sounds simple, and for the first few days it is, but you’ll be surprised how quickly the game builds its intensity and works different body parts. Those workouts come with optional stretching and cooldown, and a few options for two player modes. You can each play with two joy-cons or split so that each player has one in one of their hands. In that case, the game assumes that you’re playing perfectly with the off hand. This seems like a strange gimme, giving you credit for work you aren’t necessarily doing, but the game’s floaty programming makes that matter little.

You see, the gyroscope function is limited and inaccurate. The barest motion will register a punch, and if you’re even vaguely within the time window you can expect a Perfect hit. All the directionality, different types of body movement, those are really on the honor system. You could be lying on the floor waving the controller in the air and you could probably get a perfect score. I should dislike this more, from a critical perspective, but it makes surprisingly little difference when you’re in the game. While it does deprive you from a real rhythm-game challenge, you will find yourself energized and motivated enough to keep up with the movements on your own. At least I did, and I would fain believe someone would go to the trouble of buying a boxing game, booting it up, and then choosing the easy way out just to make numbers go up on a console. Is that naive of me? Maybe. It is a drawback, but one that does little to detract from the energy in the room while you’re moving around, punching and dodging to the beat.

The voicework and sound was more distracting, due to overall poor quality. The stilted, robotic readings of instructions don’t carry the kind of motivation you would want. They were read from voice actors but sound very much like AI. They shout random tips as you’re punching, but rarely in a way that feels specific to the exercise at hand: “Pay attention to your core! Use your lower body! Keep your fists up!” While you’re in the moment, those reminders do little to help, reinforcing the artificiality of the experience.

You can unlock cosmetics for the instructors’ outfits, which do change with seasonal holidays. The body types offer little variation, three slim athletic women and three top-heavy men, but you won’t spend a lot of time looking at them. Which, as it happens, is a boon. Their faces lack expression just as their voices do, and I’m pretty certain none of them ever blink. There are slight differences in their personalities, some being more peppy while others are more to the point, but there’s little to really drive you to choose one or the other. That’s not totally true; each trainer comes with five unlockable levels of Box & Bond, workouts with them where you grow your relationship. These aren’t bad exactly, but they aren’t much better than the normal exercise, and you won’t find much motivation to get to know these soulless homunculi.

I do have to complain about one specific thing, but only because it repeats itself so regularly: each trainer has the exact same instructions for setting your footing at the start of each exercise. You hear this over and over again, even multiples times within an exercise every time you switch feet. Moreover, many of the longer routines are shorter sets strung together, so if you want to spend a good half hour or more working out, you’ll have to see frequent stops and starts as they switch over and repeat instructions. Even though a break every ten minutes or so is reasonable for this workout, the stops and starts don’t help build the game’s intended vibe.

The general graphics and music are, as with everything else, acceptable. The less than large selection of neon cityscapes, gyms, and alien environments catch the eye enough, even if they don’t impress. Again, a workout going according to plan means you won’t be paying them much attention, so I can hardly call this a real structural fault. The music is good and poppy, keeping you motivated, and reliably enough on the rhythm of your fists. The game does have a problem keeping the feet and hands moving together through this process, so it won’t be building genuine boxing technique all that well. Nestled in the unlocks are licensed tracks from famous musicians new and old: Madonna, Elton John, Billie Eilish, and a few others show their work, but via instrumental covers that don’t always get across the real strength of the work. It would be great if you could import your own music or search through songs with the right beat, but FB3 isn’t up for that level of complexity.

The workout you’ll receive is a far cry from real boxing training and needs to be supplemented by weights or other exercise, but it more than accomplishes what it sets out to. You’ll find yourself engaged in the moment and encouraged to come back for more. All else aside, the game is great at providing motivation and challenging you. Often enough, it would suggest a workout of a higher intensity than the one I picked, building me up over a few days and giving me a real sense of accomplishment. Most often I finish a review of a middling title and I’m glad to never think about it again, but Fitness Boxing 3 is going to pull me back in for a long time to come.

See below for our list of partners and affiliates: