XBOX REVIEW | Baki Hanma: Blood Arena

Baki Hanma: Blood Arena is an arcade-style game based on the popular manga and anime series Baki Hanma, and is a series that has been begging for a fighting game to be created for it. The developers themselves say that the game is “reminiscent of the classic Super Punch-Out!!” But is that a good thing for this modern age of Mortal Kombats, Street Fighters, and Tekkens? Will Baki Hanma: Blood Arena reach a new audience of fans? Will it pull in nostalgic oldies like myself who long for the simpler days of Punch-Out? I guess there’s only one way to find out. Fight!!

Things I liked!

• Graphics | I do enjoy when games have a hand-drawn feel to them, and Baki Hanma: Blood Arena looks like the characters have been pulled from the anime itself for you to fight with. From the main character Baki to the insanely huge Biscuit Oliva, you won’t be short of muscle-bound fighters to face in the game. The backgrounds are also really well drawn, with not too much happening in them, so you don’t get too distracted by the main event, but enough to give you a sense of each arena and outdoor area you are fighting in. Sometimes less is more when it comes to fighting games, and Baki Hanma: Blood Arena has just the right amount of visual appeal to keep you interested in the action.

• Sound effects | The sound effects in Baki Hanma: Blood Arena are pretty impressive; the punches sound solid, the cracks of bones as you perform super moves are extremely visceral, and you can almost feel every hit. The limited voice acting in the game is fairly decent; however, I find the announcer’s pronunciation of ‘K.O.’ to be somewhat peculiar. But I honestly can’t fault Baki Hanma: Blood Arena for the effort the developers put into making every single hit sound as brutal as it looks.

Mixed & disliked!

• Gameplay | I’m an old-school gamer, so I remember playing Punch-Out when I was young and loving it, but to me a game like Baki Hanma: Blood Arena deserves to be something more. In fact, it feels sometimes like the game itself could have been bonus rounds in a larger game rather than a game in its own right. Once you get to grips with it, it becomes a bit of a chore to play. Punch Out was exciting because there was nothing really like it at the time, and it had a proper arcade feel to it, but Baki Hanma plays like it wants to be on an arcade machine rather than a home console, and it suffers because of this. I understand where the developers were coming from in terms of giving it that nostalgic feel, but sometimes nostalgia alone isn’t enough.

• Controls | The control scheme of Baki Hanma: Blood Arena is simple enough; duck, dodge, block, low punch, high punch and special are easily learnt in the first round, but it’s this simplicity that lets it down because after the first two rounds you feel like, ‘Hey, I could button bash my way through this; all I need to do is learn the other characters’ moves and when to dodge.’ Oh, if only it were that easy. In fact, in some of the later levels, it feels like some of the enemies are unblockable with some moves, and your hits seem exceptionally weak in comparison. But then I suppose that is the point. I feel like, again, this game had been designed like it wanted to be made for an arcade cabinet rather than a home console, and after an hour of playing, your thumbs feel pretty sore. After playing Baki Hanma: Blood Arena, I just had a feeling that something was missing, and that thing was a lack of variety. Baki Hanma: Blood Arena could have been vastly improved with a more robust fighting game style of inputs instead of what it has. This lack of variety is what ruins it for me in the long run.
  
  
• Game Length | Baki Hanma: Blood Arena is not a game you will spend hours playing; there’s only so much to do, and when you learn the other fighters’ moves, you can pretty much finish it easily on any mode. The lack of variety means that replayability is very low, and even if DLC were to come out, I doubt I could be tempted back into playing any more. In fact, I had trouble playing for long after I completed it for this review, and some games I enjoy so much I can’t stop going back to them. But when the credits roll on Baki Hanma: Blood Arena, you get less of a sense of satisfaction and more of a sense of ‘Was that it?’

How long did I play the review before publishing? 2 Hours
How long to beat the story? 40 minutes
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 10/17 OR 530/1000G
How long to achieve 1000G | 3 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Punch Out, Super Punch Out, Thunder Ray.

CONCLUSION

Score: 40/100

What should have been a knockout game is instead lying on the mat, waiting for the referee to count to ten. Baki Hanma: Blood Arena tries so hard to be something it’s not, and unfortunately, it misses all the punches it throws and should instead have thrown in the towel. If Baki Hanma: Blood Arena had been released back in the late eighties or early nineties, I could have seen it being a huge hit, but as it stands, it is just one of those games that could have been released as a smaller mobile game rather than for console and PC. Baki Hanma is not a game I could recommend, even if at the start I did have that slight rush of dopamine from the nostalgia. If you enjoy Baki Hanma’s adventures, stick to the manga or the anime and avoid this one.

“What should have been a knockout ends up throwing in the towel.”