I just want to give a quick impression of the unofficial sequel to Fight Club
. Otherwise known as
Punch Club.
The game as it core is a management RPG. Not to spoil any of the plot (yes there is a story) but you're a young boxer, haunted by a past tragedy, trying to make it in a cruel world and becoming a stronger fighter. You do basically 3 things in the game. Go to work and make money to help pay for food, train to become stronger and fight in different tournaments and meet with NPCs to advance the story. As far as I can notice, there isn't really any choices that affect the story. The graphic is quite good, quirky. Reminds me a lot of the old TMNT game and the soundtrack is fun to listen to, though after several hours, it get quite forgettable. The best thing about this game is the Easter eggs and references. There are characters and objects that make references to famous games and movies, like for example: Tyler Durden from Fight Club is an NPC in the game. As full of nostalgia this game is, I can't really recommend it right now, purely because the gameplay mechanics itself isn't enjoyable and could be improved. Everything is quite a grind and its not even an enjoyable grind. There seem to never be enough hours in a day to do much. You work to earn money to pay for food, which is needed to replenish food. There are 4 bars you have to monitors, health, food, happiness and hunger. You lose health whenever you fight, whether that its an official fight in a ring or a random street encounter. If you have 100% health, then for example you start off with 150 health in a fight but if you have 45% health, you start off fights with reduced health than normal which put you at a disadvantage. Food bar is drain whenever you work out or at work, same with energy, they can be regain by eating and sleeping. Happiness is drain whenever you lose a match or a fight and can be regain by winning, sleeping or doing leisure activities like watching TV.
Now here come the bad parts. You basically have to manage your day to be efficient. You have to work to gain money to buy food, or save up to buy gym equipments at the store so you don't have to pay gym fee to work out anymore. You have to work out to become stronger, at the end of each day, you lose a small part of each stat bar. There are 3 stats, Strength, Agility and Endurance. Its incredibly frustrating to work your butt off the entire day and then ends up losing like 25-75% of the progress you made because of that. Every single damn day. You just reached level 10 on Strength? *end of the day* well fuck you, youre now 25% away from level 10. At the end of the day you'll get a report like you gained 135 points of experience in Strength today only to lose 80 points of it. Things cost a lot in this game, early on each job you do grant $50. Food itself cost $11-20 and only restore little to moderate amount. Gym membership cost $10 each time you go in. To buy your own gym equipment cost between $100-250. So yeah, money is tight and time is precious. Even if you manange to get a lot of money, you will be randomly challenge by thugs that will try to take your money. You can fight them or run away. But my stats aren't high enough to run away apparently. So you're forced to fight, if you lose, then say goodbye to half of your money. You can participate in official tournaments and make your journey from an amateur fighter to a pro, make a name for yourself in underground tournaments is also possible.
The gameplay mechanic for fighting is interesting, you start out with 2-3 moves like basic punch, kick and maybe dodge or block. You can equip them at the beginning of a fight, mix and match to get the best result. You can change moves at the beginning of each round. In a match, you get 10 rounds, in a street fight its usually 2-3 rounds. You can learn more advanced moves as you win and complete quests which earn you tokens that can be use to purchase moves. There are 3 advanced fighting paths you can follow, that corresponds with Strength, Agility and Endurance. The game recommend you specialize your training and moves around one area. So spending your time training agility, unlock moves like high kick and train in Way of the Tiger will be beneficial. Though I recommend, working on your other two stats as well. Though honestly, the fighting itself is quite boring. You just equip moves and watch two figures fight automatically. 90% of the time you know who is going to win in the first 15 seconds. Very rarely will it be close. There are no input, you just watch, wait, and if the round end, you can switch your techniques or keep going until someone goes down. I spent about 3 hours in this game, painstakingly leveling up slowly, very slowly. Winning and losing fights. Grinding to make money and training. Its just not very fun in the end, and I'm not even done with the first chapter of the game. (The game seem to be split into 4 distinct chapters)
For this game to be enjoyable,they need to tone down or remove the experience lost at the end of the day, make it so that your techniques/fights make more of a different than just inputting and watching two sprites fighting each other until one drops.
If you read the reviews on steam, most people share similar sentiment. The game certainly has promises with it quirky dialogues, nostalgia filled references and premise. But dull and grindy gameplay really brings it down. If you have any question, feel free to ask.
