Fitness Boxing 3 Review: A welterweight fitness experience

There’s a lot of good… and a lot of bad.

I love a good gamification of fitness, and still to this day mourn the loss of Xbox Fitness. I’m also nearly in tears reading as 31-year-old me laments the challenges of ageing and potential weight gains that could some as a result; honey, this 42-year-old pandemic survivor would like a word or two.

At any rate, with peripherals like Xbox’s Kinect and even PlayStation’s Camera falling to the wayside, and other franchises like Just Dance resorting to smartphone-based trackers and subscription services, Nintendo’s Fitness Boxing 3 finds itself in a (potentially) brilliant position in this diminishing space. I’ll confess the franchise hadn’t been on my radar (though I apparently wrote about Fitness Boxing 2‘s demo in 2020), and jumped at the chance to see if this sequel could fill a void when ice hockey wasn’t on, or when weather or work meant heading over to the gym felt too hard.

While I was just dunking on Just Dance for making me hold my bulking Galaxy S24 Ultra in one hand while dancing, Fitness Boxing 3 also relies upon the same conceit, asking players to hold a (detached) Joy-Con in each hand. While similar, the experiences aren’t remotely the same — here, in a title all about boxing, you wrap each hand in a fist around a Joy-Con, and what results feels natural and organic. Strap on those support wrist straps — this is Nintendo we’re talking about, after all — and get to punching.

Fitness Boxing 3 is relatively simple, offering many different ways — and corresponding levels of difficulty — to get in exercise revolving around jabs, straights, hooks, uppercuts and the like. If you need direction, a daily workout option provides that; otherwise, you can jump into quick workouts from the get-go and design your own routine.

With a short amount of time in this review window, I opted for a guided experience, engaging in daily workouts that lasted up to 40 minutes. While I started at regular levels and found the challenge to be somewhat lacking, bumping myself up to heavy workouts indeed kicked my ass. Throwing 2,154 punches in a 40-minute timespan, Fitness Boxing 3 posited that I burned 425 kcal. My Samsung Galaxy Watch estimated it was closer to 385 kcal, but I’m happy with either result. The sweat dripping onto my living room floor also helped me be pleased with my performance.

I’m extremely competitive, so as I was doing all this I was settling for nothing short of perfection. Thankfully, I was hitting that goal and as a result found myself awash in in-game cash for meeting several milestones relating to form, punches, and levelling. That, in turn, I realised could be used to play dress-up with a number of different trainers on offer, giving them new outfits, hairstyles and the like.

This was a good thing, for as I quickly discovered, I very much disliked the default trainer that was presented to me. She — like all the trainers, admittedly — has a very AI-like quality to her, though I’m still unsure if that’s because she’s voiced by someone who speaks English as a second language, or is just an outright artificial voice. At any rate, the original’s intonation was just off, and it was throwing me off my own game as a result.

I switched over to another trainer, and while it seemed smoother, the same flaws remained and became increasingly clear. You’ll waste minutes of time with each session as your trainer explains where your feet should go in basic stance, how rhythm works, and how you should punch to the beat. Yep, got that in seconds and don’t need to be told again; it’s the same Nintendo hand-holding I constantly get my back up about.

Worse, the same “feedback” that was offered to me in a session kept coming up again and again. While I initially thought I wasn’t rotating my core enough, or keeping my elbow at shoulder height, I quickly realised my movement really weren’t being tracked and I was simply being fed the same lines again and again. In short: if you’re needing help to develop, you’re not really going to find it within.

Realising this, I decided to stop with my natural tendencies and throw a jab when an uppercut was asked for, or a hook when a straight was. Fitness Boxing 3 told me I was nailing it, regardless, and that’s problematic. So too are things like daily challenges that will prompt you to “input your weight”. I did on day one, Fitness Boxing 3, and I can clearly see issues when you’re making me do it again on day two. That, a compulsion creates.

Getting down to brass tacks — and despite its clear flaws — I can easily see Fitness Boxing 3 as a staple in my fitness routine. I need a small amount of space, charged Joy-Cons, and I’m off for a 40-minute exercise session that’ll burn the calories I’m looking to provided I bring some discipline to the mix.

Like anything, there’s room for cheating, but I know I’m only cheating myself in the process. It’s like the people I see in my Nike Run Club app, somehow smashing out thousands of kilometres on the first day of a new month: who are you impressing with that?

Attached to a $70 AUD price tag, Fitness Boxing 3 may or may not be for you. If you’re looking for something to add to your fitness routine, and don’t mind a bit of repetition in some soulless instructors, this one certainly fits the bill.

Fitness Boxing 3 is available now on Nintendo Switch. If you’re unsure what to expect from my review, never fear — a demo is available (and you can retain your progress too).

Fitness Boxing 3 was reviewed using a promotional code on Switch, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.

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