Getting motivated is hard. As we collectively hurtle toward yet another round of New Year’s Resolutions and “this time I’m serious” promises, the space in our lives for the next thing to keep us in line begins to open up. The cold, infinitely less sexy reality is that that thing doesn’t really exist and consistent hard work and self-care is the only real road to long-term succe- Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer is Nintendo’s latest attempt to fill that space with a Switch exercise game.
The third entry in the (now) long-running Fitness Boxing series which first took a swing at this back in 2018, developer Imagineer has spent most of the Switch’s lifespan refining the edges of its boxing simulator. Where Ring Fit Adventure bundled in additional hardware to expand the range of exercises, Fitness Boxing, as you might imagine based on the name, focuses solely on the one-two punch of boxing, grading your entire performance via the Joy-Con motion controls.
It’s something of an honour system, with your stance, posture, exertion, and form all left to your own efforts, the game itself all too happy to doll out “great punch!” feedback whether you put your body into it or not.
Despite its relative lack of accurate measurements, Fitness Boxing 3 plays the part of being a casual, ostensibly data-based fitness experience. Booting up the game you’ll be prompted to fill in a questionnaire, ranging from weight to age to fitness goals (weight loss, strength training, relaxed etc), and run through the basics of boxing by the game’s default, and worst, trainer. Once you’ve been onboarded, you’ll need to run through your first full session and a more casual mode before the game’s features fully unlock, but with those done, you’ve got access to the suite of modes Fitness Boxing 3 has to offer.
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From daily workouts to free play to stretches to multiplayer, you can engage with the game in a decent variety of modes, but the core mechanics remain largely unchanged. In a solid stance with your core engaged, you’ll perform a series of punch types in time and rhythm with the game’s escalating challenge levels. Your digital instructor (you can choose from a small roster of perky, beautiful people who can in turn be customised to a granular level from outfits to eye colour and even mood) will perform the motions for you a few times before encouraging you to begin your own set of them.
For basic movements like jabs and straights, this is fine, but as the game begins to fold in hooks and the like, its inability to discern how your movements fair is both unengaging mechanically and at a baseline health level, not entirely good for you. While the game does warn that its calories burnt count has essentially no basis in reality (at which point you might wonder if it’s only included for the veneer of a real fitness experience), higher-intensity workouts are often conducted under professional guidance because the human body is a temperamental thing and repeated, incorrect use of it can be rough in the long-term. There’s a degree of fun to be found in doing some basic swings and seeing the score pop and the screen light up but Fitness Boxing 3 is a toy first and foremost.
Completing a full workout gives you a star rating, scores to chase higher next time, and some form of currency you can spend on outfits for your trainer and songs to work out to. While it might be initially thrilling to see the likes of Billie Eilish and…KISS in the playlist, you’ll soon tire of hearing these lo-fi, kid’s-bop covers of popular songs as a routine will often run you 10-minutes minimum and the musical offerings are sparse. Still, when the game told me my fitness age was 26 and had me punch at the screen to officiate a stamp at the end of the workout, I smiled.
A cursory glance at the previous Fitness Boxing games tells me that they’ve also somewhat stepped up the overall visual presentation of the game. While UI and menus remain new-age fitness sterile for better legibility, the animations and flare found in the workout sections are at least vibrant and sharp. Likewise, the game now incorporates a seated mode for players with less mobility, an excellent accessibility option. Difficulty elsewhere is a bit looser, usually just extending the time or intensity of a workout session but stopping short of customisation as far as I could tell.
As with any exercise program, you’re likely to see some results from Fitness Boxing 3 over time but outside of the initial fun of numbers-go-up punching, the experience is too thin and too imprecise to warrant that degree of investment. The new accessibility options are a genuine win and the series commitment to improving its presentation and mode options is admirable, but with such a limited means of engagement, it’s difficult to recommend. If you’re chasing a thing to help you stick to your goals, it might be worth checking out Ring Fit Adventure, but I’d still bet that the 70 bucks you could spend on Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer would be better used to get a nice pair of shoes and going for a walk.
