Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact Review – Sharp Combat, Shallow Experience

Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact Review

Hunter x Hunter is a beloved anime that lasted 150 episodes. While it looked like a generic battle Shonen on the surface, it was actually a deconstruction of the genre, similar to Evangelion or Madoka Magica. Hunter x Hunter fans have never gotten a video game adaptation in North America until now. Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact is a fighting game developed by the team behind Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and published by Arc System Works. There’s a high pedigree behind the game’s source material and developers. Read-on to find out if Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact reaches that high bar.

Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact is a fighting game on a 2D plane. There are buttons for light, medium, and strong attacks. The player presses up to jump, down to crouch, and double taps a direction to dash. Back and down/ back are the block buttons. Strong attack combined with a direction are special attacks. Performing a special attack while dashing pierces an opponent’s block. The bottom face button is a “Nenpact”. When pressed by itself, it just makes the character look like they’re going to go Super Saiyan. But when used after an initial attack, it creates the follow up attack that leads to combos. This creates different situations when moving, jumping, crouching, etc. Pressing left trigger and mashing an attack button performs a fancy rush combo.

Creative Controls

There are additional special attacks attached to the right trigger. Just pressing the trigger does a stance, but pressing it combined with light, medium, or strong attack does different special attacks. There’s a gauge at the bottom of the screen that builds up when delivering or taking damage. One charge of the gauge can be used by pressing the bottom face button and right trigger at the same time. The player can also use their gauge to activate a damage absorbing shield by pressing the bottom face button and another face button.

Pressing both shoulder buttons has a partner briefly appear for an attack. While that tag attack can be done on its own, pressing one shoulder button during the attack allows the player to tag in one of their partners. There’s a cooldown between tags, which can be seen next to each character’s life bar. Pressing the bottom face button and a shoulder button uses a gauge of the special meter to do a tagged-out character’s attack. Pressing a direction and a shoulder button with precise timing, while blocking, allows for a quick tag-in.

Sublime Modern Fighter Gameplay

The gameplay in Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact blew me away! The fighting system is a mix of Street Fighter 6 modern controls, and Marvel vs. Capcom tag format. It’s incredibly polished and fun. There are no traditional Street Fighter-style button inputs, but the system was built in an interesting way from the ground up. I would put Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact’s gameplay right beside Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8. My only critique might be that the left shoulder button mash rush combos are too easy and overpowered. But that’s a small gripe in a truly thoughtful and fun system.

Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact’s roster is 16 characters. They include: Gon, Killua, Kurapika, Leorio, Biscuit, Netero, Hisoka, Chrollo, Feitan, Uvogin, Machi, Genthru, Razor, Kite, Morel, and Meruem. 16 characters is a decent amount for a fighting game launch. But when you take into account that Hunter x Hunter is 150 episodes, fans are inevitably going to feel like a lot got left out. There are only 4 out of the 12+ Phantom Troupe members (5 if you count Hisoka). Knowing there are only 16 spots, Razor and Morel seem like odd choices.

Small Roster for Triple Tag

A 16 character roster seems even more lean when the game is triple tag. It doesn’t feel like there are that many combinations. But Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact does have 4 more characters coming over the next year. If the game is successful, and we get 4 characters a year for the next 5 years, Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact might feel like a dream come true for Hunter x Hunter fans.

Online mode has rollback netcode, but not crossplay. All the expected offline modes are present in Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact. There’s single and versus free battle, and training modes. Single player modes include 3 different arcade modes, time attack, and combo trial. Combo trial is a challenge mode where players have specific instructions to make one long combo.

Garbage Story Mode

Even though Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact technically has a Story Mode, it really doesn’t actually have one. What’s in the game is more of an easy tutorial mode masquerading as a “Story Mode”. Story Mode’s presentation is a joke. There are 19 chapters. Each chapter has maybe 2 minutes of text over stills from the anime, and a fight. Sometimes the fights have subgoals like “win in under 180 seconds”. 3 of these 19 chapters are actually tutorials, and 2 of the chapters have no gameplay. The 14 fights are incredibly easy, and are no longer than one arcade mode playthough.

There’s no way that Hunter x Hunter fans won’t find this lack of a quality Story Mode disappointing. There are 150 anime episodes the game tries to blast through in under an hour. If the developers knew they couldn’t do it, they should have tried to focus on the first couple arcs, and made a Story Mode worth playing. Hunter x Hunter’s narrative is incredibly strong, and Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact’s story mode being this awful is truly upsetting.

Plays Great on Switch

I was surprised how well Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact looked and played on Switch. The character models looked great while playing, and really capture the aesthetics of the anime. Aside from the look of the base gameplay, the game’s low budget shows itself in a few ways. The music is quite bland. It’s serviceable, but also completely unmemorable, and as close to elevator music as one could imagine in a fighting game. The voices are Japanese-only, which is a shame for fans of the English anime dub. And the presentation of Story Mode is disgusting. Even the stills chosen from the anime are questionable, often offering little new visual information.

Hunter x Hunter: Nen Impact is, at its core, a phenomenal fighting game. The fighting system is near-perfect, and easily stands beside the best triple-A modern fighters. Other than that, the game is a low-budget affair. Hunter x Hunter fans are guaranteed to be disappointed by the sparse roster and awful Story Mode. But there are more characters on the way, and because the core game is so strong, Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact could become one of the best fighting games of this generation. Hopefully, future updates will provide plenty more content, and maybe eventually bring the Story Mode Hunter x Hunter fans deserve.

***Switch code provided by the publisher***