Fighting Games Friday: Hunter x Fighter x Gatherer

There weren’t too many video game announcements for Shonen Jump-related games at Jump Festa near the end of last year, the premiere event for Shonen Jump-related announcements. One particular title confirmed there has remained active in conversations, however: Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact. There’s a good reason for this. The game is not only based on the very popular Hunter x Hunter shonen manga and anime franchise, one known for its quality and the constant manga hiatuses from Yoshihiro Togashi, who’s worryingly putting himself through a LOT to finish this series. It’s also because of the genre, and the company involved with developing it. It’s also about the publisher, to a lesser extent.

Eighting being the company responsible for developing this 3-on-3 fighter was all the info some communities needed to get the speculation ball rolling hard about how this game will turn out. Why wouldn’t it? The studio remains commonly associated with a couple of Capcom’s Vs. fighting games, specifically both Tatsunoko vs. Capcom versions (remember that there were two of these — though only one released outside of Japan) and the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 titles. The latter games are the Eighting projects most remain familiar with. They were not only the most popular titles among those games (also remember that Tatsunoko vs. Capcom was and remains a Wii-exclusive title on home platforms), the MvC3 titles were also 3-on-3 games.

Hunter x Hunter has more than enough characters for a 3-on-3 game to have a robust roster. Eighting wouldn’t even have to delve into the intriguing characters who were all brutally disposed of from the start of the Chimera Ant arc to have a sufficient number of faces in the roster. There are too many ideas for characters in the game beyond the more arbitrary ones they’ve already shown. Of course, Gon Freeccs, Killua Zoldyck, Kurapika, Leorio, Hisoka, and Issac Netero will all be part of the game, all of whom are introduced early in the series. I’d like to think that six characters being confirmed off the bat implies that the character roster will be robust enough, at least on par with the initial release of Dragon Ball FighterZ. But there’s reason for concern here and with a few other elements.

I’m not concerned about Eighting’s potential for developing a fighting game. They’ve made several, including the aforementioned Capcom Vs. titles, and assisted with the recent DNF Duel. The concern is all emerging from the publisher involved: Bushiroad. The publisher is taking on and funding a bunch of intriguing games, but they sure as hell aren’t lookers. They feel like a company that read the image-driven pleas from the gaming audience that they “want shorter games with worse graphics and [they’re] not kidding,” featuring a totally-real quote from a cool-looking Sonic the Hedgehog, and took them very literally. Bushiroad wants to know if the gamers are really willing to put their money where their virtual mouths are.

Eighting’s best games have been aesthetically pleasing, but Nen x Impact is not on par with those. The visuals and animation aren’t even on par with the MvC3 titles from two console generations ago. Bushiroad does not appear to be working with the largest budgets here, and HxH is not as big a property as other Shonen Jump IP. Perhaps this is the best we can expect.

None of this is to say that I have no faith in the game itself because of its purportedly low-budget nature. Budget has never dictated quality, and it’s not like Eighting hasn’t made lower-budgeted fighters that haven’t turned out well before. It’s true that Fate: Unlimited Codes was hilariously broken thanks to several characters having infinite combos and loops, but it was still a solid fighter. Brokenness has also never stopped a fighting game from being strong mechanically. My hope is that the lower budget won’t mean that Bushiroad will be skimpy with support for the game before and after its release in terms of its polish and online play.

It is my strong hope that Bushiroad isn’t underestimating the potential for this game to take off among the fighting game community. If it does, perhaps we’ll see it in tournaments. How seriously they’ll take this will be determined over the course of its promotional campaign, including the chance of whether it’s instead treated like a Bandai Namco-published arena fighter. At least it might still sell fine enough in the latter case.

P.S. Man, imagine if they got celebrated actor Brian Cox to narrate Tekken’s story so far for Tekken 8’s promotional campaign. This is what someone at Bandai Namco clearly imagined, because they did the damned thing:

Wow! The next thing you know, they’re going to add Succession characters to the game as downloadable content guest characters. Considering the colorful members of the roster the Tekken franchise already features, they’d fit right in. Every fighting game developer should have Cox narrate their stories; pay the man whatever he asks for.