Victorious Boxers: Ippo's Road to Glory

"I have played a few boxing games before like Contender 1 & 2, Ready To Ruble Boxing but this game is different from the all!"

Well first of all the game has some strong points and some weak points. I feel this game was going in the right direction but soon got lost along the way.

I feel the fighting gameplay is second to only Contender which means it's very good. Some gamers feel it's complicated but it only took me a day to master the techniques of dodging punches and countering.

There are standard punches, sets of technique punches, and 4 special punches in total for you boxer. This mean that 16 different moves can be used to knock out your opponents. I think the only flaw in the gameplay was moving around the ring. The analog stick didn't show much control and it seems difficult to go around certain opponents ect.

The graphics were decent but nothing amazing for the ps2. The backstage scenes seem good and the graphics just improve as you go into fights. Then again there are no cinematic scenes and there's nothing much about the graphics to get too exited about.

I feel the story-line is what really kept this game from being the best boxing game to hit the shelves. After a while every thing seems so repetitive.

First you go into the arena, 80 percent of the time it's in the same one. You're trainer gives you the standard briefing about how you opponent fights then you (Ippo the main character) nods ''Yes'' or ''Ok, Boss'' and that's all what he basically says. Then the same clip of Ippo and his trainer (along with some Japanese guy for some reason) walk down to the ring. This is done before every single battle and it just gets too repetitive to captivate any gamers into the story line.

This trainer or ''Boss'' of yours is like a broken record. When ever a round ends he will tell you about 5 different things over and over again depending on how you have done in the round. After every single KO you make he says something like '' Nice knock down, keep it like that for the next fight''. And the next fight when you knock a man down he says the same thing over again.

I feel the angle of the young boy with something to prove isn't going to win any awards but to think of it there's not many options for the writers in the first place. Overall this is a good game with good gameplay and the 2 player mode can be a blast with a friend. But the dramatically repetitive story-line brings the game down badly. It's a good game to rent like what I did but I'd suggest wait until the price drops down a bit so you don't pay too much for a game that's no FFX, MGS2 or GTA3.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/04/02, Updated 08/04/02