Knockout Home Fitness Review

While the gamification of fitness is not something new it is no surprise that given recent months we have seen a rise in the number of such titles releasing. The latest one to land on the Nintendo Switch is Knockout Home Fitness, promising a full-body workout at home with a focus on combat-based exercises including muay thai, boxing, karate, and kung-fu to name a few. With so many similar titles already on the market however, Knockout Home Fitness has tough competition.

Off the bat, the title has a fairly limited offering of workout options with there really only being two to pick from. The main mode, Personal Training, is a daily workout that is tailored to slowly introduce more moves and become more intense as time passes. This can last up to 30 minutes with each one featuring several sections that focus on different body areas with rest time factored in as well. The player also has the option to enable or disable stretching in the menu should they want to follow along with their trainer or do so themselves.

Once you have finished the Personal Training for the day it is then locked until the next day. This means your only option to keep working out is the 3-Minute Fitness mode. Here you will find several workout routines lasting no more than five minutes that can be completed as much as you like. Each one focuses on an area of the body or certain move sets with plenty of variety to find what works for you, with more unlocked as you complete more daily workouts.

Performing these workouts is fairly straightforward, requiring only a Joy-Con in each hand. Once started, your trainer of choice will start instructing you on what moves to perform and when all the while on beat to one of the upbeat tracks that you can unlock as you play. It’s simple enough, with a well-timed move getting more visual flair than an off beat move along with adding to your final score and combo.

The workouts can start out deceptively easy and quickly become intense as you are required to chain together more moves at an increasing rate. This can include jabs, hooks, blocks, uppercuts, dodges, knees, kicks, and many more moves that will surely have you working up a sweat. It’s worth noting though, as the game has you holding the Joy-Con controllers, all lower body actions are automatically cleared as you play and don’t count towards your combo. Additionally, Knockout Home Fitness seems quite forgiving with its tracking and it’s somewhat unclear if this is a mistake or by design.

While you could argue that the lack of lower body tracking and fairly forgiving ‘hit boxes’ undermines the purpose of Knockout Home Fitness, you can look at it as working in the title’s favour. For starters, as most would look to this title as a means to be more active, having it be more forgiving of your mistakes and simply reward you for exercising would be encouraging for some. That said, poor form is never good in the long run and not having the precision as other titles to correct your mistakes might become an issue.

Knockout Home Fitness sets itself up as an all in one package to a full body workout in the comfort of your own home, and while it definitely delivers on that promise it is as a whole quite underwhelming. In motion, the title is a lot of fun and easily a good entry point for someone looking to get into fitness games. It offers a good mix of workouts of varying intensity and its bitesize design makes it easy to fit into a busy schedule. Where it falls short is when you start to look at it as a long term fitness solution.

It isn’t a bad fitness game, and it does a great job at getting you up and moving but that’s about it. Knockout Home Fitness feels more like a stepping stone to more refined fitness games or even personal trainers but if you want something forgiving and easy to fit into your day, then this will do just fine.