Fight of Animals Review – Let’s Fight, Right Meow!

Have you ever thought to yourself, “What if a beluga had giant muscles and wanted join a fighting roster in a video game?” Well, think no further, because Fight of Animals brings Muscle Beluga and many other wild, make-believe animals to your Nintendo Switch for some purrrrrfect action. Well, maybe. But that’s not why you are here. You want to know if Fight of Animals is worth the money out of your wallet, and I am here to tell you its worth!

Fight of Animals is simply a bizarre title with so much happening, and yet there is no proper story to explain the insane roster or why they are fighting each other.

Each character is hilariously odd, and their appearances provide a whole lot more questions than they do answers. You can clearly tell that the team behind Fight of Animals just wanted to make a standard fighting game with their goofy roster and did not prioritize story.

The game is your basic fighting fare, but the catch for Fight of Animals is its roster. This is not simply a group of animals. Oh, no. This roster is a group of semi-super animals that are just too silly to explain with words.

We have the aforementioned Muscle Beluga, Power Hook Dog, Crowrilla (A fusion of a crow and gorilla, yes), Walking Cat, Magic Squirrel, Mighty Fox, Slender Cat, and the newly added Egg Dog. It is a relatively small yet diverse roster of animals, so character select is a lot of fun and committing to any one character feels like a joy instead of an investment.

Each character in Fight of Animals is simply controlled by the face buttons, as there are only 4 major actions outside of moving and jumping, similar to that of older fighting games from the early 1990s. Y is light attack, X is heavy attack, A is your special skill, and B is a super attack when your bar is charged up. Thankfully, the game provides some nice customization options for controls, so if you are not satisfied with the default set up, you can map out the buttons however you would like.

Combat and fighting, for the most part, is smooth and actually kind of fun. You are able to connect some big combos, and each character’s special and super attacks are a lot of fun to use.

Normal combat will build up your special bar which you then can use for two different purposes. If you are on the attack, it will send a fury against your opponent that does some big damage. But if you are being overwhelmed, you can use your special bar to throw your opponent across the stage like a barrier shield. Sadly, that does not do a whole lot of damage, but it can save you in a pinch.

The game offers a decent amount of modes, including Training, Arcade, Versus, and Online. Arcade and Online are single player only, but Training and Versus can be enjoyed in local multiplayer with even just Joy-Cons. Unfortunately, Online Mode was barren when I attempted it many times, so I am not able to offer a whole lot of insight there.

Versus with a friend is the best way to enjoy the game. It is wild and frantic, and the entertainment of enjoying with people you know makes for a much greater experience than you will otherwise. This is because the AI are insanely strong. You are able to adjust AI difficulty from Very Easy to Very Hard, but I did not find a whole lot of difference between the varying difficulties. I was fighting tooth-and-nail in Very Easy, and I was struggling in Very Hard and every other difficulty in between. This made things like Arcade and solo Versus not enjoyable, because the AI expects you to be great, even if you are just starting out.

Fight of Animals is a fun little fighting game with some charm about it, but if you do not have people around to play with, it is not the most enjoyable gameplay.

I found the music in Fight of Animals to actually be quite good. The soundtrack varied enough, and the songs were all fun in their own ways and complimented the fighting experience. Each of the 5 stages have their own background music, and you can honestly tell that they put some effort into writing songs that went with the stage themes.

Even the sound effects of the punching and kicking sound great. I know that if you judge this book by its cover, it would appear that it is a low-budget and low-quality affair, but I can honestly say that the sound design across the board for the game is commendable.

Fight of Animals has a nice cell-shaded look that actually does the theme justice. Since the game is clearly not trying to be realistic, presenting the bizarre characters in the graphical style they chose really helps give the game a lot more charm. I found the different character models to look great because of this, as it presented these fictional animals in a more comic book-like presentation.

Stages, although few, are all designed quite well, even if a couple of them are weird, particularly the Christmas stage. Menus are simple and easy to navigate, especially the main menu. I also experienced no performance problems whatsoever.

The game is $8.99 on the US eShop, and I honestly believe that is a solid asking price for what you are receiving. You get 8 unique characters, 5 different stages, and a lot of different modes to enjoy. It may not be the deepest fighter out there, but for the price, it is a solid experience that will surely provide some good laughs and proper fun.

Fight of Animals Review provided by Nintendo Link
Developer: Digital Crafter
Release Date: April 9, 2020
Price: $8.99, £8.09, €8.99
Game Size: 329 MB