Hallelujah, praise the anime gods! Hunter x Hunter Nen x Impact is a manga adaptation that’s not your average arena brawler, but instead an actual fighting game. Not only that but publisher Bushiroad has recruited Marvel vs Capcom 3 dev Eighting to transform the oft-on-hiatus shonen story into a three-on-three brawler. Brilliant!

Unfortunately, this effort just doesn’t have the budget to reflect its ambition, which may retroactively justify Bandai Namco’s decision to make every anime license an arena affair.

The fighting system is okay, with some interesting mechanics, like the Nen stance pushback guard, and the ability to tag in teammates who automatically trigger super attacks.

But there are some exploits in the launch build which mean you can lock enemies into infinite attack loops, and while the automated combo system will be appreciated by newcomers, it’s a little overpowered for our tastes.

Each character has a unique move set, like Gon’s fishing rod and Razor’s volleyball spikes. There’s genuine variety to the roster too, from the quick and nimble Killua to the tricky Hisoka (this author’s personal favourite).

But with just 16 characters at launch, the three-on-three gameplay format feels seriously stretched, and you’ll be seeing a lot of repeated faces even during a simple arcade run.

There’s not much to the game either. The story mode, which glosses over the events from the anime, basically acts as an extended tutorial, and will take you less than an hour or so to beat. Outside of that you’re left with Time Attack, Combo Trials, and the Heavens Arena, which is basically just a renamed survival mode.

You do unlock some profile customisation items as you play, which you can then take online. But the netcode, at least in our experience, has been poor thus far, with frequent connection drops and syncing issues. The game was delayed to implement rollback, but we haven’t had a good experience during this review.

Some of this would be forgivable if the game was being flogged at a budget price, but it’s pretty expensive for what you get. Obviously, it may still appeal to Hunter x Hunter hardcores, but with titles like Street Fighter 6 and Guilty Gear Strive already available, it’s difficult to fathom why anyone else would choose to play this.