There’s something important you need to know about this set before you start playing with it. Something that no other reviewer mentioned yet. And I’ll tell you exactly what that is, in just a bit. But in the meantime, I have to say that we had a BLAST playing with it.
I’m talking about me, my Wife, and our Little Girl. I still think I’m more excited than our Nieces and Nephews that play it when they come over. Maybe because I never had Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots as a kid, but always wanted a set.
Well now, I feel like a kid again, getting to play the 2021 version of the classic. HOW TO PLAY: If you buy only the Ultimate Battle Arena, you get two warriors out of 38 in the full Akedo collection.
Each of the two warriors is already mounted to each of the two “controllers. ” The idea is to move the sliding part with your warrior around while pulling the sliding joystick backward to swing your warrior’s fists/weapons.
The goal is to perfectly strike your opponent right on the head, which pushes it back, and causes their upper body to split in half (the infamous “split strike”). The game already has batteries. When switched from “Try Me” mode to the “On” mode at the bottom, you allow it to make all of the sound effects possible.
The sound effects are tied to the actual movements. So as you’re swinging on the opponent, you’ll hear the hit sounds. Or glass shattering. Pull the slider as far back as you can, pull the joystick back and hold it, and you’ll hear the “power up” sound build-up (occasionally ending in a funny random sound like a burp or chicken cluck).
It’s patterned after early 90’s fighting games like Street Fighter II, minus ongoing music. If you have multiple warriors from the other packs available, you can switch them out as you play. The instructions offer several different ideas behind how to play, going by certain rules.
For example, each warrior has a number assigned to them for offense, and one for defense. The instructions mention that each player can choose three warriors, as long as their combined numbers don’t go above 15.
Honestly, that was confusing to me even as an adult and made things more complicated than needed be. So we just ignored that suggestion. Plus your kid will most likely have a favorite warrior or two that they always want to use.
WINNING A MATCH: You can play without keeping a score of how many split strikes each player has gotten, that’s honestly the most fun way to play. But they do suggest other ways of scoring matches. And there are sliders at the top of the arena with points for each warrior.
So when you score a split strike, you can just move the slider to keep track of your points until you reach the final number. My wife and I will sometimes use the point sliders, our Daughter, not so much.
The gameplay ends when she says it ends lol. TRAINING YOUR WARRIORS: The Arena comes with a plastic punching bag that you can hang down, for training purposes. The Arena detects when you’re training, versus a fighting match.
If you only move one controller for a bit, instead of both of them, it switches to training sound effects. We weren’t a big fan of the punching bag. Instead, we’d do training with the “dummy” that you get in some of the basic warrior packs that they offer.
It just looks like one of those pink fighting mannequins with no arms, but it does split open. So you can practice certain strikes. NOT ALL WARRIORS ARE THE SAME: What’s interesting about the warriors, is that they’re all kind of different.
Not just in how they look, or the tongue-in-cheek pop culture references in some of their names. But some are just better at hitting that sweet spot on the front of another warrior’s head to snap it back, which splits them in half.
Some seem to be better at blocking incoming strikes, because of what they’re holding. Certain champs have solid weapons, some have swinging weapons, some just have a fist that extends outwards when you spin them to strike.
If our Daughter plays with Strikeout (she calls him “Sports Guy”), who looks like one of the Baseball Furies from “The Warriors,” she’ll beat me 7 out of 10 times. His only weapon looks like one of those #1 giant foam fingers that fans wave around, she’s lethal with that thing.
But that’s one of the benefits to buying the different collector packs: discovering new champs that are better than others at winning. ** Worth mentioning since no one else has: weapons can’t be removed or changed.
This didn’t make a big difference to us, but at some point, everyone will get curious and tug on a weapon held in a warrior’s hand. To see if it comes out. It doesn’t. The “handle” of each weapon has sort of a circular plastic pin inside a warrior’s hand, to keep it from ever slipping out.
There’s a bit of giving to it, so the weapon can wobble or jiggle around just slightly. But the round “pin” in the handle means you can’t remove them, and you can’t swap them. I mean, you could try, but you’ll probably break the toy in the process.
Just accept that certain warriors get certain weapons, and that never changes. THREE IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE PLAYING: 1. Each warrior in this set has a tiny rubber band around its neck so that it won’t split open in the store when people try it out.
My Daughter and I battled for a few minutes before realizing that it was impossible to do a split strike. That’s when I realized that you have to pull off or break this tiny rubber band that you can’t see, first.
Then they work as expected. I can see a lot of people completely missing that when they first set it up. 2. Ignore references to things like HP (Hit Point) settings in the instructions. Some of the stand-alone warrior packs have one or two little versions of the controllers, no arena.
Those controllers in particular have these sliders that let you adjust the setting of a warrior that is losing more and more to make them “weaker” and more likely to be split. Even though that’s a feature only on the controllers in other sets, for some reason the toymaker also includes it in the instructions for the Battle Arena.
So you’ll be scratching your head when you look at the diagram, and try to figure out where the slider is on the controllers (there is none). We don’t use the sliders anyway, even on the other controllers, though.
3. Swapping out different warriors takes a bit of practice. You just pop them off by pulling them to the side. But getting a new warrior on the controller base is kind of tricky, at first. You can look at the bottom of the warrior, then the controller, and try to figure out how they line up to snap it in right.
Most of the time, you’ll be fumbling with it like trying to plug a USB cord into something right. The easiest way to pop them incorrectly is this: look for the little marker on the circle base your warrior stands on, it’s behind the warrior between his legs.
Line that up with the tiny arrow that’s on the controller, at the base where it snaps in. Then just push down hard, and it will pop in. It’s counter-intuitive because your warrior will be standing at an angle (not facing forward) when you pop it in.
But just line them up, and it pops in easily every time. You will have to do this for little kids at first, otherwise, they’ll get super frustrated if you leave it up to them the first few times. SHOULD YOU BUY THIS BATTLE ARENA? You need this game in your life.
Kids LOVE it. Adults LOVE it. Especially anyone who remembers Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Our Little Girl not only loves the fighting matches, but she loves just doing little adventures with the warriors.
And gets to play with them just like any other toys or figurines. It gets pretty interesting when Miss Slither and Tear Bear go visit the Peppa Pig family at their house. And best of all, even though it’s based on old-school arcade games, it’s just old-fashioned fun.
Unplugged from the TV, phone, tablets, video games. Just regular fun, no fancy electronics or screen time needed. So here’s what you should do now. Add the Battle Arena to your shopping cart. Maybe add one of the collector four-packs, as well.
Then check out. It will be at your home in just a few days. Don’t put off ordering it. Because the closer we get to Christmas, I guarantee the arena will be sold out. Order it today, even if just to tuck it away at the top of a closet until the holidays.
In the meantime, I’ll be playing this often. It puts a smile on my face and makes me feel like a kid again.