You give a rat a piece of cheese and it satisfies him for a day, you hook up that rat's brain up to to electrodes that activates the happy part of his brain every time he pushes a button and you satisfy him for a life time...because he'll be dead...because he pushed the button instead of eating. This is the goal of all video games (to kill us) and Punch Club can't even do that properly.
Video games let us accomplish things we can't do in real life. They give us the feeling of accomplishment without the whole unmarketable real work thing. Punch Club starts you off as a poor and weak street-puncher (or kicker) but through hard work and determination you can GET SWOLE! OATS N SQUATS! OATS N SQUATS! FUNCTIONAL STRENGTH! YOU WANNA BE OTTER-MODE FOREVER? As you get stronger you become a professional fighter, learn new moves, kick some ass, join the mafia, and you don't have to live off of candy bars and frozen pizzas anymore. It's the funnest part of the game.
But that's the end of the rat-brain-happy-button for Punch Club. The joy comes from the slow building up of your character and the time management involved, not the combat. All that personal improvement, but it doesn't let you do anything with it. By the time you reach the end where things are supposed to get real, the game's writer pulls 2/3rds of a story from thin air involving parallel universes, time-travel, and ghosts, and then everybody hugs it out off screen. I don't think you understand, I came here to beat someone to death. If I wanted flimsy plot devices fresh from the writer's ass being solved with the friends I made along the way, I'd play a JRPG.
And that's the thing, this game is an RPG, but it's trying to be a boxing management simulator too. You have three stats that degrade over time, and you only really need to specc into one of them seriously. They also have three skill trees dedicated to the individual stats and it's obvious that some of these are better balanced than others, so why even bother with complexity?
How's the combat? Don't worry about it. It's doing fine. The game will handle the combat thank you very much.
The climax of a game should be the hardest part (in my opinion) and RPGs are about improving stats; however the game climaxes as soon as you find the right groove to balancing food, sleep, and training. That can happen as early as the first bit after the tutorial. I'm not saying the combat doesn't get harder or anything, but once everything clicks into place it's not exactly difficult. If a game gets easier to play the further along you go, something's wrong. Do I have a solution? Hell no. I'm not a game developer, and if I were I'd be a terrible one (please buy my game when I finish making it in the next 5 years and don't bring up this review). But I think an RPG ends when your character becomes godly, and most RPGs write the story around that point. Punch Club unfortunately lets you shoot past becoming godly and wrote for the story to end halfway into that.
Lazy Bear Studios and Tiny Build keeps having that problem. Badly balanced (but gorgeous and funny) games with really good beginnings and middles but really terrible endings. Then they tell you to suck it if you have a problem with that. Consumers en masse complained the game was unbalanced and of course the company responded with "The game's not de problem! You're de problem! Oh you vant me to fix it? *smacks keyboard a few times* Dhere! Now nobody gets to have fun! You vant to go comerade? I'm hopped up on kvass and I'll kick your ass!" They calmed down later after some of Babushka's strawberry jam and Stalker but they definitely damaged their image in the process. I get the feeling the developer is just one guy who's learning and trying hard and doing his best, and if that's the case I think it's a good idea to just roll your eyes when he says Fuck You because there is some talent there buried under the artwork.
Punch Club's not all bad! The game's got charm! Lazy Bear Studios always puts out a beautiful looking product with a lot of funny dialogue. There were a few laugh out loud moments, and if you get your sick kicks from movie references then Punch Club is GOTY. But these ain't $10 jokes son! Ultimately I got the rat brain for most of the game and that wasn't too bad an experience. But worth dying of starvation over? Eeeehhhh. Nah.
Anyway, if you have to choose between your Monster Ultra Energy Drink and Punch Club on sale, you have to determine how awake you need to be that day.