Koality Game is a company that specializes in retro-themed sports games, including Hoop League Tactics, Hardwood Rivals, and Basketball Time. But it’s not just basketball that they specialize in, as they are also the developer of the Prizefighters series, including the recently released second installment in the franchise, Prizefighters 2.
The new title comes with a deeper, bigger, and “badder” career mode, which will again start you out as an amateur and allow you to train and climb your way up your weight class’ rankings until you win the most coveted prize of them all — the championship belt. All the while, you’ll have to maintain your physical condition and prepare for the inevitability of your attributes declining as you age. And of course, there are those retro-inspired graphics and animations, which should take any longtime gamer (and newer ones as well) back to the 1980s.
Despite the retro-themed, minimalist graphics, Koality Game doesn’t lie when they say that the game is quite deep and intricate. Aside from the fighting mechanics, there’s also a lot to learn about the training process, the scheduling of fights, and the whole process of rising from the bottom and fighting your way to the top of the rankings.
So with that all said, our Prizefighters 2 guide comes with 13 tips and tricks that are mainly geared toward newer or intermediate players, but just as always, you just might pick up something new if you’ve been playing this game for quite some time.
1. The Basics Of Prizefighters 2
As you’ll clearly notice when loading up the game for the first time — Prizefighters 2 is a retro-style boxing game, not unlike the Punch-Out! series of the 1980s in terms of its design and its game mechanics. However, it arguably offers more depth than those classic titles, given how there are multiple weight classes and the option to have dozens of fighters in a certain class — the pre-existing NPC characters as well as computer-generated characters to fill in whatever blanks there may be.
But before we get to all of that, you’ll need to go through the tutorial stage and choose a control scheme — Classic or Default. We would suggest sticking to the default controls, as you can actually see all of the buttons on the screen, as opposed to the Classic controls, which only feature buttons to move forward or backward and allow you to tap on certain parts of the screen to launch punches or block and swipe left, right, or down to dodge.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s discuss the Default controls — on the left side, you will see a virtual control pad made up of four diamonds. Hold up to go forward, hold down to go backward, hit the left and right diamonds or the bottom one to dodge in various directions.
The right-side control pad consists of four diamonds that correspond to different types of punches. Hit left for a left head punch, up for a right head punch, down for a left body punch, and right for a right body punch. Next to the left and right-side control pads, you’ll see a button each, and you’ll use this for blocking — hit the left button to block left, the right button to block right.
As you successfully land punches against your opponent, you will build up momentum, and as the number next to the momentum bar adds up, you’ll accumulate power punches that you can land at any time during the bout. Simply tap-and-hold on any of the four punch buttons to land a more powerful version of that punch than you normally would.
After knocking out the AI fighter in the tutorial bout, you will then be prompted to start a new save game — you can choose to play as a fighter (Road to Victory) in the free version of the game, but you can also opt to play the role of the promoter if you have the Premium version, which costs $3 USD or its equivalent in local currency.
You can then choose a starting month and year for your save game, the AI opponent difficulty, as well as how many minutes you want each round to be. Beginners may want to start out at Easy difficulty (of course) and one-minute rounds, though for more realism, you can leave round length at the default three minutes — it will be an accelerated three minutes, so you don’t need to worry much about the fights potentially taking up too much of your free time.
2. Creating The Ideal Fighter
When creating a new fighter in Prizefighters 2, there are many things you need to take into account. First of all, you need to choose their age, weight, reach, and stance — weight would largely determine which weight class you will be fighting in, so this can be any figure you wish. You can even create a 300-pound heavyweight (or “gigaweight,” as the game calls it) if you wish, and he won’t be any stronger or slower than a 200-pound newcomer with the same fighting style.
Reach determines how far you can be from your opponent while still being able to land some punches, so a longer reach would be more ideal, especially if you’re fighting in the Gigaweight division. As for Stance, this one is another “your mileage may vary” area, as it’s up to you whether you want them to be Orthodox (right-handed) or Southpaw (left-handed).
Age would be the first truly important factor when creating a fighter — younger fighters start out with much lower attributes than older ones, though you also wouldn’t want to start out at too old an age, as this would reduce your starting stats as well as your maximum potential.
Experienced players — or anybody else looking for more of a challenge — can create teenage fighters (18 is the minimum age) in order to work their way up the ladder from the very bottom, while newcomers may be best advised to set their new fighters’ age to mid-20s — at that point, you’ll have a pretty good chance of holding your own against most opponents in your class and picking up some easy wins in the early stages of your career. However, you’ll still have lots of room for your stats to improve, ideally reaching your prime in your late 20s or early 30s.
Next, after customizing your fighter’s appearance, you can then choose their fighting style in the Attributes section. Take note that you cannot adjust their individual attributes at this point — these can go up or down through training, so you’re going to start out with a preset depending on your fight style, with your starting stats depending on your age, as we explained above. All in all, there are four fighter styles that you can choose from.
Inside Fighters (In Fighter) have lots of Stamina and high Uppercut stats while having decent ratings in most other areas save for Chin, which is rather low, thus making them rather easy to knock out. Outside Boxers (Out Boxer) have great Speed and Stamina and more than solid Jab and Cross stats but have low Strength and Endurance — these are ideal for players who want to play things safe by going for the decision win rather than the explosive knockout.
Brawlers have great Strength and are hard to knock out due to their high Endurance and Chin, and their Lead and Rear Hook stats further add to their reputation as KO artists. They are, however, rather slow with their punches and their low Stamina means they tire out easily. Lastly, Boxer Punchers are your typical jacks of all trades — no obvious strengths in terms of physical attributes or punch types, but no glaring weaknesses either.
Your choice of fighting style will depend on your desired play style, but if you’re a beginner, we would recommend Boxer Puncher — the fact you don’t have obvious strengths or weaknesses means you can build from there and have a wide range of choices when it comes to the attributes you wish to work on once your career begins.
3. How Do Fighter Tendencies Work?
While we’re still on the topic of creating your fighter, let’s move on to the Fighter Tendencies. As the game explains, these would come into play during those times you choose to have the AI take over and let the computer do the fighting while you sit back and watch. You won’t be able to choose this option immediately, but get enough fights in and that will alter your tendencies in the first five areas.
At first, these would all be 50-50 splits and cannot be edited — Body vs. Head, Single Punches vs. Combinations, Speed vs. Power, Inside vs Outside, and Block vs. Dodge. Depending on which of the two strategies you prefer, the slider will move organically as you complete more bouts.
You can, however, make changes in the Fight Stage section, which includes two sliders — Counter vs. Aggressive and Cautious vs. Reckless. You can manually toggle the Fight Stage from First Half to Second Half and make the corresponding changes to each of the two sliders, though this will, once again, come into play when you’re spectating.
You can fight as aggressively or safely as you want, or take a cautious approach despite setting the slider fully toward Reckless, and that won’t change the slider placement — this is all about the autoplay feature, and we shall discuss this in greater depth a little later on in this guide.
4. Choosing Your Fighter’s Gym And Upgrading Your Coaches
The last thing you’ll need to choose when creating a new fighter is the gym in which they shall be training. There are six gyms located in various parts of the world, and each of them specialize in a specific type of punch — go to Mexico to train your cross faster than you would other punches, Russia to prioritize your Rear Uppercut, Japan to improve your Rear Hook, the Philippines to develop your Jab, the United States to work on your Lead Hook, and the United Kingdom to strengthen your Lead Uppercut. The name of the gym can be anything you wish — this is simply for cosmetic purposes and does not have any impact on gameplay.
What does have an effect on gameplay are the upgrades, which can be found on the right side — you can continue upgrading the different coaches once you’ve created your fighter and started your new save game, and the screen will look just as it does during fighter creation. Upgrade your Training Coach to increase the amount of XP per fight, upgrade your Conditioning Coach to increase the amount of Energy you can recover while resting, and upgrade your Fight Promoter to increase the number of fans you can accumulate per bout.
Initially, it will cost you 25 coins to upgrade (take note that you start each save game with 125 coins), and subsequent ones will cost progressively more. We would suggest prioritizing upgrades to your Conditioning Coach, followed either by your Training Coach or Fight Promoter. This is especially true if you’re starting out with a younger fighter — training sessions and bouts alike take their toll on your fighter’s Energy, and every unit of Energy you can regain will count if you want to be in tip-top condition (or as close to it) right before your next fight!
5. Focus On Defense!
Compared to your average fighting or combat sports game, Prizefighters 2 puts a very serious premium on defensive-oriented play. Indeed, your best offense will be a good defense on many an occasion, and, once you get the technique down, it will be what fuels your offense as you master the art of the counterpunch. Don’t make the rookie mistake of trying to land a furious combo of punches at every opportunity, and make sure you’re properly timing your Power Punches — especially if you’re up against an Out Boxer, you could potentially be left vulnerable if you focus too much on the offensive side of things.
And take note that it could take a while to build up enough momentum to add another Power Punch to your counter — sometimes, you’re better off hitting the Block buttons or dodging, especially if your opponent is clearly trying to mount some offense.
Personally, we prefer using the Dodge button as a defensive tool; while well-timed blocks could protect your head from head blows, which can take their toll on your Health bar, dodging could allow you to launch a counter-attack. You can counterpunch your opponent by dodging left or right, then punching from the same side — this allows you to deal out additional damage, thus creating some offense out of your defense.
6. Know Your Special Punches!
When we say “special” punches, we are referring to harder-hitting punches that you can launch at certain times or with certain combinations of controls. The game will, in fact, brief you on these special punch types, and we already covered one of them above. Counterpunches, as we mentioned in the above tip, deal out extra damage provided you are able to successfully dodge an opponent’s punch, then follow up with a punch in the same direction.
You can also stun your opponent by landing a punch right before they launch one. This is notably harder to pull off than a successful counterpunch, but could really help you build up some momentum, as stunned opponents aren’t able to attack for about a second or so, allowing you to launch some extra offense during that brief period of time.
In addition, you can land uppercuts in two ways — tap-and-hold on the left or right Head Punch button while holding on the Up button at the same time. You can also duck by tapping on the Down button, then holding on to it while holding on either Head Punch button simultaneously. Landing a successful uppercut is a great way to knock out any opponent whose health bar is close to being zeroed out — it won’t always happen, but the fact that you’re punching with much more power than usual would greatly increase the chances of a critical hit.
7. Conserve Your Stamina While Fighting!
We did say earlier that it isn’t a smart idea to launch too many flurries of punches, as that could leave you too vulnerable and give your opponent an easy opening. However, there is another reason why this isn’t really recommended, and this is especially true for Brawlers or any other fighter with a low Stamina rating.
Punching expends Stamina, and with that said, it stands to reason that punch combos, while fun to string together, could greatly reduce your Stamina and force you to pedal back a bit to recover. You wouldn’t want to string another combo together right away, as punches thrown with the Stamina bar nearly empty won’t land with as much power.
Also bear in mind that as a fight progresses, you will lose some Stamina permanently (at least until the fight ends), thus making it more important than ever to conserve this resource as the bout draws to a close. Lastly, being too busy with your punch combos could lead to a significant loss of Energy after each fight — you will certainly need to choose Rest when picking your training options, and as we’ll explain in a bit, there are consequences if you opt to rest on consecutive weeks!
Out Boxers are generally luckier in this area, as they can stand at a medium range away from their opponents (as indicated in the fight screen) and have more than enough Stamina to throw flurries of jabs that don’t connect with much power, but could earn favor with the judges because of the fact that these jabs will land far more often than they don’t. Otherwise, it’s not recommended to fight too aggressively, because that will only be counterproductive when your Stamina’s close to zero.
8. Going For The Knockout – Don’t Push It In The Early Goings!
In Prizefighters 2, you will be rising up the Legacy Ranks and starting out as an Amateur during the tutorial stage before moving on to Prospect status after your first fight. At that point in your career, you will be fighting three-round fights against generally weaker opponents, so you may think that’s going to be a walk in the park — easy knockouts galore, not unlike what you may have seen from some of the sport’s biggest legends. However, take note that this is a mobile game and not the real thing, and that only means you should focus more on winning the fight than doing so via knockout when you’re fighting those first few three-rounders.
For one, it’s going to be very hard to knock somebody out with your attributes not yet fully upgraded, and based on our experience, getting a TKO for knocking someone out thrice in the same round is extremely hard to pull off.
That simply means you shouldn’t force the issue — chances are you’re going to score your fair share of knockdowns and win quite a few 10-8 rounds during your time as a Prospect, so just take those as they come and take solace with the fact that these knockdowns will help you cruise to an easy win at the end of the day — unless you get knocked down yourself.
For what it’s worth, choosing three-minute rounds at the start of your save game is a surefire way to increase the chances of scoring a knockout once you’ve developed certain attributes. It also helps if you’re facing an opponent whose Chin is at red — or later on, yellow — levels. The lower an opponent’s Chin, the easier it is to knock them down, and eventually knock them out! You will eventually want to score as many KOs as possible, as this increases the chances that you’ll be getting majority of the fight purse for being a more exciting fighter and a bigger draw with audiences.
9. Spectating Vs. Fighting – Can You Trust The AI On Autoplay?
Those Fighter Tendencies we mentioned will come in handy once you choose to Spectate — an option that will become available after you’ve fought your first fight and enough data is available to determine your usual strategy in the ring. Given how fights become progressively longer as you progress through your career, it may sound like a good idea to let the computer take over from time to time. But is it, really?
The short answer would be no, on most occasions. The good thing here is that the AI will do a pretty good job of replicating your usual strategy, and if it’s a good one that results in a lot of knockdowns and knockouts, with most of your punches hitting their intended target, then you may spectate on a regular basis and be confident in picking up the win more often than not.
However, if there are still some holes in your overall game plan, you probably wouldn’t want to spectate — not only is the AI a bit more predictable than the typical human-controlled fighter, it will automatically play it safe whenever your fighter’s Stamina bar is all sapped out.
Even if your opponent is in particularly dire straits and is probably a power punch away from getting knocked down to the canvas, your fighter will just stand there while trying to regain whatever little stamina they have, blocking and dodging but not taking advantage of the potential opportunity for an easy KO.
In addition, you can opt to go on autoplay and spectate if you’re booked against a particularly weak opponent. If you’ve compared your stats and see that you’ve got quite the advantage over the other guy, you can choose Spectate and just sit back and watch your fighter (hopefully) send your opponent crashing down the canvas or, at the very least, picking up the decision victory.
Otherwise, you’re better off doing all the fighting yourself, especially if you’re going to be fighting for a title, in which case that human touch will be much more preferable than an automated strategy.
10. Choosing Your Training Regimen For The Week
In the weeks leading up to your next fight, you will be given the option to choose from a wide range of training exercises for that specific week — you can access them by tapping on the first date of the current week. Each of these options will come at a cost — basic routines cost 20 coins, while the more advanced ones will set you back at 25 coins a pop. There are also two free options — Rest, which simply allows you to recover your Health and Energy, and Road Work, which builds your Stamina and allows you to lose some weight.
Other than that, each regimen will improve one or two of your stats, but there may be some occasions where one routine may result in a statistical decrease. For example, it isn’t stated explicitly, but doing Road Work slightly reduces Strength. You can only choose one routine per week, so as not to overwork your fighter and also to keep things as fair as possible in the Prizefighters 2 universe. It wouldn’t be right, after all, if the human-controlled fighter gets to benefit more from training than his AI-controlled opponents.
When choosing the exercises you wish to perform as part of your training regimen, make sure you’re choosing the ones that improve as many stats as possible, particularly the ones where you still have a lot of room for potential improvement.
Remember that depending on your Fight Style, certain attributes will be capped rather low — for example, Speed and Stamina for Brawlers. And we would also suggest alternating a training regimen on one week with Rest the next week — training does drain Energy a bit, and you can’t be expected to train repeatedly over several weeks or you won’t be in ideal condition in the lead-up to your next fight.
Choosing Rest is well and good, especially if the last fight tired your fighter out quite a bit. But as the game will warn you, resting for a second consecutive week will result in a slight statistical decrease across the board — all stats will decrease by 5 percent, and while you may have no choice but to rest on consecutive weeks if you’re out of in-game currency, this is something you will want to avoid as much as possible.
In addition to performing certain exercises or routines in your gym as part of your pre-fight training, you can toggle from Simulated to Live Events on the bottom of that screen, and that will direct you to the sparring options. Ahead of your first fight, the game will ask you to spar with somebody as a way of orienting you on that feature, but as far as we’re concerned, we wouldn’t do much sparring in the lead-up to an upcoming fight.
Not only does it cost coins — sparring against someone in Hard difficulty will set you back by 50 coins — it’s also going to take its toll on your Energy, and that’s something you need to keep as high as possible so you don’t get gassed early and flame out after a quick start during the actual fight!
11. Challenging Opponents And Accepting Challenges
During the Course of your career in Prizefighters 2, you will be able to challenge opposing fighters as well as accept challenges when they make the first move. Tap on Next Opponent to pull up your weight class’ rankings, and choose away!
Before you challenge anyone, though, you need to make sure you have at least 70 percent Energy or so at the time of the fight. You will also be limited to challenging fighters who are at a similar rank as you are — you cannot pad your record by fighting the tomato cans at the bottom of the rankings, and you cannot try biting off much more than you can chew by challenging the top guns while you’re far from being a contender.
Those who already have an upcoming fight will be listed on the bottom right as Booked, while those that are available will have the Challenge button available to tap. Choosing Profile will pull up their fight history since the start of the save game.
After tapping on Challenge, you will be able to choose your fight date — the next week is the default, though fighters may inform you that they’d rather fight you at a specific date instead, presumably because they may need more time to prepare. The total prize pool will also be visible below — as a Prospect, you will usually be divvying up a $200 pool, which isn’t much, but as you rise up the Legacy Rankings, you will have much more money to split at the end of the bout. (For example, if you’re currently a Champion, the prize pool will be set at $500.)
Split Earnings refers to your split of the prize pot on the left, and the opponent’s split on the right — this split is in force regardless of who wins or loses, and as the game states, it’s the fighter who “brings in more interest from fans” who will earn the bigger split. That means you’ll need to rack up a lot of knockouts and knockdowns and accumulate a lot of fans in order to get a larger percentage of the post-fight earnings.
Lastly, Championship Bout states whether your fight has a title on the line or not — like the previous two terms, this cannot be changed, which means you don’t have the option of booking a non-title fight if you’re currently a champion.
Conversely, other NPC fighters will be able to challenge you, and they will usually set a date that’s at least three to four weeks away, thus giving you ample time to train and rest. On the left side, you’ll see the terms of the fight, and on the right, you will have the option to accept the challenge and gain fans, decline the challenge and lose fans (usually about half the fans that you could gain), or change the date. You can choose the latter option if you believe you need more time to get your Energy back up to a decent level or improve your stats sufficiently.
12. Fighter Skills – What Are They, And How Can You Unlock Them?
On the main screen during your Prizefighters 2 career, you will see four buttons — the barbell-shaped button shows you your gym information and allows you to upgrade your coaches, the button with the graph allows you to view the divisional rankings in all weight classes, and the trophy button shows you your Legacy Ranking and your achievements, the latter of which do not come with any rewards for completion.
Arguably, the most important button of these four is the one that’s shaped like a person, as this is the Edit Fighter screen — here, you can change your fighter’s name, nationality, stance/hand, and hometown (but not his age, weight, and reach, for obvious reasons), his appearance, and his fight stage tendencies.
The fourth button in Edit Fighter allows you to view and customize his Skills — as you earn more XP, you can level up and unlock new skill tiers. For example, some of the Tier 1 skills include Agile, which allows for increased momentum and dodges, Extra Padding, which reduces damage whenever you successfully block a punch, and Heart, which increases your chances of getting back up on your feet after getting knocked down.
You can unlock a total of four skill tiers, the last being unlocked once you reach fighter level 4, and the skill you currently have active per tier will be automatically upgraded as you earn more XP and complete more fights. You do have the option of choosing other skills under a certain tier and starting out at level 1 once you unlock them, but you should also bear in mind that you can only have one skill per tier active at the same time!
That means you cannot have Agile and Extra Padding activated at the same time — choose one or the other, preferably the one that’s at a higher level than the other in most cases, though you can also opt for lower-level skills if you’re trying to get them leveled up as well.
Your choice of skills will largely depend on your play style, so be sure you’re choosing carefully! You can change them, but it’s going to cost you, and you wouldn’t want to be spending coins unnecessarily when you can use them instead for training exercises or upgrading your gym’s coaches.
13. Hanging Up Your Gloves
As your fighter grows older, his skills will naturally erode and it will become harder for him to remain competitive in his weight class. Indeed, it is true that all good things must eventually come to an end, and if you feel the time is right for your fighter to retire — or if you simply do not see much of a thrill in using the same fighter — you can tap on My Fighter in the main career screen, then tap on the Retire button on the bottom right of that screen.
As the game will notify you, retiring from fighting means you will be transferring your prize money to a new amateur within the same weight class — that means you will still be able to use the same save game, but you will be managing a new fighter and kicking off from the time you left off at the time of your previous fighter’s retirement.
Once you’ve retired a fighter, their names will appear in the Hall of Fame section, which can be viewed underneath your saved games when you’re loading a career.
And that’s all you need to know to excel in Prizefighters 2! If you happen to know additional tips or strategies for the game, don’t hesitate to let us know!