Review: Star Wars Hunters: Battle for the Arena Introduces Vespaara, But Not Much Else

Does anyone remember Star Wars Hunters? Ironically, if you said yes, there's a bit of housekeeping to do. The game has received its first update since October, announcing an expansion to several new international markets ahead of its alleged worldwide debut later this year.



Now, does anyone remember Star Wars Hunters: Battle for the Arena, the tie-in book announced last February? Well, that middle-grade novel by Mark Oshiro is one Hunters venture you can now dive into from anywhere. All jokes aside, Battle for the Arena is our first tangible taste of the world of Vespaara.



For this book's target audience, Battle for the Arena is another mostly solid entry into the junior novel canon. It is a simple, harmless read with some life lessons to be reminded of via its moderately complex main character. However, as a tie-in novel that works to entice you into playing Star Wars Hunters whenever it becomes available, it is a bona fide failure.







The world of Star Wars Hunters consists of Jedi droids, Sith Lords, Imperials, Rebels, Jawas in a trench coat, bounty hunters, Wookiees who swing dismembered droid arms around, and more. There is a place for this type of Star Wars video game in today's market. How does one make sense of it all in canon though?



I can say without a doubt that Zynga and Oshiro's sports entertainment approach is not it. The base premise is that everyone who competes in the arena is there to entertain. Before they ever step foot into battle, they develop a character and train to be able to work and coexist with their teammates to provide the best possible entertainment for spectators. There are real winners and losers, but there is more to it than that. The arbiters of the arena are also looking to make sure your character is 'getting over' with the audience, whether you are playing a good guy or bad guy. It's much more fun if your good guy can be cheered and your villain can be booed.



Now, I say this from the position of being a massive fan of professional wrestling and sports entertainment: that's absolutely something that can belong in Star Wars. Oshiro just outright fails at the biggest job of a wrestling promoter in their attempt at making Star Wars Hunters appealing: promotion.



Rieve, a dark side assassin, in Star Wars Hunters.



Battle for the Arena centers around Rieve, a newcomer to Vespaara. She comes to the planet for a fresh start after some rough patches in her life. Rieve is Force-sensitive, but don't let the red lightsaber fool you; she is not tuned to any particular side. That's where the whole wrestling gimmick thing comes into play. Rieve needs to let off some steam occasionally, making the arena perfect for letting out that primal nature.



Unfortunately, Battle for the Arena has a nagging tendency to undersell and out Vespaara as the niche and nonsensical product that it is. Rieve needs to escape her past, so she finds herself browsing the HoloNet one day. Happenstance leads her randomly upon the feed the arena broadcasts to. She decides Vespaara is the place for her... even though she could care less about being a hunter.



Oshiro is kind enough to write the instruction manual for Star Wars Hunters in the opening chapters, and Rieve promptly pans it all off as a joke -- solid start considering she is the poster child for this whole thing. By the end, she embraces the hunter life, but in a vacuum, this is a book where the main character doesn't care about what's being sold. The result is having action inside the arena that is bland and uninteresting.







Star Wars Hunters' 4 vs. 4 gameplay and its various game modes are emulated in this novel. The concept of teamwork is preached as Rieve struggles with her new teammates. Another common job of a wrestling promoter is booking, and it's their task to put match-ups together that would be best for business in the short and long term. It doesn't feel like good booking to prevent Rieve's Sith Lord persona from playing up the character when the Jedi-droid 'J-3DI' negs her on. Besides the fact that a Jedi-droid gimmick would make a fantastic fit on World Wrestling Entertainment's NXT 2.0 (that's not a compliment), we see this in many of the pairings. Ex-Imperials hoping to reclaim that former glory probably shouldn't ever be teaming up with Rebels, but it happens on Vespaara. All in the name of good entertainment, I suppose.



Above all else, Battle for the Arena is supposed to make you want to play Star Wars Hunters or keep you interested in it. Alas, this book confirms the arena holds in-universe market appeal Impact and New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV would be ashamed of. Nothing like promoting that Hunters will be a heavily niche product, even if it turns out to be the best video game ever.









Rieve is the only character keeping this book afloat. As I mentioned before my rant, she is someone dealing with some stuff. Without giving too much away, her Force-sensitivity has led to some trouble. The main hook of the novel is figuring out exactly why she is leaving her past life behind, who she might be running from as a result of that history, and what Rieve might be afraid of tapping back into if she can't make it on Vespaara.



When it counts most, Oshiro delivers what matters at the end of the day in a middle-grade novel; the themes of trusting in your friends, embracing who you are, and facing your fears head-on make Rieve someone for your youngling to root for as she learns to do all three. Perhaps if the reveal of the villain wasn't as obvious as Big Show's next heel turn, Star Wars Hunters: Battle for the Arena could be recommended to anyone else.


<p style='text-align: center;']RATING: 5/10</p>


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