Battle Fantasia [X360]

Posted October 13, 2009 by maceman in Featured, Featured Home, Game Blog, Reviews, Xbox 360.

Reviewed on the Xbox 360

Battle Fantasia is a Japanese style, classic, 2D fighting game with 3D elements, similar to that of old school arcade fighters like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter. It also has a hand drawn look, 3D modeled characters and backgrounds made by the creators of the Guilty Gear series. There are 12 characters of different size, nature and weirdness: Marco, the kid with a sword that is bigger than he; Urs, the adolescent with a lightsaber cross chainsaw; a magical bunny rabbit called Watson; and the king of eternal darkness, Death Bringer.

What gives this game originality and sets it apart from other fighters on the market is the individuality it gives to the characters. Apart from them being unique in appearance, each one has a different amount of Health Points, so the bigger built-like-a-tank characters have more HP, but they are slower and have less magic and fewer special moves. Other characters are faster, have less HP, but know more moves and abilities. This takes a little while to get used to after playing so many fighters over the years. They just give you the same health bar for all characters, but, as a whole, this different approach works really well.

Like most fighting games, there are several modes, including Arcade, 2 player Versus, Story and Online. Arcade mode is your main single player arena with a series of 9 fights for each character. Survival is a continuous onslaught from different enemies to see how long you can last. Online play is good, smooth and without any obvious lag. The Story mode combines the beat ‘em up action with Role Playing Game (RPG) elements with all Japanese voicing and English text.

Story mode breaks up the straight out beat ‘em up mode sections, and it gives a background on each of the characters and their journey with an interwoven story. When you meet another character, it’s “blah blah blah, OK so you are a girl, princess or whatever and I am a big beefy guy, who cares? I am going to kick your butt anyway, lets fight.” The story branches out into different paths depending on if you win or lose a battle, and this adds more replay value to the game. This RPG element and the subtitles will have appeal to the anime fan that wants a bit more story to their game and are used to reading text while watching video, but if you could not be bothered reading this could be a put off.

Apart from the standard four attack buttons — up to jump and away to block — each has their own unique weapon, super special moves, and heat up moves. This Heat Up mechanic works in a way in which, each time you land a hit or get hit, the MP bar at the bottom fills up. Once full, it opens up more moves for you to unleash a powerful attack upon your opponent, temporarily changing the colour of the background and setting your character on fire, which is a hot effect — Yes, I had to say it. The Gachi system has been done before in other games but it is effective in this game as well. Executed by pressing the Gachi button at the right time, this allows you to counter your opponents move rather than just block it.

It offers beautiful graphics that include well designed 3D modeled characters and well imagined backgrounds, varying from the colourful to dark depending on the character you are playing. The orchestral soundtrack suits the game’s style and the entire vocal audio is in Japanese with English subtitles, which gives it an authentic Japanese anime feel. It’s elegant in its simplicity, with a lot of pick up and play appeal, and it is great for the casual beat ‘em up fan who just wants to get in there and have a bit of button-mashing fun without the combination button memory game, but it still has plenty to offer that the hardcore fan will enjoy.

Tagged as 505 games, All Interactive Entertainment, arc system works, Battle Fantasia