Characters’ health bars are made up of hit points, and you can see the number of points of damage each attack causes. What is devoid of charm is the pointless attempt to incorporate role-playing elements into Battle Fantasia. It’s barmy, twee and won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but at times the art style has its moments, and there’s a certain charm to it all. It’s got magic, awful Pokemon-esque dialogue and plenty of steam punk fantasy. Everyone’s fighting because of a new evil, called the “Scion of Ill Presage”. It’s quintessentially Japanese – there are headstrong young knights, a giant steam powered dwarf, a guy with no face (brilliantly named Face), a magical bunny rabbit and a cat woman waitress (for all the lads). Supplementing the main arcade mode is a story mode which contains lengthy Japanese voice over work that plays over cutscenes. Story is never the point in these types of games, indeed more often than not attempts to provide plot are the source of ridicule and laughter, and it’s no different here. It’s all a bit predictable, unfortunately. There are no surprises, nothing to get the juices flowing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just that Battle Fantasia simply feels old as a result, like a well-worn suit. The parry system, the super special moves, even the Heat Up mode, they’re all yet more takes on classic fighting game features. While the fighting game hardcore will find fun to be had with Battle Fantasia, and newcomers will find it accessible given the limited number of special moves each character has at their disposal and the small but easy to digest roster, there’s nothing here we haven’t seen a hundred times before. Bar the Heat Up system, Battle Fantasia might be Street Fighter in more twee, anime-influenced clothes. The engine is, like the upcoming Street Fighter 4, 2.5D – while the graphics and characters are in 3D, the action plays on a 2D plane. The special moves and super special moves all work the same way as in Capcom’s fighter. The GACHI system apes Street Fighter 3’s parry system. Marco, the small young knight, spawns a fire breathing blue dragon when he enters Heat Up mode.īattle Fantasia plays more like Street Fighter 3 than it does Guilty Gear. For most characters this will simply buff their special moves, making them do more damage, for example. Things get more interesting with the Heat Up system, which allows you to put your fighter in a brief heightened state, consuming one tier of the MP bar along the way. Super special moves, which use up a tier of your three-tiered MP gauge – Battle Fantasia’s version of a super meter – are also on the whole based on conventional fighting game motions. Only a couple of characters deviate from this with charge attacks. Almost every character’s moves are based on fireball (quarter circle forward) or dragon punch (forward, down, forward) motions. If you press the GACHI button at exactly the same time as an opponent’s attack you’ll parry it, providing you with an opportunity for a multi-hit combo. Unfortunately what should be a momentous occasion for fighting game fans is more of a damp squib – Battle Fantasia has none of the innovation Guilty Gear wowed fighting game fans with back in the late 90s.īattle Fantasia uses a five button system – light punch and light kick, hard punch and hard kick, and a fifth button reserved for the GACHI move. A decade later, Arc System Works is back with a new 2D fighter, Battle Fantasia. It’s endured as a viable tournament fighter to this very day because of its depth and incredibly tight system. Released for the PlayStation in 1998, Guilty Gear impressed with its fast paced action and emphasis on combos.
Battle fantasia review series#
Capcom’s Street Fighter series might be more well known, but speak to people in the know, people who live and breathe fighting games, those who enter tournaments, perve over Japanese hit box documents and take an active interest in how the fighting engines actually work, and a game that is regularly mentioned as the greatest ever is Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear.
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