Battle Fantasia Comments by Matt Edwards

Once again, in English this time, please?

Y'know, stuff like graphics any good, control any good, and can someone who barely knows what a Saiyan is, and found the rest a bunch of japlish gobbledygook pick it up and play, or is it cubboard dwelling obscure beat-em-up freaks only?

I think the chances of me actually predicting an attack pattern in a fighting game are close to zero. I do enjoy the occational fighter but I generally have to be content with learning a few moves and that's it.

Hmm, might see if there is a demo of this? I really Liked GG but this one does looks a bit to much "overly twee" as the reviewer put it, I'm always interested in 2D fighters though so I might try this at least if a demo is up.

This sounds right up my street! Good review :)

I would normally buy this, but SFIV is a couple of days away so no buy. Too late. Should have released this in Europe at the same time as US.

Fantazia summertime was the best!

Hmmm - if the price is right, I will be picking up a copy.

I am not a huge fan of fighting games, but since I decided to build my own arcade stick for the PS3, I suppose I should get some software to use with it ;)

This and SFIV should be enough for now.

"Five-button fighters generally tend to work more intuitively on the 360 pad"

Next to the shitty d-pad that is, calling a fighter on 360 intuitive at all is just bs.

atleasst its cheapish, might pick up next month or so

@menage

I love the 360 pad for fighting games. I dont see the issue. I think its just a fanboy rant. How childish.

@muscleblade

Why is it every fucking time you say something negative about one system you're automatically a fanboy or own only one system. Fighters suck on 360 because the d-pad stinks. You're a fanboy, your mind works that way, not mine.

Go "fanboy-hunting" somewhere else, accusing without proof is for idiots.

The d-pad on the 360 is definitely rubbish. Playing Street Fighter IV with a stick, although working, definitely feels strange. Yet, it's such a well designed game that I don't mind.

As for the Battle Fantasia, I am a bit of a fan of Arc System Works so I am pretty sure I will buy this. The last Guilty Gear game (GG XX accent core plus sadly only out in Japan so far) was very good and despite the fact that BF seems to be somewhat simpler and shallower, if the comparisons with SF Alpha made here are true then I believe I will have a lot of fun with it. The last year actually brought forth some incredibly good fighters to home consoles (GG XX accent core plus, Arcana Heart, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom - sadly none of them released in Europe, thank Allah for PS2 and Wii modchips...) and seeing two pretty high profile titles being released at the beginning of 2009 on 360 and in PAL makes me cautiously optimistic.

Sorry Menage! Im just in a bad mood right know.

I just dont see the problem with the D-pad. Many do so i guess theres something wrong with me then. I will definetly buy the SFIV stick though just to try the difference.

Oh and Kudos to Matt for consistently writing good, in-depth fighting games-related articles. Of course I am aware that many people find themselves alienated by the plethora of 'strange' words and terms, but I am afraid this comes with the territory. An RPG title-related article will usually be full of references to XP, MP, tanks, area-of-effect spells, aggro, orcs, halflings and whathaveyou, just as an FPS-related article will use terms such as strafing, leading, rocket-jumping, bunny-hopping etc. Since Fighting Games are a bit of a niche-genre where many gamers are actually pretty obssessed with advanced techniques and the actual depth of those games lies in those advanced techniques, I think it is pretty necessarry to discuss these things in an article such as this. If it's any help, here's a pretty good dictionary of fighting-games terms:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:F...

wonder if the SFIV pad works with this

@muscle

okay then;)

Hey, anyone know if Blazblue is coming to consoles as well? Cause that looks awesome.

The d-pad is pretty balls. If they fixed that, I don't know if you could improve the pad at all.

I was keeping an eye on this as i was a huge fan of the guilty gear games, this looks as close as I can get until a proper guilty gear comes out. This and street fighter will fill my 2D fighting gap in my game collection

Ive played this a few times in the arcade. Its..not very good tbh. I want to like it, but I dont.

On an EG-scale, where 5 is medium, I would give this game just that, 5/10. (Atleast the arcade version)


EDIT: To everyone hoping for a new Guilty Gear. Youll be dissapointed. Try a demo first.

@Meho: well put (both your posts). I am in the "only every other word in the review makes sense" camp, but I do take your point.

I only wish I had more time to get obsessed with these sorts of games: they're everything I think videogames should be.

@Menage:
Yep its coming for PS3... But unfortunately no word on a release date yet. :(

EDIT: I'll probably pick this up also, together with SF4... Just in case SF4 will not be my cup of tea. (Never been much of a SF fan :P ).

Tnx, great news. yay for region free games (just in case it doesn't make it here)

released the week before SF IV? great marketing choice

"I only wish I had more time to get obsessed with these sorts of games: they're everything I think videogames should be. "

Heh, yes, in a way 1-on-1 fighting games fuse the best of both worlds: the manual dexterity, reflexes and hand-eye coordination on one hand and tactical thinking, resource management and spatial thinking on the other. You could probably defend a thesis on how this represents a quintessence of videogaming with all other elements that take away from the purity of the experience reduced to almost nill. Then again, other people would point out silly visual design, large bouncing breasts, moronc attempts at storytelling et cetera and we'd feel ashamed even talking about these games in a public forum...

"To everyone hoping for a new Guilty Gear. Youll be dissapointed. Try a demo first. "

I assume you're referring to the Guilty Gear 2: Overture, which, admittedly doesn't look too hot, but after all, this is not a 'real' GG game anyway.

"I assume you're referring to the Guilty Gear 2: Overture, which, admittedly doesn't look too hot, but after all, this is not a 'real' GG game anyway."

I wasnt.
People look at this and see the same develpers name and might assume its of the same quality as GGXX. Was just a heads-up.

Oh I get it. That's fine then, I am actually not expecting Battle Fantasia to be in the same league as GG... But as long as it's competent and knows what it's doing it should be nice enough an experience.

Matt, while I do appreciate having someone who really understands fighting games (even if at a much higher level than I do) writing these reviews, would you mind putting in a little more vanilla information? I mean, you write Coyori and Face having move sets that chain into each other, and that Ashley is an aerial combo monster when in Heat Up mode, but at no point do you explain who or what these characters are. This isn't like Street Fighter where you can assume everyone knows that Sagat is a giant muay thai fighter or Honda is a sumo wrestler, most of us know precisely nothing about the game, seeing as it is the first in a new series.

If it was out now I might pick it up, but coming out two weeks after SFIV is like telling people to wait and pick it up in a bargain bin.

I want BlazBlue, though. :/

After playing Battle Fantasia for a few hours today I'll say this:

Whoever designed that final boss is having abit of a f%^#$ laugh, aren't they? Overpowered? More like completely mental.. Although, compared to Seth from Street Fighter IV, Death Bringer in his second form is still acceptable..

Anyway, other than that, I think the game will appeal to everyone into Guilty Gear. It is slightly less complex what with roman cancels and combo breakers/ faultless damage moves missing but it is by no means a dumbed down fighter. The basic feel is very similar to Guilty Gear: the roster is crazy as hell (Watson is pretty crazy but Face and Cedric and Coyori are also out there), the gameplay is very fast (although not every character can dash and do double jumps) and combo heavy. I don't think it can be compared to Street Fighter beyond a certain point, since combat is much more about combos and super moves whereas I find SF games to be more about zoning and counters... (Then again, might be the way I play). Anyway, typically, when you do a good one in BF, you are likely to end up with three sets of combos following each other and hit count of over 20.

Gachi moves and throws are tactically pretty interesting, but they are also pretty difficult to pull since they demand very precise timing, so I assume it is not easy to abuse their existence and spam them into gameplay. On the other hand, heating up demands smart tactical thinking as it spends one level of the gauge, but doing a super combo while heated up will steamroll the opponent (if it connects that is), so it pays to be conservative with the gauge...

The thing is, unlike Street Fighter where you feel like you have safe zones and can tactically retreat (although , with a knowledgeable opponent, you're dead anyway), BF really encourages aggressive playing. Every character seems to have some way of attacking quickly from a distance, either through dash specials or through projectile attacks and you simply can not retreat and consider yourself safe at any time. So it's best to be on the offensive most of the times... What I miss is some kind of advanced airplay that was abundant in Guilty Gear. There, with air dashes and double jumps, practically every character could do insane things in the air. Here you are restricted to specials and supers which are great but can not be extended...

So far I have played with Ashley and Coyori and they have very different styles but what they have in common is speed. I like this game.

The small cropped image in the front page makes no sense whatsoever. It could be anything!