Battle Fantasia : A Cel-shaded, medieval fighting game from Ark System Works, whom are famous for a very wonderfully obscene franchise.
Story : So there was this massive evil force, some kind of black-armoured embodiment of all things diabolical, and all the races in this mystical kingdom united to trap him in what looks like some giant volcano. However, evil stirs once more and…well this sounds familiar.
Well they’re about 7-50 years too late depending on which adaptation we’re talking about, but it appears that the folks at Ark System Works have discovered the Lord of the Rings trilogy and were so psyched by said epic that they decided to make their own work of fiction that ste…Is heavily influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. Prior to Battle Fantasia, said game developers were staying up late on a Saturday night watching their favorite music station, caught some really cheesy 80s hair metal music videos, and decided to turn that into a franchise.
And their previous brainchild was glorious. Guilty Gear took the devils, dragons and hairspray of 80s music videos and combined them with the absolute most over-the-top campy and sexualized anime style they could find to create a decidedly bizarre and uncomfortable yet eye-catching and memorable concept that gave the fighting game genre a much needed smack in the face (with a talking guitar). Combined with an outrageous fighting engine that made each character fight like they were Superman on meth, high resolution artwork that made the competition at the time look embarrassed to stand by their Neo Geo hardware, and numerous updates to help perfect the system, and you’ve got the unrecognized but undisputed and unsavory savior of 2D fighting.
Enter Battle Fantasia. Imagine that very same demented art style hurled into Middle-Earth, and you’ve got a fair idea of what’s happening here. Actually, the game is all cel-shaded, so there’s a strong resemblance to Dark Cloud 2 or the more recent Valkyria Chronicles here. A lot of the innuendo from Guilty Gear is slightly toned down, as now there are only two blatantly homosexual characters here. Likewise, there’s a lot taken from Harry Potter and any other books you may been forced to read as a child, as characters will include your assortment of way-too-young knights, a boy wizard, a merry dwarf, the embodiment of evil and so forth. As uninspired as some of these concepts are, there’s also a lot of charm to the characters, and a bit of that trademark Guilty Gear machismo; the main character wields what looks like a 70s motorcycle engine that, when revved up, reveals a chainsaw blade made of fire.
As far as gameplay goes, there doesn’t seem to be any original fighting styles or gameplay mechanics here. It’s a Street Fighterian 2D fighter, with basic attacks, special moves, super special moves and even a parry button. The one sort of unique aspect (and I know this has been stolen from other games) is that pressing a button will put your character “in heat”, which powers him and her up, opens up new moves and has the potential to be taken the wrong way for many, many characters. The game feels like a toned-down Guilty Gear or a straight Street Fighter clone, as there’s no double-jumping or instant kill attacks or a lot of the spice of Battle Fantasia’s more demented forefather.
All the characters fight like variations of characters in other games, especially Guilty Gear X. You’ve got your Ryu/Sol Badguy character, your Zangief/Potemkim character, your Jam/waitress character who wears a short skirt and takes every opportunity possible to ambiguously bend over, and so forth. When you consider how the Guilty Gear games are known for coming up with some incredibly abstract fighting styles, it’s a bit disappointing to be given a watered down variation of characters past. The one unique aspect seems to be the varying character sizes, such as the mouse wizard and child knight that are a fraction of the size of dwarfman but also have less health.
By the by, the game has an HP number underneath the health bar, if just to make you associate it more with fantasy RPGs.
And if this game is in fact deeper than I’m giving it credit for, if perhaps there’s some unique hook to the gameplay that I’m missing, then I wouldn’t have any means of discovering it through playing against other opponents, as it seems that absolutely no one else is playing this game online. I’ve waited for a very long time with an open ranked game waiting for an opponent and found nothing. With arcades a shell of their former glory, fighting games need a good online community to develop actual lasting value to anyone that doesn’t have a group of dedicated friends to play against (that’s a not very subtle poke at Super Smash Bros Brawl). It makes it all the more harder for a new fighting game franchise like Battle Fantasia to succeed without an established user base generated from years of sequels stemming back to an era when arcades were popular, but at least Ark System Works could at least TRY to market this game a bit; I’ve had a few too many people asking me what this Battle Fantasia game I’ve been playing instead of Fallout 3 was.
This game has all the traditional fighting game modes, the standard Arcade mode, the standard VS mode, the standard Training mode, the standard OPTIONS mode, the standard-yet-useless VS CPU mode, and so forth. The “Story Mode” will be familiar to Guilty Gear veterans, in which fights are separated by dialogue sequences of static images of the characters speaking Japanese with English subtitles. Some of the dialogue is cute and funny, but most of the time it just feels wordy. The exposition/gameplay ratio in story mode is lopsided, as you’ll spend several minutes at a time reading dialogue that just isn’t going anywhere, and then fight for a single 30 second round, before returning to more dialogue. You’re better off just sticking to the traditional Arcade mode.
The best thing I can say about Battle Fantasia is that it is GOOD, with capital letters. And really, how many original fighting game franchises from the last 5 years can you say the same thing about? It’s a fundamentally sound fighter and if you have a couple of friends that want a medieval fighter that’s more Street Fighter than Soul Calibur, then it’s a good pick. However, there’s nothing here that stands out and screams “Pick me!” over any existing fighting game franchise, and unless Ark System Works decides to push forward and give this game the same support it gives Guilty Gear with its numerous updates and intestinal fortitude, then Battle Fantasia is bound to fade into obscurity.
Pros : I didn’t state this enough in the actual review, but the cel-shaded visual style is rather easy on the eyes.
Cons : A vicious final boss that can only be damaged while your character is in heat. I guess there are some strong sexual undertones after all if the forces of evil can only be triumphed over while you’re aroused.
3 ½ stars.
I promise I’ll review something a little more well-known next time.
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