With a new and very much traditional Street Fighter game reigniting the flames of beat-’em-up fans who have lost their way of late, we’re set to see not only the rebirth (or rather, rejuvenation) of the fighting genre but also a rise to prominence for titles that would but months ago have been niche import-only games. And while at the moment Battle Fantasia may be just that, 505 Games is planning to bring it to Europe, where it will no doubt win the hearts of many a fighting fan, just as it has ours.
Despite its glorious 2.5D rendering, Fantasia is as old-school a beat-’em-up as you’ll encounter. Guilty Gear developers ArcSys have trimmed all the technical nonsense away from its flagship series, leaving a far more refined, accessible and balanced fighter as a result. Simple four-button setup works well with either a standard pad or a stick, with a fifth button being introduced in the form of the Gachi button. This falls somewhere between the Parry system from Street Fighter III and Soul Calibur’s Guard Impacts – a tap of the button at the right time will protect you from damage and give you advantage while hitting forward at the same time blasts the attacker back, bouncing them off the far side of the screen and setting them up for some seriously nasty combos. This makes your every attack a huge risk, knowing full well that a skilled opponent will easily be able to turn a predictable jump-in attack into a counter combo that will rob you of half your life.
Also changing things up is the character roster, losing the cliché ninja and martial artists upon which so many fighters rely and replacing them with RPG-style characters – a warrior princess, a humble cleric and a wizard rabbit all appear, among others. Slightly disappointing, though, is that the three characters we’ve just mentioned make up a quarter of BF’s cast, which clocks in at just twelve fighters. Sure, there’s ample variety here to ensure that all styles of play are catered for and if anything, it’s far more balanced as a result. You’ve still got your strong, beefy characters like Freed the pirate, knight Deathbringer and giant dwarf Donvalve. You’ve got speedy mix-up characters like fop and house favourite Ashley and the tricky cat-girl Coyori. You’ve even got oddities like Watson the magic rabbit, Odile & Dokurod (a necromancer-esque girl with a talking skull staff) and gunslinger Face, who is strangely reminiscent of GG’s Faust. Oh, and there’s shoto wannabe Marco too, who ensures that Ryu/Ken players aren’t left in No Man’s Land. All bases covered, then, but it’d still be nice to be offered a wee bit more choice.
To add even more variety, ArcSys has ensured that you’re able to keep opponents on their toes as soon as your super meter starts to fill up. While you can choose to spend a full bar of this gauge on a standard super attack, each character has the alternative option to use their stock to ‘heat up’ instead. What this does differs from character to character, both in terms of actual effects and overall usefulness. Freed, for example, has his attacks doubled or tripled up by a following shadow (a la Street Fighter Alpha’s V-Ism or CvS2’s A-Groove), Olivia and Marco get familiars in the form of a flock of doves and a dragon respectively while others – like our boy Ashley – get a few new moves, in his case the ability to link well timed dash attacks both along the ground and in the air for maximum zig-zag punishment. You don’t get long to put your heat to good use and a single decent hit is often enough to knock you out of Heat mode altogether, so prediction, timing and working off counters and Gachis are all important in making sure that your super meter doesn’t go to waste.
And now the bad news, although it’s nothing to do with the game itself. This Japanese 360 version isn’t region free like some import titles, meaning you’ll need an import console if you want to play it (although PS3 owners can import away, especially with the rumblings that the Sony console might not be privy to the domestic launch). Still, the good news to counterbalance this is that 505 Games will be bringing Battle Fantasia to Europe later in the year. So long as they can get it out before Capcom drops its Street Fighter bomb and totally overshadows this quirky but brilliant fighter, we’ve high hopes that fighting fans everywhere will lap it up. They should do, at least, because from style to mechanics, Battle Fantasia represents all that is good in the genre and its creators should be applauded for doing something a bit different while keeping the 2-D dream alive.
A sublime blend of old and new, Battle Fantasia has both the hardcore mechanics and depth to attract devout beat-’em-up fanatics and the style, polish and approachability to rope in the less devoted gamer. It could use a few more characters and perhaps a little more substance but still, BF is easily one of the better fighting games to grace the current generation of consoles so far.
