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Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds [XBLA]

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    Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds [XBLA]

    Phantom Breaker was born as a 1 on 1 and it was scheduled to be released in the west last year. Due to some problems, its scrolling beat'em'up spin-off, Phantom Breaker: battle Grounds gets here first.
    I don't know much about PB, I only saw few videos here and there and the thing I remember the most is how stiff animations were. Battle Grounds get this right and playable characters and bosses animations are cool and well done. Mobs got a decent level of attention but there are like 8 enemy archetypes in the game, the rest is recolours or small sprite variations.
    Anyway, the game desperately tries to be Scott Pilgrim VS The World. It tries very hard. Incredibly hard. Graphic style, animations, backgrounds, chiptune music, coins scattered by defeated enemies, and level up system (without the Kunio-kun-esque shops though). But fails almost miserably. Almost because as said before animations are well done, bu they don't have Roberton's charm, nor do the chiptune musics. And I swear there are sound effects lifted off from the NES MegaMan games in here.

    I'm not the biggest fan of Scott Pilgrim's game but I can recognize the effort that has gone into it. Battle Grounds does not really show anything like that, levels are long flat surfaces were enemies mostly stand still waiting for your punishment; I must say that I'm playing at normal difficulty level (harder modes are locked out), but this behaviour starts from level 1 and continues throughout the game. I don't really know where I am, but it feels I'm near the end, and that took a little less than 2 hours.
    The only "challenge" the game offers are the bosses, but they don't have patterns, they just spam their attacks and the reply to this is doing exactly the same.

    There is a level system in place, in which you can upgrade stats (attack, defense, speed) or learn new skills (longer combos, double jumps, dash attacks, etc.); after the first two levels it became apparent that learning skills past the dash attack and maybe double jump is useless, pumping attack will let you breeze through the game by just pressing the light attack button.
    I've started the game with Yuzuha, an high-scool ninja girl (it was her or the maid with the giant mallet) and my strategy is simply to execute a medium dash attack (able to kill most enemies in one hit) and then mash light attack until everything dies. If stronger enemies, wait, enemies with a longer life bar, appear, I'd maybe throw in medium or strong attacks.
    The tutorial goes on for 26 pages and it shows cancels, emergency mode, overdrive mode, combos, throws, modifiers for special attacks...none of them are required to go through the game at normal level. As a side note, the tutorial defines medium and strong attacks as this, respectively: "a stronger attack than light attack" and "a stronger attack than medium attack"...you don't say.
    Anyway, the game features two lanes in which to fight, like Guardian Heroes and Code of Princess, and just like CoP, the easiest tactic is to wait for an enemy to jump in the lane you're in and start attacking; works well with bosses as well, and thought the jump window is much smaller than CoP, it's the most effective tactic; if the enemies act all, that is. Sometimes they just stand there doing nothing for several seconds...CoP and Senran Kagura had the same problem, but at least those two games had combos to string together, with Senran Kagura offering mindless, uninterrupted fun fighting.

    And it's one of those games. You know, one of those game that shower you with Achievements for pressing buttons or starting the game: starting the game gets you an Achievement, using all attack buttons unlocks a new one, picking up food you don't like gets an other one...ugh, I'm trying hard to find a reedeming quality for the game and the more I write about it, more bad things come up to mind. In fact, there is one partially good thing: on of the later levels is a small maze, but the backgrounds are so repetitive that it's easier to try all possible doors rather to get a hold of your position. And maybe it's really time I stop writing or I'll start complaining about transitions between stages or the fonts used.

    #2
    Oof, I didn’t think it was nearly as bad as you made out! I’ve only played for about 30 minutes but found it infinitely more enjoyable than the main ‘Phantom Breaker’ game (which is ****). Difficulty was a bit weird and wonderful though; we were doing 2p and on normal we breezed through the first stage only to have the boss demolish us 3 times over before we succumbed and dropped to easy.

    I’ve spent a lot of time with the Scott Pilgrim game and I’m not sure I’d necessarily put this below it based on first impressions – it has charm, just in different ways! I like that there’s a decent range of moves you can do, along with parries / throw escapes / bursts and so on. There’s a few neat otaku things too – some of the shops / arcades in Akiba (you go into Hey!), enemy archetypes and so on…

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      #3
      is this in the UK store?

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        #4
        Yes it is

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          #5
          cobblers - i thought it was an update of 5pbs 2d 1-1 fighter, but it seems to have been transformed into a button mashing kiddies side scroller!

          aw well

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            #6
            Originally posted by fuse View Post
            Oof, I didn’t think it was nearly as bad as you made out! <snip>enemy archetypes and so on…
            Well, the first stage (

            and the, IIRC, third, Ikebukuro

            ) surely summon nostalgic feelings about Tokyo, but so far it has been very shallow for me; I'm mashing buttons to complete stages and haven't found any use for any advanced move so far...I would have never jumped if not for the flying enemies in later stages.

            When i was waiting for this game I thought that it would have been better than the original PB, thanks for confirming that

            I will try the game in hard, maybe there will be uses for all the cancels/throws listed in the tutorial, it's just that normal mode should have been the very easy mode for what I think.

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              #7
              Completed the game on normal...the last boss was easier than the first. Ugh. Started the game in hard with a new character (Wakaba? The shrine maiden, anyway) and my proven tactic of mashing A and abusing the dash attack still holds true. Two main differencies between normal and hard: first, bosses like to spam seemingly invicible, high-priority moves; annoying. Second, enemies take longer to die and you are actually using medium and strong attacks to plow through them, the light attack will just take too much time; and you use more often the area attack to clear the sorrounding, but otherwise there's nothing different...oh well, there are new recolours/redrawns.
              IMO hard should have been normal, with bosses less prone to spam their attacks and possibly in levelling up: level 3 in hard and I'm already past the maximum level in normal. It wouldn't have saved the game from being incredibly shallow though.

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