Did a search and couldn't find a thread for this one.
Anyway, i've been meaning to try it for a while and I can glady say that its better than expected, its not another shoddy anime tie-in in any case.
To start of with, its made by the dev's benhind Killer7, Grasshopper, and it shows, the two games are quite similar. It's got a lot of style like Killer7, lovely menus, good soundtrack and whatnot.
When you start of you get to choose out of Jin or Mugen, play through their stories and you get a bonus character to play as. So far i've only done Mugen's path and the first stage of the bonus character's.
The story is broken into stages, the stages tend to be quite small, but you get so many enemies thrown at you that they can drag on a bit. The environments are also pretty generic (snow level, forest level etc) and things become a bit tedious, especially when you reach the last stage which has you battling through near identical buildings for 2 hours. The stages are also pretty bland with little variety within them. Bit of a dissapointment here.
Onto the combat, which has been a lot of fun. There's quite a lot to the combat so it'll be hard to explain it all, you really need to try it yourself or watch some videos. Anyway, you get a normal attack, strong attack and a technique button as well as an action button which makes you jump or roll depending on which character your using. You can chain your normal and strong attacks for combos, the combo's you can do depend on the record you have equipped as this changes your combo tree. You can have 2 records with you at a time and can switch between them with a flick of the analog stick. As you progress you can buy new records from the record shop, which you can visit inbetween or at the beginning of some stages, you also unlock them for finishing stages. Some of the better records do more than change your combo tree and give you attributes such as attack up etc. Before I forget to mention, the records do also change the music, it's all hip-hop, some is quite funky, some pretty bland, but its a very nice feature overall.
Now there's a lot more to the battle system. If you and an enemy attack at the same time, you can counterattack, when this happens the action will pause for a second and you have to press a button to get the counter in, what action you do depends on what you press. You can also block with L1 although you probably won't find yourself defending too much, you can smash you way through most enemies without needing to.
You also have a tension gauge, as you land hits, this fills up, when you get hit, it goes down. If the tension gauge is full, your combo tree becomes bigger so you can pull of bigger combos usually resulting in a nice powerful attack at the end. On top of this, when your tension gauge maxes out, you can enter a hyper mode by pulling of a certan combo (which will be higlighted in red on your combo tree) - in hyper mode you speed up for a few seconds allowing you to lay down some heavy damage. When your tension gauge is filled you'll also find that some enemies will have stars above them, if you hit them at this point, you'll enter Tate mode, in tate mode you'll enter a new screen with your character facing the enemy, you get a short amount of time (varies) to get as many hits on the enemy in as you can by tapping the four main face buttons (x, o etc) as many times as possible. The more hits you land, the more health you'll regain when you leave tate mode. If you manage to get 100 hits you'll enter another mode (which I forget the name of), in this mode, you'll see a silouhete of your character and you'll get attacked by silouhete enemies, you'll get a reward depending on how many you kill, kill all 100, and a new weapon will become available to buy from the weapon stores you find inbetween the stages, if you don't make 100, you'll get ukioye art instead, there's 100 of these to collect and you can view them from a gallery mode.
Just a few more things, you can perform technique guards by pressing the technique button just as your being attacked, this stuns the enemy for a second, it's quite hard to do and I didn't find myself using this technique much. R1 lets you lock on to an enemy. And there's little tricks you can pull of, for example, pressing the technique button just as you start a counterattck and then pressing the normal attack button will bring you into hyper mode without having to fill up your tension gauge. That's about all, i've done enough typing for the moment, so you'll have to try the combat out for yourself. As complicated as it sounds, its very simple and a lot of fun.
As for the story, its quite good, some of the scenes are quite funny - you should enjoy them if you liked the anime.
There's some things that I would have liked to see but aren't included. You can't level up your character at all which is a shame. You can buy new records and weapons but it'd be nice to be able to spend your money levelling up.
The game is also easy. You get unlimited lives and never have to start a level again (which is good!). But it can be a bit easy to bust through the game without much hassle. Some of the bosses can be quite difficult, but if you die enough times on a boss, you'll start getting special bonuses such as double health, repaired weapons etc, so you'll never find yourself stuck at any point.
Overall the game is good. The battle system has a fair bit of depth but its easy to learn and a lot of fun at the same time. The environments are pretty poor as mentioned and there's other little niggles that I havn't got around to complaining about, such as the load times (which aren't long but are frequent).
Good game, espcially if your a fan of the anime, but its no Killer7.
6.5/10
Anyway, i've been meaning to try it for a while and I can glady say that its better than expected, its not another shoddy anime tie-in in any case.
To start of with, its made by the dev's benhind Killer7, Grasshopper, and it shows, the two games are quite similar. It's got a lot of style like Killer7, lovely menus, good soundtrack and whatnot.
When you start of you get to choose out of Jin or Mugen, play through their stories and you get a bonus character to play as. So far i've only done Mugen's path and the first stage of the bonus character's.
The story is broken into stages, the stages tend to be quite small, but you get so many enemies thrown at you that they can drag on a bit. The environments are also pretty generic (snow level, forest level etc) and things become a bit tedious, especially when you reach the last stage which has you battling through near identical buildings for 2 hours. The stages are also pretty bland with little variety within them. Bit of a dissapointment here.
Onto the combat, which has been a lot of fun. There's quite a lot to the combat so it'll be hard to explain it all, you really need to try it yourself or watch some videos. Anyway, you get a normal attack, strong attack and a technique button as well as an action button which makes you jump or roll depending on which character your using. You can chain your normal and strong attacks for combos, the combo's you can do depend on the record you have equipped as this changes your combo tree. You can have 2 records with you at a time and can switch between them with a flick of the analog stick. As you progress you can buy new records from the record shop, which you can visit inbetween or at the beginning of some stages, you also unlock them for finishing stages. Some of the better records do more than change your combo tree and give you attributes such as attack up etc. Before I forget to mention, the records do also change the music, it's all hip-hop, some is quite funky, some pretty bland, but its a very nice feature overall.
Now there's a lot more to the battle system. If you and an enemy attack at the same time, you can counterattack, when this happens the action will pause for a second and you have to press a button to get the counter in, what action you do depends on what you press. You can also block with L1 although you probably won't find yourself defending too much, you can smash you way through most enemies without needing to.
You also have a tension gauge, as you land hits, this fills up, when you get hit, it goes down. If the tension gauge is full, your combo tree becomes bigger so you can pull of bigger combos usually resulting in a nice powerful attack at the end. On top of this, when your tension gauge maxes out, you can enter a hyper mode by pulling of a certan combo (which will be higlighted in red on your combo tree) - in hyper mode you speed up for a few seconds allowing you to lay down some heavy damage. When your tension gauge is filled you'll also find that some enemies will have stars above them, if you hit them at this point, you'll enter Tate mode, in tate mode you'll enter a new screen with your character facing the enemy, you get a short amount of time (varies) to get as many hits on the enemy in as you can by tapping the four main face buttons (x, o etc) as many times as possible. The more hits you land, the more health you'll regain when you leave tate mode. If you manage to get 100 hits you'll enter another mode (which I forget the name of), in this mode, you'll see a silouhete of your character and you'll get attacked by silouhete enemies, you'll get a reward depending on how many you kill, kill all 100, and a new weapon will become available to buy from the weapon stores you find inbetween the stages, if you don't make 100, you'll get ukioye art instead, there's 100 of these to collect and you can view them from a gallery mode.
Just a few more things, you can perform technique guards by pressing the technique button just as your being attacked, this stuns the enemy for a second, it's quite hard to do and I didn't find myself using this technique much. R1 lets you lock on to an enemy. And there's little tricks you can pull of, for example, pressing the technique button just as you start a counterattck and then pressing the normal attack button will bring you into hyper mode without having to fill up your tension gauge. That's about all, i've done enough typing for the moment, so you'll have to try the combat out for yourself. As complicated as it sounds, its very simple and a lot of fun.
As for the story, its quite good, some of the scenes are quite funny - you should enjoy them if you liked the anime.
There's some things that I would have liked to see but aren't included. You can't level up your character at all which is a shame. You can buy new records and weapons but it'd be nice to be able to spend your money levelling up.
The game is also easy. You get unlimited lives and never have to start a level again (which is good!). But it can be a bit easy to bust through the game without much hassle. Some of the bosses can be quite difficult, but if you die enough times on a boss, you'll start getting special bonuses such as double health, repaired weapons etc, so you'll never find yourself stuck at any point.
Overall the game is good. The battle system has a fair bit of depth but its easy to learn and a lot of fun at the same time. The environments are pretty poor as mentioned and there's other little niggles that I havn't got around to complaining about, such as the load times (which aren't long but are frequent).
Good game, espcially if your a fan of the anime, but its no Killer7.
6.5/10
Comment