Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds is a 2D beat em up starring 4 girls trying to rescue someone called Nagi. The story is told upfront in the first mission but it is very forgettable and the characters are not introduced at all. I still have no idea who anyone is or why they have the powers that they do. Not that it really matters in a beat em up but it would still be nice to know these things if you are trying to tell a story. All 4 of the characters are fully voice acted which is nice but the only language available is Japanese. They usually only talk at the start of a boss fight in story mode and it is only groans and grunts during gameplay.
There are four modes in this game. The local multiplayer modes are called Battle Grounds which is a simple mode where you fight your friend and Coop Mode with up to three other players which has you going through the story missions. The solo modes are called Story which has you going through all the missions with dialogue and Arcade which is an absolutely useless mode since this game doesn’t have leaderboards and the only difference is the lack of dialogue. When enemies die they drop both coins and red gems. Red gems are used to level up but the coins are useless which was a real missed opportunity for Arcade mode.
Leveling up is done with “skill points” via the main menu or after missions. You can either upgrade your stats such as speed, strength and defends or you can also spend your points on new abilities like double jumping or magical attacks. It is a lot of fun upgrading your character and gives you a good reason to replay story mode over and over again. Characters are also customizable to an extent due to having multiple color pallets to choose from. Much to my surprise you do unlock more characters to play as later on and every character plays differently.
Which brings me to gameplay. That is the single best thing about this game and is much more in depth then most other beat em ups. There are ranged attacks, magical attacks, weak medium strong attacks, dash attacks and more. As well as double jumping, teleporting behind an enemy if you time the dash right and a emergency move that lets you escape a combo at the cost of all your mana. That’s not even all there is to combat and it all comes together very nicely which is a welcome change to simple button mashing. Add to that how different the characters play from one another and you have something quite similar to a actual fighting game.
You can also jump into the background which allows for two planes to fight in. It is quite useful for moving out of the way of powerful attacks and to give you some breathing room when enemies start to corner you. It is very difficult to tell if a flying enemy is in the foreground or background. Along with that some of the larger enemies will block your ability to see your character while in the background which leads you to blindly fighting without knowing what is going on. Enemies are plentiful and range from humans, demons, robots and other oddities. Most do fight differently and are not simple clones, so it is advised to learn their attacks patterns and behaviors early on.
At the end of each level is a boss fight and these are the moments when knowing how to fight in this game are most needed as they are no pushovers. Oddly enough the first real boss fight is one of the hardest in the game as you have no way to refill your health with food and you are very low level at that point. Starting off in this game is a bit of a challenge as there is no practice mode to learn how to fight and is further worsened by the fact that you start off with all moves available only to have them all taken away as you lose all your powers in the next level. There is a bare-bones tutorial to read in the pause screen if you find yourself at a loss as to what certain moves do and how to pull them off.
The levels are all memorable and there are 8 overall starting from 0 to 7. This game has a very nice 16 bit artstyle and sound effects. It would be nice if we could play it in 1080p though. The graphic options are literally just a fullscreen on and off switch. As of a recent update the game now runs fine on monitors over 60hz. Online play which is available on consoles since day one is still being worked on do to the developers focusing all their attention to porting to the PS4 which shows how much they care about the PC community.
Okay, to be fair they are a small company and it is better to wait until it’s not broken to release online play but the fact that the consoles have such a major feature makes this version look a lot less appealing. Moving on this game also features a very nice and upbeat soundtrack which has new tracks every level. It is a tongue in cheek game and never takes itself seriously, which adds to the charm. There are obese enemies that throw cakes at you which are much more dangerous then they seem and some random non aggressive dude that shows up at times carrying a sack that you must beat up to progress. It is an unpredictable ride and suits the chibi artstyle really well. It may not be in a HD resolution put still looks stunning at times.
Overall this really is a great game that is unfortunately gimped for the PC users. Still there is no denying that Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds is definitely one of the funnest beat em ups I have played in a long time. The involving fighting system and the great leveling mechanic makes this a very addicting game even if there are only 8 stages. With a cap of level 50 and multiple unique characters, this has great replay value. This is not a game that should be dismissed due to it’s anime artstyle. Highly recommended for fans of the genre and people looking for an action packed game.
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