Fantasy Strike – Review

Fighting games have been waning in on their popularity over the last decade. A few series still remain, such as Tekken, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Dead or Alive and so on. Sometimes an indie company decides to make its own original fighting game, but often these games are either unpopular, unknown or suffer under the lack of budget or balancing issues. Certain fighting games are simply not that ‘big of a deal’ over here, such as many anime-like fighting games. These often have a limited audience and are considered a niche in the genre. Fighting games such as those in the Smash Bros series have been gaining a bit of popularity because of how accessible they are for younger gamers or those who simply don’t have the time to learn every trick in the book. This concept must have inspired one of the original designers of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix as he is the one responsible behind the new accessible fighting game, Fantasy Strike.

Story

As always the arcade mode of a fighting game such as this allows you to play with one of the ten characters available, presenting you with a little bit of story value. There is not that much to tell, and with the lack of many characters, you’ll often see the same characters pass the revue. That being said, the snippets of the story remind us of older arcade fighting games which is always a plus.

Graphics

Having tried the Switch version of Fantasy Strike we were neither impressed nor disappointed. The character design is quite likable, the stages and backdrops suffice and the menus are a bit cheap and ugly. Other than that, the special effects certainly get you riled up, but the lack of variety in them makes it sometimes a bit tedious to see the same move over and over again. Of course, the latter is the cost of creating a fighting game with easy and basic controls with a very limited move set.

Sound

The sound design of Fantasy Strike is fairly okay, but it’s nothing to write home about. The sound effects are decent, as well as the grunts of the characters. Sadly, as will be explained below, the move sets of the characters are so limited that you, and your opponents, will constantly shout the same thing over and over again because you have to spam the same combos/moves. The music is also just fine, but once again nothing memorable.

Gameplay

Fantasy Strike describes itself as a very accessible fighting game, with proper online functionalities and a decent offline base to begin with. You’ll have to pick a fighter out of a very limited cast of ten characters and then try to win a fixed amount of rounds in the basic modes of the game. The game works a bit different than most fighting games, as the control scheme is very basic and limited, and each character’s HP bar is divided into different smaller sections, which deplete per move. This means that one hit often means removing one bar, making the rounds very short.

Fantasy Strike opts for a very limited control scheme, where things as crouching and running are non-existent. You’ll have to use one button for basic attacks, another for skills, another to jump, one to grab your opponents and so on. Each character only has a handful of moves, which makes it so that you either spam them or get killed by an opponent who spams them. The game does have a  few interesting counter mechanics which give the fighting a bit more depth. We would have loved the complexity of the Smash Bros move set for this one, as Fantasy Strike already has a very limited cast of characters and moves, making the overall experience a lot more bland than you’d initially think.

The very limited move set also shows in the behavior of the A.I., as they also spam the same move constantly. The latter is extremely annoying as you can often find yourself being bashed to a pulp because the opponent keeps using his signature move. It’s often a lot more fun playing against real opponents, but if the A.I. already resorts to very shitty tactics and behavior, you can bet your sweet ass that the internet community will act just the same.

Conclusion

Fantasy Strike is one of those titles that looks impressive on paper but gets extremely tedious and dull when you play it for a while. While the characters prove to be interesting and unique, they can’t be properly tied together, they seem to be of different styles and their move-sets are so limited that the game quickly becomes a spam-fest of a single button. While the game has a few different options to offer, sometimes aiming for a very simplistic style of mechanics can also be what makes the game shallow and boring.

Ibuki

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Aspiring ninja.

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