Developer: SNK, Abstraction Games
Publisher: SNK, Nippon Ichi Software, NIS America
Platform: PS4, Switch
Tested on: Switch
SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy – Review
SNK has faded a bit more to the background of the gaming industry after being one of the biggest companies in the business during the nineties. The company released one iconic title after another, resulting in many of their franchises still being popular to this day. The Nintendo eShop is littered with SNK titles which you can pick up for a low price, allowing you to play many of the games that different generations grew up with, or simply because many of the games are still fun and relevant to this day. Instead of lingering in the past, the company still develops new titles, with SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy being one of them. With a cast of familiar faces, and some new contenders, we were wondering if we would be bamboozled again with the premise of something new and exciting, or if we would have our socks blown off.
Story
The story of the game is a bit blurry. You find yourself in a small pocket dimension which is created by a villain by the name of Kukri. This villain wishes to feed on the fear and despair of a handful of female warriors, only to increase his powers and hopefully strengthen this dimension. He also wishes to collect every warrior that enters his dimension, which is somewhat scary. Of course, you select two warriors, beat the rest of the cast and then come eye to eye with the villain only to stomp his brains in. Overall the plot is very simple but it gives the game a little extra and thus you have something to hold on to. At the end of each playthrough you get to see small cutscenes revolving around the characters you completed the game with, but they lack a bit of a punch and they are somewhat nonsensical making them redundant rather than something to look forward to.
Graphics
SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy is a good looking game from start to finish. The characters of the game are really well designed and are a proper homage to their former retro selves. While the arenas are limited to only a handful in the selection screen, they translate well to the screen and look spiffy enough to remain entertaining. Sadly, there is no real interaction with the arenas and they are all somewhat flat in their dimensions, which is probably the biggest letdown of the graphical prowess of the game.
Sound
The soundtrack of the game is not really that diverse, but it will still get your blood pumping during your playing sessions. Overall you won’t notice that much as the matches will be filled with grunts and cries from the characters, as well as standard punching and kicking noises. You’ll have a fair amount of voice acting during the cutscenes in the story mode, and you can also choose to listen to the voices of your favorite characters, who can also be selected as the presenter of the game.
Gameplay
SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy is a fairly old school fighting game, with a 2 vs. 2 format with a fairly unique twist. As usual you’ll be fighting each other, but instead of having two separate HP bars which would indicate the hit points per character, you’ll have one shared bar. When the bar is depleted, you won’t die, but you’ll be stunned, as the game can only be concluded when a finishing move is performed. This move is called the ‘Dream Finish’ and can easily be performed by a single button press. Nonetheless, you will have to have enough energy to perform said move. The lower your HP bar is, the more energy you can stock, as it uses the empty space of the HP bar as well. This quirky mechanic is actually quite fun, and allows for some decent comeback moves if the winning party doesn’t manage their energy in a proper fashion.
The flow of the combat is pretty much what you’d expect from any other fighting game. You inflict damage by performing normal or special moves and instead of knocking out your opponent when she reaches zero hit points, you’ll have to perform a Dream Finish as explained above. This special move can easily be done by the press of a single button, but immediately we arrive at one of the biggest issues of the game when playing against other, real opponents, namely blocking. The block move is somewhat overpowered and can even be triggered when another opponent is already performing his Dream Finish, often resulting in a block-fest, where the timer ticks away without any of the fighters reaching a conclusion. We feel that there should have been a small delay on the block, or at least something to break it more easily, as you don’t even have to consider blocking high or low, which means that just pressing the block button gives you an impenetrable shield for a (short) while.
As the game is a tag team game, we were surprised that there are only around sixteen female warriors to choose from. This means you’ll go through the cast of characters quite fast, but you’ll still have a reasonable amount of combinations to make. We hope to see more characters being added to the roster in the future as this game certainly has potential in becoming something great for newcomers to the fighting genre, if we disregard the issues with the blocking.
Other than the normal content in the game, it’s clear that some fan service has been provided to the potential buyers of the game, as you have a lot of gallery content to unlock ranging from clips, to pictures, to even settings where you can choose the voice of your favorite character who will then be the presenter of the game. You can also unlock new outfits and accessories, which can spice up your matches. There is a lot of extra content to explore for completionists, which will create a certain drive.
Conclusion
SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy is an ok fighting game, that is pretty much only hampered by its basic control scheme and the fairly low amount of available fighters. If you can look past the somewhat hollow shell in terms of options, you’ll find a decent fighting game with simplified controls, making this the perfect game for those who are into fighting games but can’t dedicate that much time to becoming professional fighters. That being said, the game does also have enough to offer for more experienced players, but they will run out of steam a lot faster than initiates. Overall SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy is a game that can spice up your Switch collection, but in many ways more of an ‘in-between title’.
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[…] MissX will be joining the Tag Team Frenzy of SNK HEROINES today as a downloadable character. This brings the total amount of playable characters to eighteen. If you’re not familiar with SNK HEROINES it’s a fighting game much like Tekken and Street Fighter but with a heavy focus on the tag team component. MissX was the host of the Queen of Fighters tournament in SNK Gals’ Fighters back in 2000. She is now making a comeback as a participant in this installment. The game is available on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. If you want to know more about the game you can find our review right here. […]
[…] Jeanne is the latest heroine to join the SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. Jeanne is lightly based on Jeanne D’arc, a French heroine from the history books and movies. She is a beautiful young lady with grace, who is not afraid to wield a sword and slice and dice your face and other body parts into tiny bits. Jeanne has a large range of costumes, from a more traditional full plate body armor to a metal bikini, dressed to impress at every occasion. She just became available today as a DLC character. You can find our review of the game right here. […]