Developer: Bandai Namco Games
Publisher: Bandai Namco Games
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Tenkai Knights: Brave Battle – Review
There have been tons of children anime on television even in the west. There has been Beyblade, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon and more which have been immensely popular. Because of their popularity, those franchises expanded themselves to more than just cartoons, as there are now tons of merchandise available like toys, games or card games. Even now those are ever-growing. Tenkai Knights is one of those types of franchises, as there is now a game released for the Nintendo 3DS. So hop into your trusted Knights, fight of the evil that is invading your planet and save the world as no other hero has ever done before!
Story
A long, long time ago there was a planet called Quarton, where form-changing cubes called Tenkai live. However there is also an villainous army that has ravaged the planet, called the Corrupted Army under the command of the evil Vilius who wants to use Tenkai energy to take over the planet. Under the command of Commander Boreas, the legendary Tenkai Knights face up against Vilius, who unleashed the amazing power of the legendary Tenkai Dragon for world domination. Thankfully the Tenkai Knights defeated the dragon and scattered its parts across the whole planet in multiple Tenkai Cubes.
In the modern day, a group of teenage middle-schoolers come across a mysterious portal that leads to the planet of Quarton. The boys Guren, Ceylan, Toxsa and Chooki eventually met thanks to them travelling accidentally to this planet and meeting each other while driving away the returning Corrupted Army, which has become even more powerful and are in search of the Tenkai Cubes in order to revive the legendary Tenkai Dragon. If the dragon would be obtained by the hands of Vilius, the world of Quarton will appear in the same dimension as planet Earth, eventually colliding with it. The boys have been chosen as the new legendary Tenkai Knights and are asked to help planet Quarton against the invasion by obtaining the Tenkai Dragons themselves and saving planet Earth along with it.
The story is rather cliché, so it isn’t really much to look forward to. The concept feels rather cheap, and is something that has certainly been done before, only slightly varying thanks to the characters.
Graphics
The overall graphics in this game is not something that will make the game more pleasant as everything is very simplistic. This is of course not that big of an issue as the game is most definitely made for a younger audience. When following the story, you’ll be looking at some background image accompanied by dialogues and small windows with the character portraits in it. When in combat you’ll be looking at rather simple stages and your knight against pretty much most of the same enemies. There is not much variation, so it is rather disappointing. The knights that you’ll be playing as look pretty cool and do differ from the other knights so variation is present there.
Thankfully the 3D-function makes the game more pleasant to look at as it tries to make the best out of the possibly. Fighting with the 3D on is more fun than without.
Sound
Sound-wise the game isn’t impressive. Most of the songs or background music you’ll listen to doesn’t really have a memorable feeling to them. Most background tracks don’t vary much in their tune, so after a while you’ll just set your volume to zero.
There isn’t even a lot of voice acting present in the game, only when in combat or when choosing your mission where it says “Here we go”. This makes most of the dialogues pretty boring and makes you want to just skip them.
Gameplay
In terms of game play, the game makes up for its lack of other things, but only by a small bit. The game orients itself around completing missions in a battle royal like battle style. You’ll choose your knight and equipment beforehand and will play on a rather small stage. Missions can vary, but don’t vary too much. The first couple of missions are so easy that you’ll probably lose your motivation to play. However, sometimes the game can get so hard that you’ll want to stop playing because it can get too difficult or annoying. This doesn’t improve much because whatever mission you are doing, you’ll usually do the same thing over and over again, like beating a couple of enemies without even a time limt.
In battle you’ll control a Knight, who varies in fighting style depending on what knight you have. Although this does offer variation, the overall battles are fought pretty much like the other ones as you’ll just be hitting and running you opponent while dashing trough the air jumping from platform to platform.
If you defeat an enemy, that enemy will drop a small material that you can use to upgrade your knight with different weapons. However each upgrade takes a lot of materials so it becomes quite a grind fest if you want to become stronger. Sadly this doesn’t even change the game play by much, as they are just the same weapons but with stronger stats.
Sometimes you’ll have to do a mission where you fight in Titan Mode, where your knight becomes bigger and more badass looking. However this doesn’t affect the gameplay at all as it doesn’t really offer a new experience. The only difference is that the stage is a lot smaller and your mobility is lowered.
Lastly there is a multiplayer option available, which allows you to fight against your friends making use of your own improved Knight. The game play is just the same as the single player experience.
Conclusion
There are quite a lot of issues the game has, mainly the fact that the game play is so much the same during the whole game.While enjoyable at times, you’ll get bored of it pretty fast. The sound and the graphics are also not much to write home about, especially the lack of voice acting. The only really good thing that was likeable was the 3D function, which did a pretty fine job. The knights’ designs were also pretty cool, but that’s pretty much it. Thankfully you get a small toy when you buy the game, which makes the purchase a little more acceptable.
Tenkai Knights: Brave Battle - Review,
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