Developer: French-Bread, Ecole Software, Arc System Works
Publisher: NIS America
Platform: PS3
Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late – Review
It hasn’t been long since the last NIS America title was examined by us and already a new one was popped in our mailbox. This time we aren’t presented with half naked girls who want to escape their hellish prison, but rather a fighting game where evil monsters lurk around every corner. NIS America is here to prove that old school fighters are not dead.
Story
With the mention of the ‘year 20xx’ one might expect the intro of a Mega Man game, where Dr. Wily will pop out of the woodwork and beat the living crap out of you. Instead you are offered a game that portrays a future society where scientific progress reigns supreme. That being said, the world seems to be under attack by an invisible evil force, that consumes humanity.
Those who are actually able to see these monsters either don’t live long or have certain powers that allow them to survive the lurking menace. Other than that, the game does not really give you that much information about the basic plot.
During your playthroughs of the arcade mode, you will be treated to a separate storyline for each of the available characters. This is brought to you in the form of spoken dialogue and static images to spice things up.
For a fighting game the story is brought in an entertaining way, albeit too vague. Nonetheless, you will be able to enjoy the different personalities of the different characters.
Graphics
Graphically the game feels like a throwback to many of the old school anime-like fighting games, such as BlazBlue, Guilty Gear and so on. Of course this is not a bad thing, as the characters look great, the backgrounds look detailed and overall an HD quality is noticeable.
The game does bring up certain cliché appearances, that have been overused in the genre. As usual among the cast of fighters you will find a samurai with an extremely oversized weapon, a robotic maid girl, a dark monster etc. That being said, all of them still look amazingly well animated.
Special moves look flashy, movements are fluent and the cutscenes prove to be superb. Overall a great looking game, be it with ‘2D’ graphics.
Sound
NIS America always does an effort to implement a decent amount of voice acting in their games, this time is no exception either. Outside of the regular catchphrases and grunts you will hear during the course of the fierce battles, you will be treated to fairly long spoken dialogues every few stages in the arcade mode. All of the characters have a reasonable amount of spoken Japanese dialogue and it simply sounds great.
Music is another catchy, yet subtle factor. You will hear fairly subtle fighting music during the battles, but outside of the occasional catchiness, there won’t be that many memorable tracks.
Gameplay
Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late is an ‘old school’ 2D fighting game, that has a BlazBlue, Guilty Gear vibe going on. You will have a cast of sixteen fighters, each having their own quirks, special abilities and fairly different fighting styles. As with many fighting games, there is a clear difference in power between the fast and slow hitters.
The game itself feels a bit more tactical than for example Tekken or Street fighter games -Don’t shoot me SF and Tekken fans!- because of the fact that handling your fighting avatar feels a lot slower than in those mentioned games. You will have a slightly more limited control scheme as you will only have three actual fighting buttons and one to charge your special meter. It’s also clear that button mashing those action buttons over and over again will not score you any easy wins. You will have to maintain your guard, as you can be countered and your opponents can easily ‘recover’ when knocked in the air. Simply put, the main mechanics are simple but very hard to master.
Of course, you will not be limited to normal punches and kicks. You will also be able to perform special moves. To perform these special moves you will need to consume your EXS meter, in order to remove your ‘veil’. This allows you to go into an overdrive state, in which you can perform your ultra move. You’ll notice that the command to perform your ultra move is identically the same for all the different characters. This makes it easy to learn and master all the different fighters on the roster.
Like with many other fighting games, you will find the typical modes present. You will be able to follow each other’s storyline in the arcade mode, duke it out with friends in the vs mode or practice and so on. Nothing groundbreaking has happened in this department, except for old school fighting fun.
Overall the controls proved to be quite responsive, except for jumping towards the sides. Often will the game register a side-jump as a normal upwards motion, either missing an attack or missing the chance to strike your foe. When getting used to the mechanics, and the fact that you have to be extremely precise with the left stick (if you opt to play with the stick instead of the D-pad), things will certainly get better.
Conclusion
Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late is one of those fighting games that show us that simplicity of controls and options does not necessarily mean the game itself is simple. A great cast of warriors, fun moves and great artwork will accompany you on your way of vanquishing your foes.
Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late - Review,
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