| paleface [sys=PCCD; cat=Fighting; reg=JPN] |
| | | Stat-based fighting game with impressive anime-style presentation and very long RPG-ish modes.
The main Scenario mode pits your hero against a series of story-based foes. In between fights you watch incredibly long anime slideshows, most of them sporting nice artwork. They start to get old after the first, oh, hour though (especially since I can't understand a word of what they're saying) and really the scenes themselves, though well drawn, feature little action. Worse, it sometimes just reverts to tiny talking heads, and while these still have full voice acting, it feels like a real step down. Still, I can't think of another fighting game off the top of my head that has hours of story content. Oddly, all this oodles and oodles of speech is recorded at a much lower volume than the rest of the sounds in the game, meaning that you have to keep adjusting the volume of your speakers if you want to be able to hear the speakers and not deafen yourself during a fight.
Before a fight you can spend accumulated character points to increase speed, strength, etc. Then you go fight some AI person. This would be more fun if the AI was smarter than a shag carpet, or if the characters at least animated fluidly. Unfortunately neither of those is the case, and you can beat many opponents just by kicking them repeatedly after having raised your Speed attribute a bunch. Also, it must be said that a lot of the attacks are just plain awkward.
The game supports a six-button stick, though it only uses four attack buttons (weak/strong punch/kick). Each character has a selection of special moves but, perhaps thanks to the stilted animation, they feel a little difficult to use, and besides they're like molasses compared to a Speed-boosted regular attack.
In "Advance" mode you choose a character and then put them through a seemingly endless series of fights against your choice of opponent. You get money with each win and can buy better equipment (boosts stats), boost your stats, and then go fight again. And again. And again. You could keep it up forever, I suppose--if only the base fighting action were more entertaining.
And there's the obligatory Vs. mode. |
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| | | | In Scenario and Advance modes you can set your character to be controlled by the computer, and then you just sit back and watch the battle. I suppose there may be one or two people in the universe who would spend much time doing that? |
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| | | | The game lives up to its name by having red screen flash FX during gameplay. : P |
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