Phantom Breaker is a 2D fighting game that was planned to be localized for the US but ultimately fell victim to a series of delays and eventually was cancelled altogether. However, its Spin-Off, Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds, was localized for PSN and XBLA late last year, and has now come to Steam. Battle Grounds is an old school brawler starring the characters from the original Phantom Breaker, with a chibi aesthetic. Don’t worry too much about Battle Ground’s spotty origins, while the plot does reference events from the previous game, and seems to expect a certain level of understanding of the world, the story is fairly minimal and you don’t necessarily need to follow it in order to enjoy the game.
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds opens with the four playable characters Mikoto, Waka, Itsuki and Yuzuha, confronting a group of bad guys when they find out that they have Nagi, one of the character’s younger sister. You then go through an introductory level, at the end of which you go through a portal to rescue the captured member of the family. This entire plot ultimately feels meaningless to the game. Considering this is a spin-off of a game that we never saw in the west, I don’t feel like it’s Battle Ground’s fault, but if there was anything that the previous game’s story could have added here it’s been lost.
There also hasn’t been anything but the minimal effort when adapting the game from console to PC. It is very hard to play with the keyboard, I’d say even impossible, and it was clearly never intended to be played with anything other than a controller, since the controller setting page has an image of the Xbox 360 controller. A bigger problem is a strange bug where the game allowed my monitor to go into sleep mode. This only affects the display, as the game still runs, and it is fixed by using Alt+Tab to exit the game. At first I thought this was an issue with my computer, but Phantom Break: Battle Grounds is the only game that has given me this trouble. No amount of fiddling with any of the display settings seemed to make a difference.
This is a shame because the core game-play of Phantom Break: Battle Grounds can be a lot of fun. It is an old-school 2D brawler reminiscent of Double Dragon, with a clever twist. The game happens in two separate planes, one closer to the camera, and one further back, and you can travel between them on the fly by pressing a button. This can help you get out of tricky situations, avoid projectiles, or simply corner enemies during boss battles. Enemies, particularly bosses, do a good job of using the multiple planes during fights. There are four characters to choose from initially, and they all level up as you use them and clear levels with them. The leveling system is surprisingly deep, having you choose not only between three attributes, attack, defense, and speed, but also advancing through skill tress. Attributes and skills are bought with points form the same pool, so you have to choose what you think its more suitable to your play style when leveling up each character. Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is nice enough to allow you to re-spec those characters whenever you want, so if you feel you made a mistake during the level up process, you can fix that at any time between levels.
Sadly all of that depth feels somewhat wasted as you can go through most of the game by button mashing. Despite the variety in girls, they are very similar in how they play. Some are faster, or slower, and there might be one or two moves that are different, but they essentially have the same move set. Enemies tend to cluster together, which makes them easier to kill. Some major enemies and bosses will take a little more thought to defeat, and those were the best moments of the game. Granted, I am a sucker for a good boss fight, and I love that they put extra effort when it came to them in this game, but I wish that there was more thought on how to defeat the hordes that the game throws at you. On that note, I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer variety and creativity of the enemies in the game. You will fight evil salary men, bionic ganguro girls, and gigantic constructs reminiscent of the angels in Neon Genesis Evangelion, and everything in between.
One of the game’s biggest missed opportunities is its lack of online co-op. Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds was clearly intended to be enjoyed with friends. Considering the keyboard control issues I mentioned earlier in this review, I am not sure how they expect anyone to do couch coop unless you are in the rare household that has more than one controller. There even is a screen where players can join the game, a leftover from when the game was an XBLA title, that was not removed when they ported the game. Magic says they will add full control remapping will be patched in after release, but it was not available as of the time the review went up.
Lazy Port
Lazy, Lazy Port
I know that this review sounds critical of the game, but despite its flaws I did have fun with it. It is a solid, gratifying game that I feel was close to being great if they had just taken some times address some of their issues. Fixing the keyboards controls, and adding online coop could go a long way to making this a fantastic game. If you enjoy the anime aesthetic and are looking for a fun brawler, then I recommend Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds. If you are looking for something more complex, or if you do not not enjoy the style, I’d give this one a pass.
This review was written based on final code provided by the publisher.
