Neon Genesis Evangelion: Battle Orchestra Review

新世紀エヴァンゲリオン バトルオーケストラ 
Title: Shin Seiki Evangelion: Battle Orchestra

Platform: Playstation 2, Playstation Portable

Developer: Gainax

Genre: 4-Player Fighting

CERO: A

The Angels are invading, NERV is mankind's last hope! Suit up and pilot the evas, and stop these monstrosities from causing the 3rd impact and erasing mankind from existence!

Gameplay

In this day and age we have quite a few really powerful 4-player fighting games, the likes of Super Smash Brothers and Playstation All-Stars. On this side of the pond though we don't see most of them. In japan, licensed anime games are littered through out the smash genre: Fullmetal Alchemist: Dream Carnival, One Piece: Gear Spirit, Jump Ultimate Stars, etc. Well this is one of them. Now this game is a lot of fun, but I'll be honest in saying that the mechanics are not terribly impressive. You have your punches, kicks, and ranged attacks. The Ability to use dropped items, specials attacks, and these kinds of things. Which is fairly simple, but like I said its a lot of fun. It does feel kind of clunky, once you've begun attacking you cannot move until you're combo is over, which is annoying if you start attacking in the wrong direction, surely your enemy will get an easy back stab on you. And the combos themselves feel fairly stale, you can feel the contrast from how smooth games like Super Smash play. Aside from this, it functions decently. And the game has a wide array of modes to enjoy. You have a story mode, mission mode, practice, challenge, and multi-player. Every mode earns you money which you ca use to buy new characters and stages! Once you've gotten used to the flaws of the game, I'm sure you'll find a wealth of time and fun in all the corridors of this game. It's not amazing, but it certainly is fun!

Score: 6.5/10

Presentation

I'll Start by saying this game looks great! I'm giving it a good score here, if you want to know why keep reading, otherwise go onto story! Anyway, the first thing that really struck me about this game (especially in the ps2 version) is how wonderfully rendered the eva's are! all the textures are detailed and smooth. obviously this game isn't super high budget, so it's no match to the likes of Final Fantasy XII or Shadow of the Colossus, but damn does it come close! Unfortunately the background environments are a bit stale. As far as menu set-up the text is nice an poppy, everything is stylized to feel like you're inside NERV headquarters, and everything is placed exactly where you'd expect it so it's organized well. I took off half a point here for one presentation flaw, and that is the story mode. With a story like this, and the great looking renders, this game is top contender for having some amazing anime-inspired cut-scenes... but alas, it's that visual novel style text only bullshit that really doesn't serve this game justice. aside from that and the so-so environments, this game earns a great presentation score!

Score: 8.5/10

Story

Let me gush, I fucking love Evangelion.... The story is great, and the game follows the story of the anime so I mean it's perfect! right? well sort of... 

This game follows the story of the anime, the premise of which being: Beings from space, called angels, come to earth and try to destroy mankind and erase them from existence. 14 years previous, an event called second impact occurred, which is widely believed to be the first time the angels appeared on earth. NERV, an organization ran by Gendo Ikari, develops a humanoid android called "Eva" which is the only weapon that can combat the angels. Sounds pretty straight forward, yeah? well along the journey a wealth of secrets are unveiled which makes you question any fact you thought to be true about the show, followed by one of the most controversial ends of any anime I've ever discussed. (I will not give spoilers no matter how old the series is) needless to say, I loved every second of it! 

Well the game does't get super heavy on the details and kind of lets the story flow on the surface level, you will probably get the over all concept, but it doesn't get as deep as the anime or the books. half a point there, and half a point for not having cutscenes (again).

Score: 9/10

Import Friendliness

This Games main menu is completely in english, so basic navigation will be very easy! Once you enter story mode, practice, multiplayer or whatever you should be fine. not much reading is "required" (although will enhance the overall experience) Once you start getting into the mission mode, on the other hand, you will run into some trouble. The mission objectives are actually very Kanji heavy, which requires a native and/or advanced understanding of the language, some of it was a little rich for my blood. Also buying characters and stages will be all in japanese as well, albeit much simpler japanese than mission mode. so we do have the existence here of a small language barrier.

as far as the act of actually importing, you will need either a Chip-Mod Ps2 or a Japanese Original Ps2. The PS2 version is 100% Region-Locked! these can get expensive for your average consumer. On the other hand you have the PSP version, which is natively region free, and is by-in-lerge identical to it's PS2 counterpart.

so it's doable, just depends on if you're a handheld gamer or not

Score: 7/10

Final Thoughts and Score

I had quite a bit of fun with this one, and I still carry it around with me for lunch breaks and the like. I give it a high recommendation  you can get the full collectors edition on amazon for the same price of buying a regular copy, so enjoy the extra freebies!

FINAL SCORE: 7.75/10

Gundam Extreme VS. Review

機動戦士ガンダム エクストリームバーサス

Title: Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme VS.

Platform: Playstation 3
Developer: Namco Bandai

Genre: Fighting

CERO: A

Gundam is a wonderful blast from the past, with a continuing universe that's been expanding since the 80's! How appropriate that we get a cross-universe fighting game that features every different Gundam universe. This is one of my personal favourites so lets have some fun!

Gameplay

Gundam is, at its core, a brawler. You have your basic attacks, blocks, ranged attacks mapped on the signature triangle, circle, cross, square. as you battle you build-up your EX bare for a super move, which increase your mech's power. unique to this game is your HP bar. you have a certain amount of HP per life, this is the big number at the bottom-left, and then you have your Team's HP bar up top-left. Every Gundam is worth a certain amount of you team's HP, and when you die that number is subtracted from your Team. This mechanic breath's a bit of life into the brawler genre, and gives a new perspective on team play.

And this game has a myriad of ways to present this battle system to you. you have an arcade mode, which feels like it sounds, you have multiplayer, vs COM, online, etc.Then you have the "story mode" type mode that's set up on a a couple grids. each grid has key battles as well as normal battles, all with different kinds of enemies, objectives, and requirements. some fights you will have to have a certain team mate, others you have to play as a certain gundam, you might have to keep someone alive, you might have to maintain a certain amount of HP, kill a certain amount of enemies. point being that the game forces you to play on it's terms, which really keeps a could-be-repetitive game nice and interesting.

In these grids you'll run into battles to earn badges, these are especially specific conditions that are much more difficult to get, and it will feel very rewarding to earn them. earning these badges is also a large part of the games PSN trophies. This part of the game is what I spend the most time on.

That all being said this game is really easy to get stuck in, and you will find yourself going back to older battle to grind required characters that you never use. And every character's playstyles are vastly different, so doing some battle will be grueling if your not comfortable changing like that on the fly.

overall the game is smooth, fun, challenging, and is loaded with content that will keep you coming back for hours!

Score: 8.5/10

Presentation

VS. is one of the prettiest ex-arcade titles to date. The characters and backgrounds are smoothly cell-shaded, which goes really well with it's anime roots. the effects are flashy, colourful, and energetic. the menus are very aesthetically pleasing, and generally easy to navigate. Not to mention the tons of nostalgic gundams and wonderful character portraits from the ages. Really nice Lincoln Park cameo at the home screen, a surprisingly fitting opening song. And, of course, you have the wonderful TV quality voice acting for all the characters from the different series! It's really well put together, but the soundtrack is rather forgettable , almost reminds you of the Dynasty Warriors notoriously average soundtracks. 

Score: 8/10

Story

As with most arcade games, VS. really doesn't focus on story. the Trial Mission Mode (that grid thing I talked about) is about the closest thing to a story this game has. And as with most crossover games, the story that is there is patchy and scattered. The few scenes of story you get are really cool and well put together. But story is clearly not the focus here, and its very steeped in fan-service. If your not into Gundam, its easy to skip past.

You do have, on the other hand, a wonderful collaboration of different Gundam universes and a large pantheon of playable characters. Which is hugely important, especially in the Fighting Game genre, having a dick load of characters!

Score: 7/10

Import Friendliness

By default, being on the Playstation 3 system, this game is region-free. Buy it anywhere, play it anywhere! So that much gives you the accessibility. for collectors, buying it black-label can get fairly prices (last I checked near 80 dollars), but you can get it cheap from Hong Kong for like 30 USD, so its easy to obtain just to play. 

Now, the ugly part, if you don't know Japanese you will have a very hard time getting into it. The menus are extremely Kanji heavy, and for the "guess-and-press"ers, they are organized strangely, so you will have to do research to figure out what you are doing. The game is not entirely un-playable, it will just take a heavy study of online guides and walkthroughs to figure out what certain objectives are and what everything does...

especially in a game with such a wide array of objectives. In short, it's text heavy.

Although, once you do figure out where everything is, you can still enjoy the basics without knowing much. I mean, in the actual meat of the game, you don't have to know Japanese to know how to actually fight.

Score: 6/10

Final Thoughts and Score

This game is clearly sweet, and is still one of my favourite PS3 games. If you can take the time to learn the set-up or the language, you will be in for an incredible fighting game.

Final Score: 7.37/10