Although the advent of online play has made it pretty clear that I'm
actually not very good at them at all, I've always loved fighting games,
and the Psychic Force series found its way into my heart during my
teenage years, as it put the actual licenced anime fighting games to
which I had access at the time to shame: while Dragonball GT Final Bout
offered vague approximations of well-known characters having slow,
awkward battles in boring, lifeless arenas, Psychic force offered
cool-looking original characters in flight, dashing around firing energy
blasts at each other in a variety of cool-looking stages. The reason
I'm talking about Psychic Force is because Unmei no Tatakai is
essentially Psychic Force 3 in all but name and characters.
Not only does this game have the same concept and mechanics as the
Psychic Force series, it even reuses a few graphical effects and fonts.
But it's not just a simple re-skinning of Psychic Force 2/2012, it is a
true sequel, with numerous tweaks and new elements. The biggest
all-round tweak relates to the dash system. The Psychic Force games have
two main kinds of dashing that can be done: a dash that goes in a
straight line in any direction that's used for travelling around the
arenas, and a semi-circular dash that's intended for dodging attacks at
high speed and quickly ducking behind opponents. In the earlier games,
dashing was executed by pressing both attack buttons at once, with the
type of dash determined by the direction pressed, but Unmei no Tatakai
has dashing mapped to the right shoulder buttons, R1 for the straight
dash and R2 for the curved dodge.
Obviously, the entire cast is new, being taking from CLAMP's
pre-apocalyptic saga X, but two of the characters in particular bring
interesting new ideas to the table. Sword-weilding Arashi Kishu stands
out from the rest of the cast by being a melee specialist, with vastly
fewer projectile attacks, but with better range and power on her melee
attacks than any of the other characters. Yuzuhira Nekoi's gimmick is
hard to describe in text, but she comes accompanied by a large dog, and
most of her projectile attacks are delivered in the form of that canine
companion launching itself at her opponent like a missile. The
difference this makes mechanically is that Nekoi and her dog are not
always in the same direction in relation to the opponent, who can find
themselves coming under attack from all directions.
The game's presentation is also worth writing about, as not only is it
easily the best-looking 3D fighting game on the Playstation, with some
really breath-taking stages which manage to be varied despite all being
set in Tokyo, from a skyscraper encoiled by a huge electric dragon, to a
peaceful shrine at night, to the misty, moonlit ruins of
post-apocalyptic Tokyo in general. The character models all look pretty
great, too, with plenty of detail, even close up. It doesn't stop with
the graphics, either, as the soundtrack is also excellent, with some
amazing music providing perfect accompaniment to the exciting,
fast-paced super-powered battles taking place.
You've probably already worked this out, but TV Animation X: Unmei no
Tatakai is an incredible game, that I strongly recommend without
reservation.
Sunday, 8 February 2015
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Personally I always hated the Psychic Force games as I found them cumbersome and unexciting. Can't beat the immediacy of a 2d fighter in the end. Still I suppose they deserve credit for trying something different.
ReplyDeleteThis game is great! Wish more people knew about it. Also, i don't know why people called it Unmei no Tatakai instead of Unmei no Sentaku.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I hear about this one every once in awhile and completely forget about it instantly. Man, I am nabbing this now - copies of Psychic Force for the Dreamcast keep popping up for $50 or so on eBay at the time of writing, but I just found a copy of "TV Animation X: Selection of the Destiny" for the PSX for a whopping $15 - THAT'S CRAZY! I love secret sequel games like this (this kind of situation does happen occasionally).
ReplyDeleteGreat blog you haave
ReplyDelete