Windy x Windam (DS)

I remember when this game was originally released in 2008, I was pretty excited for it! I've always been interested attempts at fitting arcade genres like fighting games, beat em ups and shooting games onto handhelds, and this wasn't just a handheld fighting game, but it was made specifically for the ds, so it wasn't a downgraded version of a "proper" fighting game, like the massively disappointing Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers. Nor was it a licensed game, which I considered a plus, as though Treasure's Bleach DS fighting games were a lot of fun, the world and characters didn't appeal to me at all. (One extra little note: why weren't there any Capcom or SNK fighting games on DS? The GBC and GBA played host to some miraculously great versions of the Street Fighter ALpha and King of Fighters games. A missed opportunity.)

Then it actually came out and I played it a little, but it just couldn't hold my interest, and I quickly forgot about it in favour of playing Last Blade 2 and Mark of the Wolves via the surprisingly good homebrew Neo Geo emulator the DS had. Playing it again a decade later, it's got a lot of charm, but I can definitely see why it didn't have staying power, and why pretty much everyone almost instantly forgot about it: that charm has to do a lot of heavy lifting to get you to look past the big flaws in how the game actually plays, and it's just not up to the task.

I'll talk about the positives before I get onto the negatives, though. Like the world and characters are pretty nice. I guess it's set in the same world as the DS roguelite Izuna the Unemployed Ninja, since two characters from that game are unlockable in it, along with a stage set in their village, plus the chharacters are part of the story like everyone else, and the village is on the map just like the other locations. The fact that the attacks have little-to-no recovery time is pretty nice, too. It means you can make weak combos just by attacking really quickly, and almost feels like a poor man's Asuka 120%, albeit with none of the impact that that game's attacks have, and also lacking the cool clash/parry mechanic from that series.

That's pretty much it for the positives, unfortunately. And some of these negatives are pretty hefty, too. Like how sometimes, jumping just doesn't work. That's pretty much unforgivable, right? Any game with unreliable controls has to do a lot of work to make up for that, but for a fighting game? It's an insurmountable barrier. It's clear that this was a problem the developers had noticed too, as they add a seperate jump button, along with the traditional pressing up on the d-pad. Unfortunately, while I'm sure with some dedication, a player might eventually get used to it, with heavy attacks on the X button and jump on the B button, it feels very awkward. Another, lesser flaw is that all the characters seem to have a ton of health, making fights seem slow and undramatic. Though that one's more an issue of preference than a game-breaking catastrophe like the controls.

Obviously, I can't recommend Windy x Windam, especially now that a used copy seems to cost more than a brand new copy did back when it was released. Pretty much every major handheld since the original Game Boy has a bunch of way better fighting games than this, including the DS itself. So get one of those instead.