Inuyasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale (Playstation)

 Just like TV Animation X: Unmei no Tatakai, this game (also known as Inuyasha: Sengoku Otogi Kassen) is a fighting game based on an anime with a large female fanbase that was released very late in the Playstation's life. Also like TV Animation X, it takes full advantage of its late release by having really impressive graphics, though this time it's a 2D game. But while that game was built upon an existing series, being essentially the secret third Psychic Force game, this one is totally its own thing, with mixed results.

 

The second thing you'll notice about the game is how great it looks: the character sprites are all really well drawn and animated, and their animations are all full of personality, too. The stages are also really well-drawn, and even more impressively, they all have different lighting. I mention this because the character sprites actually react to the lighting in each stage. And it's not just that they'll be dark in the dark stages or what ever, but there's stages where different parts of the stage have different levels of light coming from different sources, and the sprites are lit appropriately depending on what part of the screen they're in. It's something you don't often see in 2D fighting games, and in 2003, I think the only similar examples would have been the Capcom Vs. SNK games, which were on much more powerful hardware than the Playstation.

 

Another feature you really wouldn't have expected to see in a Playstation fighting game are tag battles! Even Capcom had to make massive sacrifices to get them working in their games, and they were able to work miracles on 32-bit consoles. But of course, Capcom's games were arcade ports with massive sprites, while Inuyasha is a Playstation original, so everything about it was custom-tailored to the hardware. Furthermore, there is a couple of seconds of loading whenever a tag happens. But I do think they did a fairly decent job of hiding these pauses, and you can have any combination of four characters fighting each other on any of the game's stages.

 

It's not all good, though, unfortunately. There are a couple of things I really don't like about this game. I mentioned earlier that the graphics would be the second thing you'll notice about the game. That's because the first thing you'll notice is that you start with only two playable characters! You've got to unlock the rest by playing through story mode, where you travel around a map encountering characters to fight, and mini-games to play. While doing this, you have a quota of jewel shards to collect. You get these by knocking them out of your opponents, and each character has one specific move that knocks shards out of an opponent. Imagine if you bought this game and wanted to play versus mode as soon as you got home! This'd really knock some of your enthusiasm out of you, wouldn't it? 

 

Another disapponting thing is that the special move inputs are very simple. Normal attacks are performed with the circle button, and specials are done by pressing a direction and the square button together. I get why this was done, the target audience of the game was more likely to be fans of the anime, rather than fans of fighting games, and simplified inputs have even been tried a few times in original fighting games in an effort to try and attract new players. The problem is that in my opinion, it never really works well. Move inputs in normal fighting games are designed so that performing moves can be a part of how a character plays, and how it feels to control them. These simplified input games though, lack that kind of satisfying, fluid flow, and they never feel especially good to play.

 

Despite all of that, I think that for fans of the show, I think there is some value to be found in a great-looking game where you can have the characters fight each other, and most importantly: you can play as Sesshomaru, the best character. It's a shame that all the work that went into making it look so good ended up being attached to a game that's so mechanically flawed. I got a Japanese copy of it dirt cheap a few years ago, and prices don't seem to have risen a great deal in the time since, but make sure you don't accidentally uy a copy of the JP-only RPG, also on Playstation.