Fantasy Strike Review

The fighting genre isn’t the most accessible genre to gaming, as most of it requires a large amount of memory, timing, and knowledge on how to pull off insane combos and special moves. While some games attempt to open themselves up for more casual audience, they also risk alienating fans of the community which causes its own set of problems.

I like to think this is part of the thought process for Fantasy Strike, the latest fighting game from Sirlin Games – which is helmed by David Sirlin, the lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix and former pro fighting game player. How to make a fighting game that can serves well as an introduction to the genre to newcomers yet still be competitive enough for fans.

Now on the surface, Fantasy Strike hits the right checkboxes, a very strong Online Multiplayer, even better Couch VS mode, challenge modes and a Single-Player story mode which tells the characters reason to fight and the aftermath of proving to be the better fighter.

Looking deeper into the gameplay is where you can find the game’s accessibility and how the game was designed to be focused on strategy over memorization by giving players a streamlined control system and removing the crouch functionality. There was also a decision to set the Jump command to a button press rather than the normal “press up to jump” that fans of the genre would be familiar with however you can add this command back in quickly with a visit to the options menu.

Each character has a basic strike, a special ability and a second special that is considered heavier. Of course these attacks are modified by pressing left or right, and blocks can occur easily by pressing back – made easier with the lack of crouching. This puts a greater emphasis on grappling, which can break guards and deliver a large amount of damage.

Grapples can be counter with Yomi Counters, which are pulled off by not pressing any buttons at all during a grapple. It’s not an easy task but successfully pulling it off could mean a difference between winning and losing a round, while helping to eliminate the need to button mash your way to victory.

Each character also has an ultimate attack which can be preformed on ground and air to different effects. These attacks like everything else in the game, can be linked to a single button push making it easy to combo off of a series of different strikes.Surprisingly, the system works very well. I found myself adapting quickly to the combos and planning ahead in an attempt to get out of dangerous situations like heavy grapples and characters who had insainly fast strikes or counters.

While gameplay is always important when it comes to fighters, I find that a successful fighting game is in its unique fighters. While Fantasy Strike has some interesting characters like Lum – the gambling Panda, or Valerie – a rush fighter who uses a paintbrush as a weapon, other characters felt flat.

A good example of this is the game’s Ryu-like protagonist Grave, who enters the tournament to find stronger fighters to spar against. While he’s cliche, it feels like he’s just too basic in design and moveset when you compare him to the other characters. On the other end of the spectrum, have the grapplers Midori and Rook, who feel very over powered with Midori’s ability to turn into a dragon for a short period of time and Rook having a variety of Zangief style grapples that can do massive damage and be difficult to counter or block.

Fantasy Strike also provides some interesting features that are not actively advertised in the game itself, the ability for Cross-play between all platforms (unfortunately we did not test this feature at the time of writing) and the ability to play it with your favourite controller, from keyboards, Fight Sticks or even your Guitar Hero/Rock Band controller.

Fantasy Strike does a great job at being accessible without sacrificing too much thanks to the idea of focusing on strategy. I found it more enjoyable playing vs with a friend or online with the community. If you’re looking for a game to introduce a friend to the Fighting genre, this should be your new go to as it doesn’t overwhelm yet delivers a deep enough experience for those looking for the competitive circuit.