I am TERRIBLE at fighting games, but for whatever reason I am cursed with enjoying them. It’s like I am a glutton for punishment, especially when they look pretty and have wacky complicated moves. Many times these games trick me into thinking I’ve actually gotten good at them and as soon as I go online I find out just how bad I am. BlazBlue: Chronophantasma on the PlayStation 3 is no different.
How does BlazBlue: Chronophantasma fair out on PS3? Find out below with the rest of my review below.
BlazBlue: Chronophantasma is the newest entry of Arc System’s BlazBlue series and I believe fans of the series will be pleased. There are a ton of different modes including a story mode filled with typical anime weirdness and over the top drama you would expect. My favorite mode is Abyss mode. Abyss mode has you pick a character and then you go out in the wild and capture small monsters to… Wait, that is a different game. There are nodes on a map that show how difficult your opponents will be and how deep you must go to beat it. Then as expected, you pick a character and start fighting. It’s very much like survival in that your health doesn’t refill after each match, unless you find an item that restores it. As you fight, sometimes you get challenged by special characters. When you defeat one of these characters you get a choice between three different items or money added to your reward pool. The items you find can heal your character, let you travel deeper into the abyss, add points to your base stats, or even special items that have various effects that ultimately make your character stronger. It’s sort of like a weird RPG fighting game thing that I just can’t get enough.
There is also online of course. There are the standard ranked and unranked versions and winning allows you unlock all sorts of fancy icons and backgrounds for your banner. The fights were pretty smooth, I hardly experienced any lag.
One thing that I really liked about BlazBlue: Chronophantasma is that when you pick your character you can pick Technical or Stylish mode. Technical is your standard input the commands like a proper fighting game mode. Stylish on the other hand allows you to essentially button mash to victory. I like this because then you get see just how bad-ass the characters are. At the same time it kind of makes me feel bad, especially when I use it online. Sure, I might win sometimes that way but I feel so dirty.
Visually the game looks fantastic. The characters are all highly detailed anime works of art. The animations are incredibly smooth and the moves all look fantastic, if you can pull them off. There is a ton of variety in the character department catering to any style of character from werewolves, giants, weird blobby things with claws, to even a little boy with a marionette of sorts.
Overall it’s a solid fighting game If you’re a fan of Arc System games. Even as a casual fighting game fan I found a lot of fun with this title especially when friends come over.
