Hidden Gems - Battle Fantasia.

Arc System Works is well-known for it's work on BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger and Guilty Gear and it's thousands of spin-offs. But they have another lesser known fighter available now on your 360 and your PS3 known as Battle Fantasia.

A quick summary of Battle Fantasia would be the following: Take the fighting system of existing ASW titles, replace the 2D Art with Cel-shaded 3D characters, set the game in a High Fantasy setting. Voila, you have Battle Fantasia.

Battle Fantasia takes you into a fantasy world where peace has been brought about by four heroes. Many years later, an evil being known as the "Scion of Ill Presage" emerges and attempts to re-awaken the Lord of Annihilation. Depending on your choice of character, you will bring about his resurrection or prevent it.

Like all games by Arc System Works, Battle Fantasia is a combo-focused fighter and requires heavy emphasis on precision. (Sorry button mashers!) Those familiar with BlazBlue will be right at home here as the games play almost exactly alike. The game features 12 unique fighters who have varied play-styles, not as varied as Blazblue, but it keeps things interesting. The gameplay features the typical arcade mode, some interesting modes like Survival and Time Attack as well as a story mode. The Story mode plays similar to the arcade mode but features text-heavy interludes (To go with the RPG motif of the game) and branching paths. The story mode spreads some light on characters and their history. The story mode could definitely be stronger, it works.

Woo! Text!

The game has neat visuals in the form of Cel-shaded characters and backgrounds as well as hand-drawn animations that populated the various cutscenes in the story mode. The character designs are beautiful and wonderfully animated, the characters are the game's greatest aspect. The audio is also pretty solid, there's no song that's particularly noteworthy, but it's a refreshing change of pace from the Power Metal-inspired soundtracks of other Arc System titles. The game does contain voice-acting, but unless you speak Japanese, you won't understand a thing.

Overall, Battle Fantasia is an overlooked fighter with an excellent combat system and gorgeous visuals. Interesting fact, Battle Fantasia was responsible for Capcom going with the artstyle used in Street Fighter IV! Strange huh? The game can be picked up for as low as $10. Go ahead and grab a copy, fans of other Arc System fighting games will love this one.

- Kyle K.