Initially, I bought this for Yuel and Yuel alone. But after trying her out in practice mode, the stuttery animations and spastic movements weren't doing anything for me. It was that moment that the irony dawned on me- That they went through all the trouble of 3D models and PS4 hardware capabilities only to mimic the look of a bargain bin anime fighter for PS2. How very typically Arcsys. Sure, I'll admit, the 3D intros are very cool. (Although kind of odd when voices are turned off, which is pretty much a prerequisite before playing an Arcsys fighter if you want to be able to enjoy the game in any capacity.) But the actual gameplay could have easily been handled by a Vita with only trivial visual compromises. So why couldn't I just have my Vita port?

So anyway, having lost interest in Yuel, I perused over the rest of the game's repertoire, which mostly consisted of bland generic effeminate males in armor. (The grappler character in particular came off as incredibly uninspired IMHO. Slap some Granblue armor on Zangief and call it a day. They probably tried to pass this off by making him metrosexual, but nothing about his actual moveset is interesting.) Found only one character that remotely appealed to me, which was Djeeta. So I took her in practice mode. Her super requires inputting 10 button combo in order to deal full damage, which I thought was shit. (Just let me have a super for crying out loud!! Other characters just get to have one no strings attached, what does having to input a phone number actually add, aside from taking minimum 1-2 hours of my life in order to learn the exact timing required for each button in the sequence??)

But that hardly ruined it for me. So I took her to arcade mode and played though it exactly once. Got my t-shirt. I didn't even think I'd finish arcade mode, but after each match I was like "what the hey, just one more" and before I knew it, I was at the end boss. Lucky me. I'll give the game credit for having a cohesive aesthetic (which is always neat for a fighter), cool music (I adored the final boss theme) and very slick command lists. (It actually plays a windowed video clip of whichever special you currently have highlighted- right in there in the menu screen!) The gameplay feels satisfying/snappy, but that's no surprise, being a 2D fighter. The characters are cute. Did I mention I like Djeeta? No idea what the blue hair's deal is, but I'll be damned if she isn't kawaii. At the end of the day though the game is still just a bunch of throwaway modes. I probably won't be playing this game ever again, but at least I enjoyed my time with it, for what it was worth.

One thing of note is that the game comes out of the box with the option to cast specials via a shortcut simply by pressing R1 and a different direction. This is available by default, so you can use the QCF method and the R1 method to perform the exact same attack, in the same battle. There's a grappler character whose 360 degree throw can be activated by simply pressing R1. Just R1. That's just busted. It takes away from both the satisfaction of doing the 360 and the strategy of doing it without jumping. (Why would anyone ever do it the normal way, given the option?)

If they were going to include this feature, I would have liked to also have the option to forward/backward dash using L1 and R1 respectively, for example, or R1 plus a direction. (like the run button in Mortal Kombat 3, lol) This would have allowed the game to be played using an analog stick instead of the direction pad- a boon for consoles where the dpad is not palatable for fighters, such as the Xbox 360, the PS4, the PS5, or y'know, the PS4. cough Not to mention it would just have been a good accessibility option to have in general. Honestly this was needed in fighting games a long ass time ago, especially back then on the 360 while the great fighting genre resurgence took place. And we have here Granblue which does the R1 shortcut thing for specials, but not for dashing. We were so close this time! Oh well. Maybe someday.