Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds

 Xbox 360
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Image
Metascore
72

Mixed or average reviews - based on 14 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 18 Ratings

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  • Summary: Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is a 2D beat 'em up from Mages/5pb, the makers of Steins;Gate, Bullet Soul, and other great games. Choose a fighter and battle against the bizarre minions of the evil wizard Phantom. Enjoy classic beat 'em up gameplay with a fighting game twist. Dash throughPhantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is a 2D beat 'em up from Mages/5pb, the makers of Steins;Gate, Bullet Soul, and other great games. Choose a fighter and battle against the bizarre minions of the evil wizard Phantom. Enjoy classic beat 'em up gameplay with a fighting game twist. Dash through colorful Tokyo locales, strengthen your characters, team up with your friends, fight dragons and killer robots!

    Story Mode - Enjoy a lighthearted story as you battle Phantom's minions across 8 stages inspired by famous Tokyo districts.

    Arcade Mode - Challenge yourself to get the biggest combo, the highest score, or the fastest completion time.

    Multiplayer - Easy to learn mechanics make playing with your friends a snap. Team up with your friends for the local co-op or online campaign, or go to the battlegrounds arena and fight a pitched PVP battle! Up to 4 players supported.

    Customizable, Persistent Characters - 4 starting characters and 6 unlockable ones. Each character has a fully customizable stat and skill tree, and levels persist between all modes. Choose a favorite character and build them how you like! Every character has unique special attacks.

    Retro Charm - Vibrant sprite graphics and a catchy chiptune-inspired soundtrack for the discerning retro gamer!    … Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 14
  3. Negative: 1 out of 14
  1. Gaming Age
    Mar 14, 2013
    83
    The price is right for what you get here, so if you are a fan of games like this, by all means give the demo a spin. If frantic combo filled beat-em-ups aren't your thing, then skip this one and wait for the 2D fighter.
  2. Gaming Nexus
    Apr 1, 2013
    80
    It’s hard not to love Phantom Breaker Battlegrounds. It’s got everything I could hope for: old school, beat’em up charm along with a heavy dose of gameplay variation and customization. I can’t get enough of the game and pray that there is more in the works for this franchise.
  3. Hardcore Gamer
    Apr 14, 2013
    80
    With a solid fighting engine, plenty of room for customization, a copious offering of modes, delightfully oldschool graphics and sound and some solid controls, Battle Grounds is a game that should be played by anyone who loves nostalgic beat’em ups, especially ones that are very stylized and very Japanese.
  4. NZGamer
    Apr 11, 2013
    75
    It's hard to deny that a coop beat-em-up with loads of visual flair and plenty of replayability (thanks to the various characters and even character builds you can try) represents damn good value for around $16 (it's 800 of Microsoft's mystical Points.) It's frustrating that you can't really find anyone to play with online, but friends / local coop cures that and, let's face it, this sort of game is more fun with friends than strangers anyway.
  5. X-ONE Magazine UK
    Apr 23, 2013
    70
    Under that pixelated good is a deviously complex fighting engine. This means it's not for everyone, thought. [Issue#97, p.71]
    All this publication's reviews
  6. DarkStation
    Mar 21, 2013
    70
    In the end, Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds does not feature the seminal, tightly-crafted fighting mechanics of Street Fighter or the spectacular boss fights from Castle Crashers, but it does provide a handful of hours of side-scrolling, 2D-beat-em-up glee. In spite of a few crippling issues and ham-fisted mechanics, Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds still outweighs its flaws with a competent throwback look and feel, gratifying gameplay flow and a strong selection of modes that, all things considered, justifies the asking price of merely $10.
  7. Game Revolution
    Mar 8, 2013
    40
    I have a hard time recommending Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds to anyone. If you're obsessed with 2D brawlers and love Japanese animé, I strongly recommend you give the demo a try before shelling out any cash. The redundant and dated gameplay, coupled with weak production values, make this a forgettable experience that won't keep you entertained for very long.

See all 14 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

Write a Review
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 0 out of 3
  1. shootingstars99
    Sep 16, 2019
    10
    For the price, this excellent beat-em-up is a steal! The progression is awesome and gives replay ability to the game in spades, maxing out allFor the price, this excellent beat-em-up is a steal! The progression is awesome and gives replay ability to the game in spades, maxing out all of the base and unlock-able characters in the game. Co-op is awesome, and really brings the game together, because we all know one of the highlights of any stellar beat-em-up title is playing with your friends and getting into it. The sprite art is gorgeous, and the fighting game-esque combo system is a joy to play! It's got a lot of charm to it, and actually takes a little bit to see progression in your game play, but after a few runs, you see your improvement right before your eyes. This is one arcade style game that just doesn't get old!… Expand
  2. Xplocion
    Mar 13, 2021
    8
    The good:
    Another game with the Phantom Breaker characters. Beat'em Up competent and a lot of fun. Up to four players can play    The good:
    Another game with the Phantom Breaker characters. Beat'em Up competent and a lot of fun. Up to four players can play simultaneously. Includes a confrontation mode for up to four players. Very funny. Good challenge. Various characters to unlock (including L and White Mikoto re-colored versions). Comic situations. The plot is an excuse to go out in search of the captor of your sister / sister of your friend with trips to strange dimensions and personal revenge of things that happened in other games. It feels like chapters from some Random anime. Backward compatible with Xbox One / Series (With Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility to Xbox One there is no need to buy the game again). 700G easy achievements

    The bad:
    Watching the Phantom Breaker fighting games makes you think that this game is a wasted opportunity. It started as a 500G Arcade game to which two costly character expansions were added to reach 1000G. If you want to play with Kurisu Makise from Steins; Gate you have to pay. if you want to play with Frau you have to pay for the DLC. These DLCs may no longer be for sale on the Xbox Live Store.

    What Meh:
    There are those who say that this game is a plagiarism of Scott Pilgrim's game for coming out three years later, but the truth is that it is one more beat'em up and adds elements of history to the Phantom Breakers saga. If you have visited Japan you will be able to identify the references to many of the scenarios set in the game such as cities, buildings, train stations and temples. If you don’t like graphics "chibi" or Super Deformed graphics, this game may not hook you    … Expand
  4. BloodwCinnamon
    Mar 2, 2013
    8
    Phantom Breaker was a fighting game that came out a couple years back in Japan, and pretty much gave western civilization the finger in termsPhantom Breaker was a fighting game that came out a couple years back in Japan, and pretty much gave western civilization the finger in terms of coming over to play. Now we've been deemed worthy of the spin-off. While the first game was straight up one versus one, Battle Grounds goes the 2D beat-em-up route of Streets of Rage and Scott Pilgrim (more so Scott Pilgrim), with a focus on co-op and combos over weapons.

    Graphics consist of cutesy pixel-art recreations of what it would look like if a cosplay convention exploded all over itself in and around such gamer-hip Japanese locations as Akihabara. Whether or not you've grown tired of pixelated graphics, there's no denying the ones here being beautifully done, with stellar animation that's fast and clean. It's been a trend lately to go this route, but believe me when I say the art here is no imitation of facsimile. It's the real deal, and looks like it was made by veterans of the field. There would truly be times I would look past the chaos in the foreground to marvel over a particularly detailed backdrop, only to look back to see my character moving faster than I could process, with score multipliers firing numbers out of her skull with the ferocity of a mathematician's acid trip. As the wide-eyed anime girls kick the ever-loving out of monsters, androids and Harajuku girls alike, you may notice that not only is the whole thing nice to look at, it's rather fun as well.

    Controls are set up to prefer d-pad and face buttons over precision stick swipes, and combos are often nothing more than pressing a couple buttons in tandem with a single direction. Not only does this let you fire off chained attacks at machine gun pace, it provides the button-mashers out there with an optimal set-up for freeform brutalizing without ever having to learn much beyond "panic fingers". It feels like playing at an old arcade machine, where any strategy from careful timing to sheer madness works fine. A power-up gauge provides a nice incentive to hold off stronger powers until you can chain together super combos, which can rack up insane numbers and damage when deployed correctly. An even nicer touch is how they break up the 2D plane into two layers, allowing you to hop back and forth between separate paths. Works well for strategic jumping and dodging.

    Of course, this is all better with a friend (or three), as the AI can get downright mean in later stages, where devastating chain attacks can be deployed on you with only the tiniest windows of escape. Co-op here is either on or offline, with online having the benefit of not restricting all players to the same frame space. In other words, freedom to splinter off from the group, spreading the enemies out. Still, you can stick together and bounce enemies around between you, as it's possible to pull off team-up attacks. As a team, battles get frantic quickly, as the speed of the game tends to run high, and if one person is deploying an overdrive combo, everyone else slows down to what is essentially bullet time. It can be distracting or unfavorable in many instances, but it's still kind of cool to fight in slow motion as your friend tears through enemies at multiplied speed, or vice versa. Ah, who am I kidding? It's more trouble than it's worth...

    Full review at http://www.bloodwcinnamon.com/rev/phantombr.html    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

76
#76 Best Xbox 360 Game of 2013