Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds

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.

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.

Battle Grounds is not the super-polished experience of many of today's top brawlers, but it's definitely worth a look if you're interested in the genre and are at peace with familiar anime tropes.

Though a few flaws do mar the overall experience, Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is an extremely enjoyable mix of retro beat-em-up design and modern fighting-game-inspired combat depth that offers far more satisfaction than its $10 price tag might initially suggest.

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is a simple game that anyone can pick up and play, but belies a deeper feel for combos like a traditional fighting game would, while adding a minimal skill tree for damage and speed boosts like an RPG. It's deep without being too deep, which makes it just the right amount of fun.

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is a really fun game, and well worth the $10 entry fee. Local co-op is a blast, and you don’t have to be the best video game player to enjoy it.

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.

Under that pixelated good is a deviously complex fighting engine. This means it's not for everyone, thought. [Issue#97, p.71]

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.

If you can get some pals together, have a stable connection, and don’t mind interrupting your game for a level-up session, you’ll have some fun here, but Battle Grounds still falls short of being the sleeper hit it could have been.

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is a serviceable beat-'em-up, which is always welcome. However, it bears the cruel irony of being far more fun in single-player than multiplayer — a backward design for its chosen genre.

All things considered after a promising start, this title leads into an ultimately disappointing experience. If you like the design and also have a soft spot for games like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, you might find an afternoon's worth of decent entertainment with this.