Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax (PlayStation 3) Review

One of the many barriers of entry into fighting games is the controls. Read the move list in the pause menu of any of them, and to the uninitiated, it looks like the Six Sigma Green Belt study guide. Needless to say, it's confusing. This is because fighting controls are largely derivative of their old home, the arcade cabinet. Dengeki Bunko largely eschews this. While the controls may be somewhat confusing, they are largely unimportant. One of the sacred taboos in fighting games is when they employ the "button mashing" control scheme. Dengeki Bunko employs this almost to a fault.

New fighting players will enjoy the short barrier of entry, but anyone who likes their controls complicated and thinks Skullgirls is too streamlined is going to find a lot to complain about. The field is 2D, and the controls reflect that. Pressing up allows the character to jump, Square attacks, and so on and so forth. While there are more complicated moves, beating any arcade line requires using none of them. For example, for this review, one storyline was beaten by mashing Square for the duration of every fight until the credits rolled.

Of course, Dengeki Bunko also features various difficulties, although the differences are fairly minute. It also includes various modes, like Score and Time Attack. These are exactly what would be expected by any genre fan, and follow the same formula as they do in any other title. Online play is also available, although, for obvious reasons of the game not being live yet, was not tested. The final mode available is Dual Dreams, which is more of a streamlined Arcade story.

Speaking of the Arcade story, don't get those hopes up too high. It's a wet Hallmark card at its best moments. The voice acting doesn't help much, as it's more of the same old anime voiceovers. It does tend to get downright intolerable at times, but it can be moderately enjoyable. The graphics help all of these shortcomings, but only so far.

The animation is very fluid, but all of the characters look hopelessly bland. The lack of facial features and the abundance of anime tropes galore, the animation looks like it was ripped straight from a Death Note knockoff. When anime clichés aren't around, weird and off-putting sci-fi pretty much stinks up the remainder of the visual landscape. Oh, and a minor grievance, but one nonetheless: the name does include the word "Climax," but when it shows up at the beginning of every fight, it definitely makes it hard to gauge where in the story the player currently is.

Dengeki Bunko's silver lining is its ease of access. It offers rewarding, albeit somewhat repetitive, gameplay for beginners, and a decent roster of additional moves to entice veterans of fighting games. Unfortunately, it also loses the feeling of gratification quickly. One of the more interesting moves, which allows the summoning in of an ally, almost stands out. However, it's unpredictable, and rarely really offers any assistance.