Fantasy Strike is the brainchild of David Sirlin, the designer behind Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix. The thought behind the design is to focus on strategy rather than rote button memorization and muscle memory. It’s wrapped in a colorful package decorated by interesting character design and interesting locations to fight in. The experience it creates is one that is easy to pick up and play but is it just as easy to put down?
When first starting the game, Fantasy Strike tasks the player with completing a simple but effective tutorial. The tutorial teaches the player all of the basics: special attacks, blocking, attacking, and throwing.
The most unique element that the game teaches you is Fantasy Strike’s throw counter system. If the player doesn’t press any inputs when the opponent attempts to throw them the player will counter the opponent. It’s a unique mechanic that makes throw counters accessible to players of all skill levels.
It’s this accessibility that is both Fantasy Strikes gift and its curse. After finishing the tutorial I was eager to select my character and jump into the campaign to see the depth of the fighting systems. The variety of characters in Fantasy Strike is relatively limited but what’s unique is that they are divided into types. There are Rushdown fighter, grapplers, zoners, and wildcards. Each with their own fighting style
Not only are the move-set archetypes for each of these classes different, but their movement speed, hit points, and damage-dealing potential is varied. This was something I found interesting at first but quickly found to be fairly shallow with the most intriguing part of the system being that each type has a ‘counter’ making certain opponents generally easier or harder to combat.
While all fighting games have balance issues, it’s disappointing to see that instead of taking extra work to balance all fighters, the decision was made to put them into categories so that each type having a ‘counter’ would seem acceptable.
The next frustration came when I realized that the limited number of moves each character could perform and the slow-paced combat felt less deliberate and strategic than it did clunky and boring. It’s a real shame that the game is so slow too because I think the simplified controls could really work to the game’s advantage if it was faster. Instead, it flails about like Samurai Showdown with lag. The moves just don’t quite feel responsive enough and none of the characters are as fast as I wanted them to be.
Though the characters don’t feel great to fight with, I do have to say there are some real high points in the 2D animation for the story cutscenes. Similarly, the background work for the stages are animated well and make for interesting arenas. I just wish this translated to the characters themselves. The designs are serviceable but I found myself wishing they were handdrawn in the 2D anime style of the cutscenes, rather than 3D models.
The problem is I’m not sure who to recommend Fantasy Strike to.
There are many better fighting games on the Switch (or any other platform) and the new twists that Sirlin adds do little to differentiate it from its contemporaries, while exprerienced fans of the genre will find little challenge here.
However, it does achieve what it sets out to do, and works well as baby’s first fighting game, so parents with kids eager for cross geenration brawl, that are too young for Mortal Kombat, could do a lot worse than giving Fantasy Strike a whirl.