Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate gives you a basic rundown of the plot at the beginning of the game’s story mode and regardless of which character you choose, the narrative will be similar but with some variations. It is a decent story, though nothing special, but it does not take itself seriously, which is a great thing. The story is paced right and never gets in its own way, understanding that gameplay comes first.
And what great gameplay it is, with a varied moveset that calls to mind the fighting game roots. This means that while Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate is a beat em up, it is far more involved than most, with combinations of light, medium and heavy attacks, and a variety that will be very familiar to fighting game fans. This helps give Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate more of a unique identity and the gameplay is fast and furious in a great way.
The blend of , light, medium and heavy attacks has another advantage as well, as it lets you chain together massive combos like in a traditional 2D fighting game. There is a lot of room to experiment here, and the gameplay comes off as easy to learn, but difficult to master. You can try button mashing, but Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate uses a 2D-plane, so you can get thrown off quickly if you are not careful. You need to get things right, and master the jumps and dashes, and then you will be effective.
Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate does what games like Guardian Heroes and Code of Princess did and has you jumping back and forth between two 2D-Planes. You will need to learn how to manage the two planes in order to not get overwhelmed by enemies and be able to make progress. It can be a bit difficult at first, but you will get the hang of it quickly.
One nice touch with Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate is that as you advance through the story mode, you will be able to allocate stat points at the end of each level to Attack, Defense or Strength, as well as unlock new abilities essential for combat. Doing this will let you build the characters in different ways, and there are multiple possible routes to go. You can take a character built for speed for instance, and make them more rounded, or take one built for strength and make her a speed demon.
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate is a nice remake of the original Battle Grounds, built using Unreal Engine 5 and there are some neat additions here. For instance, you can take control of the villain characters in the Arcade Mode, and each has a unique style that provides good variety. There is also a new soundtrack available that is pretty good, but if you want the soundtracks from the original Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds, or the Overdrive version of the game, those are available as well. Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate is a gorgeous game visually that blends a chibi art style, with dynamic animations that stands out well. Unreal Engine 5 also helps to make everything look so much better, and just tearing through enemies is a delight to see, particularly when using your character full abilities.
There are several multiplayer options as well in Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate, although it must be said that on the Nintendo Switch version, some are reduced such as the number of players in a game. Still, for the most part, Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate delivers a solid experience, and the online works well. There was no slowdown encountered when playing online and the lag was minimal, which was ideal.
Overall, Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate is a fantastic beat em up that remained true to its fighting game roots by melding the two genres well. It delivers a fast paced arcade style gameplay that you will want to keep playing over and over, and the added content just makes it even better. Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate gets a full recommendation, and any beat em up fan or fan of action games should check this one out.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
