Pocket Bravery doesn’t have much of a story. The story is that you play as various characters working to take down the criminal organization known as Matilha. But for a fighting game, you really don’t need to have much of a story to it. For as little of a story as this game offers, it does present it well in the form of cutscenes.
Pocket Bravery is a fighting game, but one with a lot of content; almost too much content. The game features the following modes; Story, Arcade, Versus, Online, Extra Modes, Tutorial, Training, and Combo Factory. With additional selections from the main menu being Gallery, Shop, and Options.
Story Mode has you exploring the universe of Pocket Bravery, playing as a lot of the different characters, starting with Nuno, uncovering their secrets, and taking down the Matilha organization. Arcade Mode is is the classic arcade experience as is in most fighting games. Pick a fighter and fight through the character roster until you make it to the final boss encounter and attempt to take them down.
Versus Mode is yet another staple mode found in most fighting games. Select your fighter and fight against another local player or against the CPU. Online Mode has you picking a fighter and taking the fight online. Fight your way through ranked online matches or play casual matches with other people from around the globe. Extra Mode consists of several challenge modes you can choose from. The modes featured in Extra Mode are Survival, Time Attack, Trials, Rainbow Edition, and Hot Pursuit Mode.
Survival is as it sounds, play until you can’t survive, this is a very challenging mode. Time Attack mode has you facing off against opponents and the clock The faster you are at taking out your opponents, the higher your score will be. Trials has each fighter in the game posing challenges to you and you have to work your way through them all. Rainbow Edition is a mode that has you playing the game from a new perspective. Specifically, it makes the game very unbalanced by removing restrictions and acts like a bootleg mode of sorts. The last mode featured under Extra is Hot Pursuit. This mode has you taking control of a character named Daisuke in his quest for revenge against Ximena, this mode is in fact endless as its description states.
Tutorial and Training modes are as they sound. Tutorial mode allows you to learn mechanics and basics of the game while training mode allows you to pick a fighter and train with them to learn their move set and how they fight. Combo Factory mode is similar to training mode in that it allows you to train with a selected fighter but focuses on the use of combos.
Gallery gives you access to the gallery which features things like artwork, promo material and fighter endings, which is yet another staple in most modern fighting games. The Shop is as the name suggests, a shop that can be used to purchase things to look at in the gallery as well as things like unlockable fighters. You spend points you earn while playing the game to purchase items found within.
The last item from the main menu is the Options. This as the name suggests, allows you to adjust things like game difficulty, audio options, and the length of the in game timer for each round.
So like I stated, it features almost too much content for a fighting game. As far as how it plays, it plays alright. You pick a fighter, and fight through the ranks. It seems to blend a bit of a beat em up with it’s core being a fighting game. There will be some fights that are one on one, but others that have you fighting against multiple enemies at once, similar to that of a beat em up.
The blending of genres is a nice touch that I really appreciate for it being unique, but the enemy AI is a bit unfair and kind of all over the place. So depending on who you’re fighting against, you could have them be extremely difficult by constantly moving and jumping around to corning you and just pummeling you to the point you can’t move or do anything. With other times, the AI doesn’t fight back and you have a very easy time winning the fight.
Pocket Bravery isn’t unique in it’s graphical style. It’s a 2D fighting game that feels like something you would have played back in the day on Newgrounds or some other flash website. The fighters and enemies you fight against look and feel generic and rather mediocre. Though the backgrounds you have in each stage do look rather nice, but that’s about all I can say positively about the graphics of this game.
Performance is what you would expect with a 2D fighting game on the Switch. It runs very well, as is to be expected. I mean if it were to slow down at all or flicker, I would think I was playing something on the SNES or NES, thankfully none of that is present here; so no mistaking it for a retro game being played on a retro platform.
Music found in Pocket Bravery definitely fits it like a glove. The soundtrack is very good sounding with up beat and hard hitting tempos. The game really has some great music that is very enjoyable. The music found here is about the only real impressive aspect of this title.
I understand that I bashed the game a bit here, but it’s warranted. I feel like they added too much content with the various modes to make up for the lack of quality. This should have been one of those instances where we saw quality over quantity. You can’t slightly season chicken a dozen different ways and call it a different dish; it’s still chicken.
The game would be a lot better if it had basic modes, better finely tuned AI, and more variation when it comes to the character models. The game is ambitious, don’t get me wrong, it just falls a bit flat on it’s face. It tries to hard to offer too much and as a result spreads itself way too thin.
If you’re curious, I would say pick this game up. If you’re looking for your next great fighting game fix, look at other titles and avoid Pocket Bravery.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.