Yet another PSP fighter falls upon my lap.
Spectral VS Generation is a 2D one on one fighting game featuring characters from both "Generation" and "Spectral" franchises... of which I'm
unacquainted with either. Which also means I'm not
invested on the franchises, so I'm looking at the game purely as a fighter and not as a
form of fan service.
There's no real backstory to the game, there's a 4 paragraph intro on the instruction booklet, but it's just
fluff for the setting. Each character also has their own ending after finishing Arcade Mode, but I guess they only make sense if you are familiar with the cast. Regardless, as far as modes go, the game covers only the
bare essentials: Arcade, VS(Com and Player), Survival and Training. The character roster is made up of 10 unique characters and 2 hidden alternate versions of other characters, while many would
scoff at that number, as long as a fighter has at
least 8 characters, I'm OK with it, plus, all 10 of them are very
different from each other(Even if it
seems like all of them have at least one Recca type move), the two secret alternate version also feature different moves, even if most of the animations are shared with their normal counterparts.
One thing I really likes was how fast the game moves, there's dashing, air dashing and super jumps for movement, and you get four different attacks: Kick, Light, Medium and Heavy. It also has it's
own mechanics:
Chaos Breaking, by pressing Light and Medium attacks, which is a Guard Break move, but there's also
Return Breaking, which is done when your guard is broken with a CB, in which you press Light and Medium attacks just after getting CB'd allowing you to recover from the guard break
immediately, rounding up the normal techniques is
Chaos Counter, done by pressing Heavy plus Kick, which is a counter move. Then there's
Sword Devil Combination, done by pressing Medium plus Heavy, which pops your enemy up into the air, and then pressing a specific button combination unleashes a devastating flurry of attacks. Each character also has a specific special attack that can be turned into a
Seal of Time, by pressing Light, Medium and Heavy at the same time during the attack, afterwards your enemy will be slowed down by a short period of time.
Lastly, there's
Aura Burst, you can set it to Auto or Manual, both have their advantages and disadvantages, for instance, Auto can only be done once per round, while manual gives you unlimited uses, as long as you have gauges, and grants you enhanced defense, guard breaking properties to your normals and maxes your energy gauge. That's a
lot of mechanics for a game like this!
It's pretty clear that the game
wasn't shoddily put together, the game is fun to play, and it has a lot of nuances that make it fairly interesting... at a
casual level. Y'see, the game can get pretty dang unbalanced, there's a ton of videos online showcasing the huge amount of infinites present in the game, so this is probably not the game to get if you aim to play at a high level. Plus, it was kinda forgotten by time, and it was only released on PS2 and PSP. Which is a shame, since the core gameplay is fairly good, pretty
reminiscent of DarkStalkers, but with less monsters and more anime.
The game is absolutely
gorgeous, graphics are very bright and well animated. The style in which the sprites where drawn is very similar to DarkStalkers, something about the
coloring and proportions, but the animation isn't quite as wild. All in all, very Capcom-ish, the stages
could've used some more livening up, but the characters are great. Music is pretty good, I don't know if it comes from games in the franchise, but considering how good it is, it
might as well be!
This is usually the paragraph where I talk about how the PSP has much better Fighting game offerings... but in this case, I will suggest giving Spectral VS Generation a try. While it
lacks modes, characters and better balancing... it also isn't yet another entry in an established IP, and seeing how few original fighting games have come out since the PS2 era... it's very
refreshing. And as long as you don't get super competitive about it, the gameplay is rather good!
6.0 out of 10
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