Review #485: Bloody Roar 4

 Bloody whimper.

That's not witchblade, it's the newest focus on fanservice!

 Primal Fury's place as a sequel is often contested by people that consider it more of an upgraded port, which is funny considering this game feels even less as a sequel than it... kinda. If you come to BR 4 from BR 3, which would be understandable considering Primal Fury/Extreme were never released on the PS2, this game will feel fresher and newer, but if you come from PR/E... well, it'll feel like a remix or enhanced port of sorts. Yes, Bloody Roar 4 is another lackluster effort from Hudson, but changes made to the core mechanics made this game a blunder.

 Modes in this game are: Arcade, Time Attack, VS Player, Training, Survival, Sparring(VS CPU) and Career. Most modes are self explanatory but Career Mode, which was a good idea on paper. In it you have to travel through a grid, fighting monotonous one-round fights against random opponents in order to earn points with which to customize your characters, with passive abilities(More strength, higher jumps) or even new moves or moves from other fighters. It's also the only mode in which you can unlock the secret fighters.... which are made up of Long(What.), Shina(Why?!), Kohryu(Plays just like he did in 3 and Primal Fury, and is still an unlockable), Uranus(Same deal as Kohryu) and another version of Ryoho. Lame. It boggles the mind as to why the made Long and Shina unlockable now, they look and play just like they did in Primal Fury, and they don't have any special plot relevance or what have you.

Lions and Tigers... there surely were a lot of felines in the franchise, huh?

 Let's start with changes to the gameplay, first of all, as long as you're in beast mode, you won't receive damage but rather lose beast energy. It's a weird change, and one that makes Human form all but useless, and it's hilarious because you start every fight with a full health and beast gauge, and there's no reason as to why you wouldn't morph right then and there, why lose health needlessly? Turning into beast can be done at any time, if you don't have any energy on the beast gauge you'll simply trade a bit of your health. Trading in a certain amount of health will initiate a toned down version of Hyper Beast form from previous games. Lame. These changes also mean that after you lose all your health you'll be forcibly changed into beast form, and a round won't end until both gauges are depleted. It's lame, it's dull, it's boring and it removes a lot of strategy from previous games, just spam that beast form. Beast Drives do much less damage than before and only cost a bit of Beast Gauge, but in turn now deal damage to both health and beast gauges at the same time. The game's engine has been tweaked a bit, and now landing hits doesn't feel quite as good as before and the game, as a whole, feels slower. Lame.

 Ganesha and Chronos(And Fang, if you played Extreme) are gone, alongside their movesets, and characters only have 2 costumes(8 of them have a new third costume though.), movesets haven't changed a bit as far as I noticed. There're a few new stages, but you'll notice that a lot of them are rehashes or asset flips from previous stages. There're some unexplained invisible barriers around stages that make a few arenas very small and cramped until you break them(By smashing your opponent against it) which is... odd? The smaller stages are too small, which makes fighting a bit cumbersome.

The newcomers are not very appealing.

 As for the new characters, we've got Nagi the Spurious, a design that put fanservice first, but she's kinda fun to play as, which is understandable since she is related to Xion, and both are masher-friendly characters that have a lot of flash and simple inputs. There's Reiji the Crow, his beast form is really cool, but his human form looks like a generic enemy NPC Thug. Lastly, Ryoho who comes in two flavors: Ryoho and Mana the Ninetails, which is a bit wonky, circle makes Mana attack while Ryoho fights with punches and kicks, and Ryoho the Dragon in which Ryoho fights by himself and gets a wonky, but kinda neat, dragon form. As for Ryoho, he is a bit dull, gameplay-wise, and looks like a generic Japanese Martial Artist Monk design. Basically, besides Nagi, the other new characters aren't worth it. And Reiji's beast form makes a few stages drop frames like there's no tomorrow, do not use him in the sewers stage, for your sake.

 Finally, let me go in on the Career Mode and its flaws. First of all, fully clearing the entire and needlessly convoluted to explore grid you'll be left off with 96000 points... but you need 100000 in order to unlock Ryoho, problem is... every fight from then on only gives out 50 points. Yes, you have to fight 80 boring rounds to unlock Ryoho. If you equip damage boosts on your character you can finish each fight in two combos(The game pushes you back when a character transforms after losing all its health), so you can probably do this in 30-40 minutes. It's not really all that tedious, but its very boring. Then there's the fact that a savefile only has room for 8 customized characters. 8 out of 18. Brilliant.

There're two Ryohos, two tigers, two moles and Uranus is supposed to be a clone of Uriko....is this rise of the Clones?

 And don't you worry, not only does the game fail at a gameplay level, it also fails in the presentation. I know that the Gamecube was a stronger console, but these character models, which should be the ones from Primal Fury, which should look better than the models from BR3... managed to look even worse than 3. I can't quite put my finger on why the game looks worse, but it does. I think the characters are missing some polygons and worse lighting effects in order to bring back blood particles and make the game run smoothly while providing very short load times. It's just a theory, but BR 3 had rather long load times, which are gone now. Thanks? And then there're the ending cutscenes to Arcade Mode. The dialogue is bad, the subtitles have typos, the stories contradict each other and the voice acting is horrible, the delivery is abysmal and there's no lip synching. Did someone even care?

 And this marks Bloody Roar's end. In a sick twist of fate, no other Bloody Roar game is as hard to find, or expensive, as Bloody Roar 4 and none is as bad as it is. If you're like me you probably want to play as the new characters, but believe me, they aren't worth it. The new mechanics are horrible and only Nagi manages to be fun to play as, you're better off with Chronos and Ganesha in Primal Fury.
 4.0 out of 10