Game #887: Black Clover - Quartet Knights

  So this is what watching an episode of Dragon Ball Super feels like, huh?

 So, um... I don't really like Black Clover. I read the first 80 chapters and found it almost as dumb as Fairy Tail, although I've been reading the last few chapters that were released because why the hell not, so I approached Black Clover: Quartet Knights as someone that didn't really care about the series but found a very cheap game and decided to give it a try.

 With Shonen shows, nothing makes more sense than a 1 on 1 fighting game, but for Quartet Knights they did something very different, for you see, this is a 4 on 4 goal-based third person shooter. Every character falls into one of four different categories: Fighters, which tend to fight up close and can block incoming damage, Shooters, squishy wizards that pelt you with projectiles from afar, Supporters, who usually have spells that grant bonuses to their teammates and Healers, which are pretty much self explanatory. The game includes 17 playable characters, 5 fighters, 4 shooters, 4 healers and 4 support characters. Every character feels very different from each other, even Young Yami plays nothing like Yami, which is pretty cool for an anime game.

 Modes is where the game falters a bit... There's NO offline multiplayer, which is very disappointing. If you are by yourself you can play the Story Mode(2-3 hours top), Challenges(1 hour top), and... there's Training or VS CPU Mock Battle. Pretty lame to be honest. You can customize your characters with alternate color palettes and give them passive buffs to their spells... but you can only see these online, not even during Mock Battle. It's a shame, but if you're not planning on going online you only get half the experience... something that split-screen versus/co-op could've easily fixed.

 So, what do you get if you only plan to play offline? Well, the Story Mode follows a whole new story, featuring a time-travelling young Yami. This mode also has all new anime cutscenes drawn exclusively for this game.... And I hope to god the anime doesn't look like this. The art is atrocious and the animation is incredibly bad, it looks like something made by the same studio that animated Dragon Ball Super. Still, I appreciate the effort into giving fans something new that feels official.

 Challenge Stages are simple fights that more or less introduce you to each playable character. They are prefaced by a few story bits, but they are boring and dumb.

 Black Clover: Quartet Knights is an interesting offering. The gameplay is fairly original and it works well, so it gets bonus points just for that. That said, if you're not planning on going online, the game won't have much to offer you, something that offline split-screen could've fixed.

6.0