Aquapazza is a difficult sell to the present fighting game crowd. It is a crossover game featuring only characters from the Japanese visual novel company Aquaplus, being released right into a market where the fighting game crowd has a healthy amount of alternative, more established one-on-one fighters to pick out from. The game’s low cost makes it more appealing to potential buyers, however, and for those willing to dive on in, however, there is a charming fighter beneath the unfamiliar waters.
The cast from Aquapazza is culled from numerous Aquaplus’ visual novel offerings, including characters from To Heart, Utawarerumono, White Album, Comic Party, Tears to Tiara, and other titles. In case you recognize the names of none of those games, that’s perfectly understandable–none of them had been officially made available to play in English. To all however the most seasoned otaku, Aquapazza’s mostly female cast feels like a peculiar conglomeration of generic fantasy tropes, schoolgirls, and animal-eared folks, only a few of which feature one of these flashy, attractive designs fighting game fans adore. The merely adequate character animation and art don’t do them any favors, either, and the shortage of context for the source material hurts Aquapazza on greater than just an initial-impression level. The tale mode, which pits these characters from disparate games against one another, makes little or no sense in case you don’t already understand the characters and their relationships with each other.
Not practicing bike safety is usually a killer.
Where a fighting game truly lives or dies, however, is inside the strength of its gameplay systems. In comparison with a game like BlazBlue, Aquapazza’s systems are simple, making it easier for players of all stripes to leap into, however it still has quite a few competitive meat on its bones.
You choose two characters: a prime character and an assist character, though oddly, the assist character can never be summoned into the fight directly, nor can she or he take damage. Hits may be chained from light to heavy, and you’ll perform slow-moving damaging strikes that knock opponents down. Special moves are performed with the standard array of quarter-circle-forward motions and variants, while stronger super moves require more complex inputs and use either one or three stocks from a character’s power gauge. Universal defensive options include an impact guard performed by pressing back once your opponent’s strike is set to hit (which negates chip damage and give other benefits), a handy guide a rough recovery by holding up when knocked down, and an assist-character counterattack which uses one power gauge stock. All characters have the same quantity of life, and customarily an analogous kind of attack does similar damage with each character around the board. It’s not tough to get the texture of the way combos into special moves work, and you may start performing some basic strings from the get-go.
The game works to encourage you to head at the offensive by bestowing conditions of “emotion high” and “emotion low” at the fighters.
Where Aquapazza’s gameplay gets interesting is within the unique capabilities of every character and assist, in addition to in its “emotion” element. Characters move in distinct ways in which factor heavily into how they may be played. Double-tapping with some characters gets you a quick hop forward, while others dash forward and may execute special while-running attacks. a couple of characters have high and double jumps; just one (Sasara) has an air dash. Still others, like perpetually book-encumbered Manaka, have unique traits of their basic walks and jumps that give them a special approach to handling. The range makes simply learning the way in which each character moves across the screen a joy.
Sasara has unique defense maneuvers. Arawn has demonic eyebrows. Folks argue that some books are dangerous. They’re right.
Picking an assist can also be vital on your gameplay. Assists offer as much as two variant attacks, each of which has distinct properties. Some attacks deal direct damage because the assist jumps into the world, some have a delay before they hit (making an allowance for combo setups), some are projectiles, and a few are more practical as defensive punishing attacks. Other skills don’t deal direct damage to the foe but work to make it easier in an effort to get in and do damage, equivalent to slowing down time, holding a foe defenseless in place, giving your basic and special attacks extra hits, or boosting your basic attacks with extra damage. There is a lot of potential strategy and synergy in making a player/assist team, and the degree to which assists affect the gameplay makes Aquapazza stand out. Some assists are better suited for certain characters than others (using a combo-focused assist isn’t really useful with a grappler character like Tamaki), so choosing the right assist–and knowing when to exploit it–can provide you a robust edge. They are able to even be extremely useful in extending combos, resulting in clever strings of injury that leave foes hurting and also you with a wicked smile for your face.
Another particularly interesting conceit is the emotion system. The sport works to encourage you to head at the offensive by bestowing conditions of “emotion high” and “emotion low” at the fighters. When you find yourself attacking and racking up combos and super hits, your emotions will rise, eventually putting you in a state of “emotion high,” where your damage is augmented, your attacks cause more blockstun, and your super moves get additional animations and a rise in potency. Emotion low, meanwhile, is triggered while you block, backdash, or otherwise avoid aggressively engaging the opponent for long stretches of time, and greatly increases the wear you are taking, in addition to your odds of having guardbroken. Certain defensive skills, like impact guard and assist counterattacks, can affect your emotion positively, making them vital to profit and use. This aspect of the sport keeps battles moving quickly and encourages you not to only be active, but to benefit and use an entire range of skills. It’s an attractive game of seesaw: You won’t like to turtle and watch for openings, but instead to move all-out and find how you can force opponents right into a state wherein their character’s emotions will degrade.
When good schoolgirls get rowdy.
The package features some well-thought-out extras. Training mode comes with a powerful set of features, including recording and playback and detailed input and damage info, but additionally permits you to quickly swap characters and assists without having to back each of the way into the choice screen. Changing control setups is extremely convenient and still surprisingly underused among fighting games more often than not. Online play is solid, with a wealth of collectable titles to assign in your profile and match recording and replay features. The one thing lacking is a comprehensive tutorial for the game’s mechanics; training mode includes a few optional combo demonstrations, but learning the game’s bits and bobs requires some trial and mistake.
Aquapazza is a welcome boost to this year’s fighting game releases. It isn’t the main immediately appealing of games, resulting from its uninteresting character lineup, but digging beneath the outside reveals a superb fighter that’s fun to benefit and play. It’s unlikely to exchange the various bigger, more technical, and prettier fighters as your go-to versus game of choice, but it is a pleasant, enjoyable diversion once you need some airy, unfettered fun.