Erementar Gerad: Matoe, Suifu no Ken (2005)

A couple things I neglected to mention in my review: 1: All of the extras is unlockable via the game's arcade mode. Please note that if you want to unlock everything, you are going to have to replay the arcade mode many times. 2: The ost is alright, a couple of stand-out songs but nothing too memorable 3: There is no English translation for the game, but generally it isn't too difficult to infer what the game is trying to say. 4: Another point towards the game's presentation is how it has unique character intros depending on the match-up.

I was pleasantly suprised to discover that Elemental Gelade had a Japan exclusive fighting game on the PS2. While the anime itself wasn't anything special, I thought that its colorful cast could work well in a fighting game setting, and I'm glad others had go the same idea. It is a 3D fighter more akin to Soul Calibur rather than arena fighters such as Jump Force. It has basic mechanics with nothing unique outside of certain supers requiring players to partake in quick time events to optimize the move's damage. It's kind of cool at first, but becomes extremely tedious after a while. Another flaw with the gameplay is that there are basically no true combos. Practically every string has gaps in them, and moves are generally slow and unsafe, making the matches feel drawn-out. In terms of modes, it has got the basic modes expected of a fighting game such as arcade, training, and versus. It also has an unlockable bonus mode which let's players view character models and animations, voice lines, and the game's ost. The game's story mode is serviceable, though it is paratically just a glorified arcade mode (though the game's story cutscenes actually manage to be more faithful to the manga than the anime is). While the graphics aren't incredible, they are good enough for PS2 standards. The best aspect of the games is undoubtedly its content. What shocked me was the astonishing amount of unlockables it contains. It is clear that appealing to the fans was the priority of the developers. This also gives the game a ton of replay value even in single player. In conclusion, if you are one of the 4 fans of the anime/manga, then I would definitely recommend checking this game out. However, if you are looking for a competitive and intuitive 3D fighter, this definitely isn't it. If you do plan on emulating it via PCSX2 (as it is a Japanese exclusive PS2 game) make sure to run the emulator in software mode, as it fails to run properly otherwise