Bakugan Battle Brawlers

Bakugan Battle Brawlers follows the adventures of a player created character as they fight off evil masterminds with the help of their Bakugan called Leonidas. Leonidas shows up out of nowhere one day and the duo have to team up to stop the malicious advances of Marduk and his own recently discovered Bakugan, Vladitor. The plot is overall not very interesting aside from a few moments unfortunately and every character comes off a bit obnoxiously, especially towards the protagonist who is annoying and unrelatable. Most games with player created characters tend to be silent but your character in Bakugan Battle Brawlers has a very defined, clichéd personality that leaves much to be desired.

Tools

This game is a faithful and even expanded adaptation of the physical game for consoles and computers. You play the game as you normally would but with greatly expanded stage elements that wouldn’t be possible in real life. This is pretty wonderful to see and might make or break the game for fans of Bakugan who want to see the game come to life before their eyes. This comes in contrast to similar games, like from the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise which rarely take advantage of the video game medium and tend to spawn unoriginal, copy pasted games. Bakugan clearly tries to be the best it can be despite its many failings.

Gameplay

The game’s battles are fun but suffer from a few key issues. Mainly they take too long and spam you with too many cutscenes which quickly makes it a chore to skip through them when they’re very clearly unnecessary. Battles between the Bakugan themselves are a mix of strategically planning out your stats beforehand and spamming buttons after. This is jarring as the game lets you ignore poor decisions by just tapping buttons or swinging the Wii remote around for extra power. This would be like tapping the A button during a Pokémon battle to get stronger to the point of being able to take out a gym leader several levels higher than you. It’s adding mechanics where it wasn’t necessary which makes it a bit obtuse. The gameplay outside the battles themselves is pretty terrible as you simple play repetitive tournaments over and over again with almost no variation or meaningful side content. Definitely the game’s weakest aspect by far.

Sound & Ambiance

The music is very good and the voice actors are the same from the show which makes this feel extremely faithful and nostalgic for fans of the cartoon. With the exception of everyone kind of being mean to the player character which is a bit off putting. The graphics themselves are a mixed bag as they replicate the look of the show very well in a 3D space but lack a bit of resolution.