Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax

In the realm of 2D fighting games, notoriety is relatively limited. I, myself, have likely only played a couple over the past few years aside from Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax but without nearly as much enjoyment. This game is honestly a lot of fun for what it offers and a few of the mechanics that it uses, which was quite relevant for me since I have limited experience with this genre. For the most part, it is widely accessible through these mechanics despite having what it likely a small Western audience. Even if, like me, you previously had only some interactions with other 2D fighter titles – namely the Guilty Gear or BlazBlue series – or perhaps none at all, what makes DBFC special is newcomers can quickly get invested too. It is a bit out there compared to traditional fighters but doesn’t totally breakdown the genre with new ideas.

A Dream Crossover

Fighters for this game were chosen from a wide variety of popular animes, notably from the Toradora!, Sword Art Online, and The Irregular at Magic High School.

Already, it becomes clear that the developers were aiming to attract a wider audience, as there are nearly 20 different animes represented here. This is also the result of them coming off their previous projects, Guilty Gears and Under Night In-Birth ExeLate, which are both well known for being intricately crafted 2D fighters. DBFC takes a different approach entirely, opting for a simpler battle scheme by removing subtle/difficult to pull off combos and instead inserting the ‘climax arts’ system. This change was quite significant because it was done effectively instead of being reductive.

With such a focus on simpler gameplay, many titles fall into the trap of becoming button mashers, which can still be fun but lack nuance. DBFC manages to retain the finer points that make it an innovative title while also enabling wider audiences to play with a smaller learning curve. Additionally, and unsurprisingly, the graphics and art design of this game are fantastic. Some of the stages look a bit off, but that’s hardly a detractor given the justice done to each character.

The Roster

The choice of characters for this game was honestly good, though many of them seem to follow a similar trend of being a ‘cute anime girl’ which somewhat takes away from their presence. However, this also begins to outline one of the weaker points of this title. Since so much of the game was created in favor of simplicity and action, there’s a bit of a lapse that occurs between choosing new characters.

Bottom Line

I personally have not seen many of the shows which the characters come from (save for some Sword Art Online and an inkling of the others), but even if I had, there isn’t a ton of variety to their attacks.

Most of them suffer from having nearly identical attacks that are simply a different color outside of the climax arts. This isn’t exactly unacceptable, but for a fighting game, it really takes away the incentive to care about switching characters. Regardless, it was one minor slipup in an otherwise great game.

Pros:

• Great design
• Climax arts were neat
• Widely accessible to any player at any level of experience

Cons:

• Roster was large, but characters hardly different in terms of play style
• Stage choices seemed out of place at times