I did a little digging ahead of this review to find out the back story for this game. PBBG is a scrolling beat ‘em up spin off of a fighting game about anime girls. The original developers 5pb have a long history of releasing games about anime girls. The big names I know are Corpse Party and Steins;gate. What impresses me the most is their passion for revisiting their franchises. The persistence with which they have revived Phantom Breaker, in all of its apparitions, is heartening. I tried out Phantom Breaker Omnia – the newest iteration of the one-on-one fighting game – and although it seems deeply average mechanically, visually it is stunning.
So, arrives this version of PBBG with Ultimate attached as a suffix. I played the original version on Xbox 360 back in 2013. Mechanically it was very simple; you control an anime girl, and she has a light heavy and special attack that you can spam until a meter fills up and then you can pop a mega attack. Despite that there was a great sense of charm to the fighting with big effects blowing up on the screen. There is a lot of flare to the combat, with the challenge coming from playing on harder difficulties and timing the parry properly due to the bigger damage the enemies can do.
Defeated enemies drop coins and orbs that allow for upgrading in between levels – damage, health and speed can be increased, as well as unlocking double jumps and new combos – and each level ends with a boss that will be familiar to anyone that has played Phantom Breaker Omnia (or its predecessors).
The advancements of PBBG Ultimate are that it has an expanded roster of most of the game’s original DLC characters, more players allowed to play simultaneously in both offline and online (with cross-platform support available), and a number of new game modes. On beating the game even more characters are unlocked with almost the entire list of enemies then being playable.
This all makes the game feel bigger in terms of content, and goes a long way towards justifying a double dip for those that enjoyed it previously. Of note too, is that the game has remixed its sound levels so that everything works well together (although I do miss the loud haunting noises the tiny little claw enemies used to make when they died on the X360 version).
The thing is PBBG: Ultimate isn’t a particularly deep game. The first three levels of the story mode just requires you to spam the attack buttons to get through every enemy. By the time it gets challenging the parry and dash attacks dispatch a lot of them, with flying enemies and ranged enemies the only types that cause real headaches. It might be my faded memories but I recall this game being a lot harder to level up, and some of the fights (even on normal) were really tough.
When returning on harder difficulties there is a fair bit of grinding to beat them, but varying tactics is not really required. I just don’t think that is the metric that this game should be judged upon. The truth of the matter is that mashing buttons and having a large amount of gratifying feedback is PBBG: Ultimate’s whole jam. When done alongside friends it is even better as once everyone realises they are god tier threat, it becomes about stealing kills.
PBBG: Ultimate is undeniably fun for me – a flawless remaster of a game that fires off high levels of serotonin as a little anime maid (with a massive sword) goes through thousands of beautifully rendered enemies.
Conclusion
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds: Ultimate is a loving remaster/reworking of the original title, it is bursting with content and all of the originals wide-eyed excess. For those revisiting this will be everything they could possibly want (bigger roster, more modes, better multiplayer). For hardcore beat ‘em up fans the combat might not be deep enough for them but they aren’t the target audience for this title.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
