Monday 20 July 2015

Yatagarasu: Attack on Cataclysm Review (PC)


We’ll admit that we weren’t aware of this project by a team of ex SNK staff until very recently. There have been various builds and versions of the game around since as early as 2010 but we now have the final release. 

Yatagarasu is a one on one fighting game claiming to be accessible to all but also contain depth for more hard-core gamers. It draws from a number of influences and the result is a pretty playable mash up of Street Fighter III, Fatal Fury and The Last Blade. 

There are eleven characters to pick from and they all show strong design in terms of how they balance against each other and their styles of play. The one down point is that there isn’t really anyone here you haven’t played before and the game certainly lacks an iconic character to hang the franchise on.

There’s the usual Ryu and Ken variants, a big guy who is part Hugo and part Zangief and an assassin character clearly influenced by Ibuki. The rest of the cast fall into character templates from the Last Blade and various other SNK franchises. This isn’t a massive problem as they all play well but a bit more imagination would have helped raise the game up a level. The design of the characters themselves is also nothing to write home about. There’s a nice consistent pixel style to them but no one leaps out or is especially memorable in terms of how they look. 

The backgrounds are strangely inconsistent in their design aesthetic and a bit dull if we’re being painfully honest. A couple are great and fit the game perfectly. Others don’t gel with the character art style at all and the static nature of them creates a really odd feeling that your characters are merely drifting around in front of them instead of it all being an integrated location. It also makes bouts feel somewhat less intense than in other fighters. The same criticism cannot be aimed at the music which is consistently excellent throughout.

There can also be no criticism of how blows connect with other fighters. We’ve played a few games where it can be difficult to know if you are connecting at times but here everything comes with a solid sound effect and made everything seem meaty and precise. 

The key Street Fighter III influence is the parry. It works differently here with buttons assigned to high and low parries. Much like Capcom’s fighter, good timing will see you avoid damage from any incoming attack. Get the timing wrong and you are left open for extra hits during a counter attacking combo. The system works really well and has clearly had a lot of thought put into it.

In terms of modes you get a fairly basic training mode, an online mode (which has good net code from what we’ve experienced), some replay options and two arcade modes. The arcade modes play out the same but it’s nice to have two different stories to battle through and is certainly a unique feature.

The other key feature of the game is that you can have ongoing commentary from fighting experts to try and build up the same feel as tournament fighting. In practice this means cut out heads of the veterans popping up when key moves or combos are carried out saying a few different phrases. It’s a fun addition but we soon turned it off as it’s very distracting.

Overall, Yatagarasu: Attack on Cataclysm is a solid fighting game with some nice mechanics but it really has its work cut out to overthrow the current crop of fighters. The core mechanics are all here but it’s let down but some inconsistent presentation. We enjoyed our time with it but with Street Fighter, Blazblu and King of the Fighters having exceptional games in the market it’s hard to see us spending that much time with it in the future. Hopefully a sequel will arrive that really blows us away but at the minute this is good but not amazing.

Overall 7/10

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