It takes guts to develop a game and market it as a Japan-only Xbox exclusive. Such was the case with the original Phantom Breaker, an anime-styled 2D fighter full of great ideas, but long forgotten by pretty much everyone due to the aforementioned (and obvious) reason. Even though a few updated versions of the game had been released over the years, it never managed to take off. Its developers clearly didn’t want to give up so easily, however. They knew they had something interesting in stock, so they decided to revamp its visuals a notch, add a ton of localized voice acting, release it to many platforms at once, and hope for the best. Phantom Breaker: Omnia is the result.

For the most part, Phantom Breaker: Omnia looks and feels like a BlazBlue clone, but instead of featuring overly designed and absurdist characters, it focuses mostly on anime teenagers and waifus, given its premise: a tournament featuring awakened forms of Japanese teenagers, fighting against each other until the sole winner is declared, with the main prize being any wish coming true. Definitely not the most exciting of premises (it’s literally the same as Twisted Metal, mind you, and that’s never a good thing), and not the best game in terms of character designs. Everyone looks a bit too samey, a bit too generic. It was hard to actually find a character to main due to how unappealing most of them were.

Sure, it’s a bland fighting game in terms of its presentation, but it has some really interesting features that make it stand out from other obscure anime fighters in the market. One of those is the sheer amount of single player content. Phantom Breaker: Omnia is absolutely packed with tons of different campaign modes, each of them being fully voiced in English, with tons of cutscenes in between fights. I have to commend the surprising quality of the voice acting, for I was not expecting it. The option to revert back to Japanese is still present in the game, mind you, but you won’t complain at all about the quality of the English dub.

What I liked the most from Phantom Breaker: Omnia, without a doubt, was its gameplay. This is nowhere near as complex to learn or master as other fighting games. Sure, it has its many buttons and combos to pull off, but you can actually perform special moves by pressing a specific button alongside a direction on the d-pad, not unlike the Super Smash Bros. series. This allowed me to test each character with ease when I first booted the game up, as I had no freaking idea of who they were, or what made them stand out from one another. It also made me filter which story campaigns I wanted to tackle, for they were many, and quite long.

There’s a lot to like in Phantom Breaker: Omnia, namely its “easy-to-learn, not-so-hard-to-master” combat system and the sheer amount of fully voiced campaigns for players to enjoy on-the-go. It even controls surprisingly well on Nintendo’s archaic Joy-Cons, all things considered. The problem lies on its uninteresting character design, resulting in half of the roster looking like clones of each other, and the fact I legitimately cannot see its online community lasting for long, especially with Persona 4 Arena Ultimax right around the corner. It’s still a good pick for fighting game enthusiasts, however, so if you’re a fan of the genre and want to something to spend literal dozens of hours into, go for it.

 

Graphics: 7.0 Even though I appreciate Phantom Breaker: Omnia‘s artwork and sprites, I’m not a fan of how similar each character is to each other.	Gameplay: 9.0 This might be one of the first proper fighting games to successfully mix the traditional control system and combat mechanics from traditional arcade fighters with Super Smash Bros.‘ sensibilities without feeling out of place.
Sound: 8.0 I wasn’t expecting for this game to have so much voice acting, and definitely wasn’t expecting for it to be localized… and good.	Fun Factor: 7.0 I appreciate this game’s sheer amount of content and battle system, but I certainly wasn’t a fan of its uninteresting character design. I also have my worries regarding its multiplayer mode’s lasting appeal.
Final Verdict: 7.5

Phantom Breaker: Omnia is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Phantom Breaker: Omnia was provided by the publisher.