A short brawler with excellent artwork, atmosphere, and character design that is unfortunately marred by frustratingly stiff controls and lack of gameplay polish.

+ Superb art and character design
+ Authentic Japanese theming and feel
+ Good variety of attacks, special moves, and combos
+ Can't just button mash to win, needs some finesse/skill
+ Controls become more intuitive the longer you play
+ First completion run in under 90 minutes on Easy
+ Hard and Endless modes available if you want more

- Very stiff, frustrating, animation-locked controls
- Hit detection and enemy recoil feels inconsistent
- Impatient people will not like the story or gameplay
- Help/tutorial text is difficult to read
- Development feels rushed, lacks depth and refinement

At first, I felt this game was almost unplayable due to the very stiff controls. However, giving it a bit of time and adjusting my playstyle to focus more on defense, dodging, and learning which attack methods to use at the right time made the game much more interesting than your average button-mash brawler. If you approach the game with the perspective that it requires a little thought and finesse to beat, the stiff controls become a little less game breaking and one can appreciate that there is some depth to the gameplay.

I would also say that this game is not really for the impatient, as both the story and gameplay requires a bit of restraint to appreciate -- and this can be a little counter-intuitive for what seems like a simple brawler. It's unfortunate that this game wasn't refined further in terms of more characters, more plot, more music tracks, more gameplay tweaks... because if it had been given just a little more time, love and polish it could have been something spectactular as opposed to something kind of recommended but with strong caveats.

[h1]One-Sentence Summary:[/h1] A short brawler with excellent artwork, atmosphere, and character design that is unfortunately marred by frustratingly stiff controls and lack of gameplay polish. [h1]Pros:[/h1] + Superb art and character design + Authentic Japanese theming and feel + Good variety of attacks, special moves, and combos + Can't just button mash to win, needs some finesse/skill + Controls become more intuitive the longer you play + First completion run in under 90 minutes on Easy + Hard and Endless modes available if you want more [h1]Cons:[/h1] - Very stiff, frustrating, animation-locked controls - Hit detection and enemy recoil feels inconsistent - Impatient people will not like the story or gameplay - Help/tutorial text is difficult to read - Development feels rushed, lacks depth and refinement [h1]Final Thoughts:[/h1] At first, I felt this game was almost unplayable due to the very stiff controls. However, giving it a bit of time and adjusting my playstyle to focus more on defense, dodging, and learning which attack methods to use at the right time made the game much more interesting than your average button-mash brawler. If you approach the game with the perspective that it requires a little thought and finesse to beat, the stiff controls become a little less game breaking and one can appreciate that there is some depth to the gameplay. I would also say that this game is not really for the impatient, as both the story and gameplay requires a bit of restraint to appreciate -- and this can be a little counter-intuitive for what seems like a simple brawler. It's unfortunate that this game wasn't refined further in terms of more characters, more plot, more music tracks, more gameplay tweaks... because if it had been given just a little more time, love and polish it could have been something spectactular as opposed to something kind of recommended but with strong caveats.