God I love this game! It's too bad no one's ever heard of it. I never did either, actually. I heard about it from a friend (hi Chris!). We rented it one day, and had such fun playing it that I just had to get it.

As far as I can tell, it's a first or second generation playstation game. I', pretty sure it's pre-FFVII, but I could be wrong. Chances are you can find it new for about $10, and I recomend that you run out and buy it right now. Basically, it's a fighting game, but using heavy doses of anime styling. And we're talking anime on crack here. Pretty much all the characters are stereotypical anime characters, but that only adds to their charm. There's a big, burly guy with a huge glowing sword, a magical schoolgirl complete with miniskirt and fairies, and young boy magician, and (my personal favorite) a 10,000 year old etheral being who looks and talks like a 6-year-old. SHE'S SO KAWAIIIIIIII!!

Ahem. Anyway, each of the characters are complemented with pretty damn good voice actors. They even managed to get a good fit for Kakurine (the 10,000-year-old 6-year-old. Hmmm, that didn't sound right)! However, what makes it really charming is that they have a script that's even worst than FFT. Much worse. Nothing even comes close. Either the localization team was a group of kindergardeners who didn't even speak English, or it was intentional. Considering the overall quality of voice acting, I think it was the later. Whatever they meant to do though, they succeeded. There's a huge amount of voice acting, with such a consitently bad script that it leads to tons of hilarious lines. Just to name a few:

NOTE: By good voice acting, I meant voices which fit the characters. The whole thing's pretty campy, but I still think it was intentional. Even if it wasn't, it still works, so who cares?

"It's all about invincible beauty!"
"I will not forget my feelings in the fantasy world."
"Erel hates nice guys!"
"After all, we must fight!"
"Oh well. Screw it!"
"I wonder if she lost because of the stale crackers I gave her?"

And that's only scratching the surface. Each of the 8 or so characters has a storyline mode, where they get a 45-60 second monolouge between fights. Plus, all the storylines are done to seem like episodes in a real anime, complete with title screens (sorta like Sakura Wars. But not really). It's REALLY funny. Just playing through one storyline had me and Chris rolling on the floor laughing after almost every speech. PLUS, there's a pretty huge library that contains totally useless, but horribly translated, information about the world and characters.

Since it is a fighting game, I should probably talk a little about the fighting engine. There are two buttons: attack and block. While this seems pretty basic, it's actually much more complex. Pressing a directional button and attack does special moves, depending on which direction you press. Double tap a direction and press attack and it does a variant of the attack you would have done for a single press, usually one that hits sidesteppers. With the addition of an unblockable throw being possible from any distance (down + attack) that can only be evaded by moving out of the way, the game is actually deceptively deep. Since all the characters have their own sets of moves, a strategy for one character may be a total failure for another. In fact, the whole engine is supprisingly addictive, and is one of the few fighting games I actually like.

The only real downside of this game is that the sound is pretty bad. I can't even remember most of the songs (although Chris swears there's one that sounds like the Sailor Moon theme), so at most they're pretty average. Still, it might be because I was laughing too hard to concentrate on the music.

This is one freaking hillarious game. And it's only about $10 used at the local EB. Very good deal.
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