Battle Fantasia - Reception

Reception

The home console versions of Battle Fantasia received relatively low sales in Japan, with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions selling 3,100 and 2,300 copies respectively during their debut week.

Western response to Battle Fantasia was mostly average, with the PlayStation 3 version garnering a 67% average on aggregate review websites Metacritic and Game Rankings, and the Xbox 360 version obtaining a marginally higher 71%. Many critics compared the title to Arc System Works' previous fighting game endeavor, the Guilty Gear series, with 1UP.com declaring that the game was more simplistic than the company's earlier works with less focus on technical aspects such as combos, and that each characters special moves were "flashy and not as situational". The website felt that many of the changes resulted in the characters being more interesting, and called the game's fantasy art motif "a pleasing sidestep" from Guilty Gear's more "edgy" style, but found that most matches were slow and that the colorful art direction and Japanese voices would only appeal to a niche audience. Game Informer declared that the presentation of Battle Fantasia was charming "with all the vibrancy and artistic style of an anime", yet it did little to revolutionize the genre despite adding traditional role-playing game aesthetics such as "long-winded story segments". IGN called the game's character design "lighthearted and appealing", but that the total cast size of only twelve playable characters was relatively small compared to other fighting games, and that background designs were "oftentimes bland and ugly". In regards to the game's technical aspects, IGN felt the game lacking when compared to more high-profile titles such as Sega's Virtua Fighter 5, and that gameplay was more about "timing and calculated moves than massive combos or memorizing deep move sets".

European versions of Battle Fantasia in early 2009 were often compared to Capcom's highly anticipated Street Fighter IV released just one month after. Eurogamer claimed that the game was "not even in the same league as Capcom's superlative re-envisioning", yet compared its defensive Gachi parrying system to Street Fighter III. The website would criticize the title's "by-the-numbers gameplay" and lack of online competition, and called Battle Fantasia's art style "a nice departure, but many will find the overly twee presentation a bit too sugary for their fighter tastes." Play magazine also commented on the game's release, stating that "Six months ago we would have happily recommended it as a stopgap to Street Fighter IV, but we just can’t say that now." Journalists for the magazine would pan the title's lack of gameplay options and called the story mode "a joke". Ironically, though it was often found to be inferior to the latest Street Fighter, series director Yoshinori Ono cited the original arcade version of Battle Fantasia in 2007 as the inspiration for his game's new three-dimensional art style, stating "Our fear was that with Street Fighter IV, because our characters are taller and more human-proportioned that it might look funky... What we learned through development was that no, it's not going to look weird... Battle Fantasia was part of what made us realize that, I think."