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I absolutely despise the Bakugan console game.
I don’t really do video games reviews and I am open to that idea, but since I’m not
much of a gamer, you’ll most likely not see me review a lot of video games in the
future.
This is a special occasion because I recently bought the Bakugan Battle Brawlers video game
for Playstation 2 and it has been a catastrophe.
I wasn’t really expecting this game to be that good, especially given the ratings and
reviews it received, but I was not expecting to hate it.
Now, I hope this won’t bother you, I don’t have a game capture device, so I’m gonna
have to use whatever footage I ended up using to cover the screen.
So from the beginning, I was already raising my eyebrows.
When I witnessed the opening sequence, I noticed that Dan’s narration was slightly different.
It was the same voice actor, but they made him redo the entire opening narration, for
reasons I cannot explain.
Sure, it didn’t affect my enjoyment in the slightest, but it was definitely not a good
first impression.
And then, we head to the creation of the main character.
For some reason, you don’t have the option to choose a female character.
Not to say that it was an inconvenience to me.
In fact, I would have ended up creating a male character anyway, but the fact that you
can’t create a female character could be very alienating to many people.
I’m sure there are some female Bakugan fans who would have preferred creating a girl character.
And then you also have that group of guys who would like to have customize themselves
as a female character, which is very common in the Anime community.
Speaking of Anime, you also don’t have to option to choose Japanese voices, which to
be fair, most people are probably used to the English voices, so it’s not much of
a big deal.
Anyway, when it comes to the designs of the characters, if there’s one thing that kept
constantly bugging me was the visibly scalar and unpolished lining of the characters and
then the backgrounds are badly blended in with the character layers.
As for the environment of the story, it did feel nice and nostalgic seeing Akira and Shuji
acting all tough, cocky and then insecure right after Dan arrived.
The background music is also the same as in the show, which did indeed make me feel like
I was in the world of the Bakugan series.
RIGHT until we entered the actual battles.
I don’t know how many times I got really pissy while fighting against someone.
Let’s start off with the continuity.
In story mode, you can participate in tournaments, despite the fact that no tournaments were
established in the first series.
It was really just a long league and not to mention, despite the fact that I’m a newbie
and I occasionally fight against some of the highest ranked players, I somehow win them
easily.
Hell, some of them even have the difficulty set in easy, not that it even matters anyway,
because even if it was set in hard, CPU players are not challenging opponents.
They make a bunch of dumb mistakes and it really doesn’t help that every time you
brawl, unlike in the original series, you have to carefully place the bakugan in the
exact card you want to, so they just end screwing up and losing the ball.
But aside from all of that, the tournaments contain stadiums based on whatever attribute
they choose as thematical settings, which is strange because in the first series, of
which the game is based on, the only way you could have played bakugan is if you entered
the dark and empty battle field.
These attribute themed stadiums would only make sense if earth and vestroya had collided,
which during the first series, it only happened after Naga and Hal G invaded earth.
Also, some of these stadiums have these archaic collectible items that just make my head hurt
even more for not resembling the original series at all and making the game less grounded.
Anyway, as for the actual matches, I noticed that we’re given only three gate cards and
those gate cards aren’t always related to our chosen attributes.
In terms of the negative and positive effect on the bakugans, they do vary depending on
the attribute, some specific circumstances and the Bakugan present in the gate card,
which is all fine and dandy, but the categorization of the Gate cards is not exclusively based
on my attribute and my bakugans, which is wrong.
There are some cards that have a special feature for specific bakugans and they’re called
Golden cards, but unfortunately, you’re only allowed to place one Golden card on your
deck.
For instance, I own Serpenoid and a Gate card that doubles his increase when opened, but
unfortunately, I have to put it on the side, because I need my Leonidas Gate Card since
he’s my main bakugan.
I mean sure, I can use the Serpenoid card instead and that’s what I end up doing most
of the times, but I hate how I have to choose one of them instead of having the option to
have both cards on my deck.
You also have Silver cards that don’t really do much besides increase G points and then
you have Copper cards that have circumstantial variables and with both these cards, no matter
how much you’ve bought, you can only place one of them each on your Deck, which I think
it’s pretty inconvenient, because the choices you make on the battles depend on the situation
you’re in and this system they imposed limits critical evaluation of your options.
But that’s not the biggest problem I have with the Gate cards.
For some reason, in order for you to win the game, you have to capture three gate cards
instead of avoiding elimination by losing three times, which is ludicrous.
In the show, in order for you to win, you had to defeat three bakugans, not capture
three gate cards and in this game, if you place a Bakugan into the field and you either
win or lose, you don’t the option to use it again unless it’s to perform double stand,
which by the way, the idea of a double stand is complete nonsense.
In the show, you could very easily place two of your bakugans into one gate card and the
game would continue and the G points of the two Bakugans would combine.
In this game, if you place two bakugans into the same gate card, it’s consider a victory,
which is massively inaccurate, and if you place your bakugan into the same gate card
as your partner, it will count as a miss, instead of combining their G points and teaming
up.
So basically, there’s no way you can add more than one bakugan into the same Gate card.
Also, for some reason, in tag team matches, each tag team shares three chances of winning
the match, unlike the show where every individual player has three strikes each.
A huge side effect of this is that if my partner goes full on retard and loses every time it’s
his turn, it’s going to directly affect me and that’s exactly what happened while
I was playing, and it was really annoying.
But anyway, getting back to what I was previously talking about, aside from the fact that you
can’t reuse your Bakugan even after winning a match, but also if you get an opportunity
where you can perform a double stand, you are given the option to use any of your bakugans,
including the ones that previously lost in a game, WHICH IS DUMB!
Also, it pisses me off that my Gate card also increases my opponent’s G points, I mean
that wasn’t unlikely in the original show, but for God’s sake, every time?
Like what side are you on anyway?
Oh!
And where are the Doom cards?
That could have easily made games a lot more exciting!
But now, let’s get into that’s something that’s even dumber, the ability cards.
Much like the gate cards, the ability cards aren’t entirely categorized exclusively
by their bakugans and attributes and their main function of is to increase the G points
depending on different variables and their usage is very anti-climatic.
We don’t even witness their application with a special sequence or something cool
like that.
There are some ability cards that provide extra boosts to specific bakugans and there
are some that are exclusive to certain bakugans, especially if they’re the main bakugans
of the players, but again, I wish all of the ability cards were like that.
But, much like before, that’s not my only problem.
In the actual game itself, for some reason, you’re only allowed to use the ability cards
after the gate cards are open and you have to option to apply multiple ability cards
into one Bakugan, which is not at all accurate.
In the show, you’re allowed to use one ability card per bakugan during one of the three turns.
Now in the game’s defense, while you can apply multiple cards into one bakugan, you
only have three cards in total that you’re allowed to use for the rest of the game, but
again, I would have preferred if you could only use one.
That way, you can have a dozen of ability cards on you deck ready for usage at any time
depending on your bakugan and would you have to choose wisely, since you only get to use
once per bakugan.
I also don’t understand why you can’t activate your ability cards before the Gate
card is open.
It’s probably because it keeps the individual battles more self-contained and focused, but
not only does it prevent others from interfering with the battles, but in the show, there are
some ability cards that disables Gate cards and even transfer other bakugans to your gate
card, or even just transfer yourself to your opponent’s Gate card.
I think the best solution for this problem would be to just give the players the option
to position their attacks to whatever player they want.
But um…
I still have one other issue...
Even after applying your ability card, opening your gate card and have more G points, there
is chance that you might lose and that’s because there are these small minigames you
play as a way to either defend or gain enough points to surpass your opponent, which first
of all, that’s insane.
In the anime, the closest there is to something like that is whenever a special and smart
bakugan uses his individual skills to take control of the game, which even then, that’s
very rare.
Secondly, if you’re going to pull off some crap like this, can you at least make the
gameplay fun?
At least let me control the bakugan and maybe move around with him or something like that.
Granted, I would be much happier if this just didn’t exist at all and everything was just
based on numbers.
Oh, and by the way, when playing Tag team matches, when your partner is fighting against
his opponent, even if he has more G points after activating the cards, he can still lose
because of those stupid minigames and we don’t even witness those minigames.
I am of course talking about Story mode.
If you’re playing alongside someone else in real life, you can of course witness the
minigames and you might even have the option to help them, but with CPU, it’s all up
to chances.
Like when I was playing with Dan, he had around 70 G points in advantage and he somehow lost.
And those are pretty much my main issues with the game and it’s why I cannot stand playing
this video game.
I know this might come across as a weird video to upload, since I never review video games,
but I had to make this video because I was so fueled with anger and frustration.
I doubt you would do it anyway, but don’t buy this game.
It sucks.