| Crossovers have been a popular
concept in nearly every walk of medium. They have
become a stable in comic books, and have drifted
into cinema on more than one occasion, including
one of Toho's most profitable endeavors: King
Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). Naturally,
the idea of mixing franchises has been a significant
player in successful video games as well, with
efforts ranging from X-Men vs. Streetfighter
to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros series.
Of course, the grandfather of the video game crossover
would have to be Banpresto's Battle series.
Conceived in the early 1990's,
the Battle series pits some of Japan's most recognizable
intellectual properties against each other to,
most frequently, compete in a sport. Battle
Soccer (also referred to as Battle Soccer:
Field of Champions) is no exception, as the
game sees Godzilla, Ultraman, Gundam, and Kamen
Rider duking it out through a game of soccer.
Unfortunately, beyond the enticing concept of
seeing these four brands joining up, Battle
Soccer itself is very forgettable effort
as it's fairly mediocre across the board. On the
"positive" side, the game play, graphics
and audio are fairly middle of the road, although
at least not terrible, but the controls, on the
other hand, are completely inadequate. What's
really sad about Battle Soccer, though,
is that there appears to be a generally good concept
underneath, in regards to how things like Stamina
and leveling where actually conceived, but all
of this is overlooked by the more apparent fallacies
of the final product.
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| If there is one thing that Battle
Soccer deserves praise for, it's that there
is a great deal to do. There is a battle mode
(for single or multi player use), a normal mode,
and the very interesting tournament mode, the
latter of which is the pinnacle point of the game.
From start to finish, the tournament mode will
require a great deal of time to beat, while the
built in save feature allows the player to take
their time with the process and watch their team
slowly gain in power. Unfortunately, the lack
of balance in the characters themselves ensures
that most teams, near the end, will be nearly
identical, regardless of who the player might
prefer on their roster. For example, the prospect
of an all Toho team is pretty much dashed away
by the fact that only a few of them are in the
least bit decent. All in all, there are really
four characters who are heads and shoulders above
any other in the game, and during the later levels,
when entire teams are comprised solely from them,
it's impossible not to fill one's roster with
them if the player hopes to progress. The four
are, in order of usefulness:
Vigna Gina: Hands down, this mech
is the most broken character in the game. He has
no weakness, his overall stat total is the highest,
and his Hi-Mega Shot special is powerful enough
to take out as many as three (!) opponents if
they are clumped close enough and Vigna Gina is
of a high enough level. Because of this, it's
generally suggested that the player start the
game out as the Mobile Busters.
King Ghidorah: The three-headed
space demon takes the second place crown. His
attack, defense, kick, and stamina are all the
highest in the game. Unlike Vigna Gina, though,
he has a huge weakness in the form of his lackluster
speed. Fortunately, King Ghidorah is the only
top tier character who can also play goalie, so
his low speed becomes a non-issue in that position,
although setting the king of the terror on defense
is also suggested.
Ultraman Great: This character
excels in attack, defense, kick, and energy. He
can go toe-to-toe with most characters without
much worry. Unfortunately, he has incredibly low
stamina, meaning that he can be taken out of commission
fairly quickly if he actually receives damage,
but his quicker than normal leveling and useful
Plasma Bolt special make him versatile enough
to play most any position on a team.
Shadow Moon: When it comes to speed,
Shadow Moon is really unsurpassed. Only Kamen
Rider Black RX can even compare, and even then
Shadow Moon beats him out in every other area,
so it's a non-issue. The character also has a
generous supply of stamina, but he really is far
below the usefulness of the other three, as his
defense doesn't make him nearly as untouchable
as the others, while he has trouble with trying
to take out other characters as well. The fact
that he also gains level noticeably slower then
most other characters is also a strike against
him. In reality, Shadow Moon is really meant for
goal rushing, and nothing more.
Unfortunately, this lack of balance
gives really no incentive to even consider playing
tournament mode more than once as the ending result
will nearly always be the same. For example, when
I beat the game, my final team had 2 King Ghidorahs,
3 Vigna Ginas, 2 Ultraman Greats, and Shadow Moon
on it.
To deviate from this subject, another
area which "deserves" mention is the
games AI. To put it bluntly, it's pretty terrible.
It's not uncommon to see a computer controlled
player rush one's goal, unleash a special so they
knock out the goalie, and then kick the ball to
another player who is far away instead of scoring
a point then and there. Another display of the
lackluster AI is when the computer characters
will fire specials off into the out of bounds
regions, which occurs because the shot is fully
powered and once that happens they release it
(regardless of where the ball might be sent off).
The AI also doesn't understand the concept of
swapping out injured players for healthy ones,
and even when given a few reserve characters they
will never send them out on the field under any
circumstances.
For all of the AI's misgivings,
though, Banpresto has more than armed them with
unfair, often frustrating, advantages that will
rid the player of any sympathy they might feel
when the opposing team does something stupid.
For example, the computer can control any number
of players at once. Unlike a human player, who
can control only one character at a time, the
computer can control, for example, four members
of their defense at once, making them all attempt
to steal the ball in unison (which is incredibly
difficult to dodge when this occurs at every which
angle). This joined AI also allows the computer
to effectively pass the ball across the entire
field in no time, which is impossible for a human
player to achieve on account of the cumbersome
switching system and having to systematically
aim each pass, instead of the computer's ability
to do this in rapid succession.
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Banpresto has done a decent job
here, given the hardware. The characters themselves
are distinct, although not very detailed, but
then these kind of "super deformed",
or "chibi", style of characters aren't
generally meant to be. Each of the player's head
shots is pretty well drawn out too, although a
couple of them have some errors in regards to
how they display with the red background vs. the
blue and vice-versa. Sadly, the fields themselves
are pretty bland, but the only one that looks
displeasing is the Metal stage.
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Battle Soccer isn't horrible
in this regard, although some definite work is
in order. For the most part, the music is a little
catchy, but the problem is that there simply isn't
enough of it. There is only one music track for
each of the four fields, and for each season the
player is likely to hear this theme for an almost
solid hour and a half, with only small pauses.
The stages also eventually repeat, meaning that
someone who plays through the tournament mode
is likely to hear the Metal stage theme, the least
pleasant of the four, for a good three hours,
which is simply way too much.
As for sound effects, the game
is noticeable light in this regard, with no diversity
amongst the numerous characters. In fact, I can
run through all of the sound effects one is likely
to hear on the field itself, which include: kick
noise, impact noise, side check noise, slide noise,
charging, special, whistle, and "goal".
One thing that would have been nice is some slightly
different noises for some of the specials, perhaps
something for Godzilla's fireball instead of a
normal "kick noise" for example.
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The main controls of kicking and
defending are simple enough. An extra pass feature
would have been much appreciated, though, especially
given that the computer AI is set up to effectively
pass to their teammates using the regular kick
moves. Responsiveness is an issue occasionally,
though, as periodically I was frantically trying
to move in a different direction, or release a
special, and finding myself having to press the
button an additional time before anything occurred;
also, for the record, I'm not confusing this with
the slight recovery delay that occurs when the
character recovers from a failed attempt to steal
the ball.
The largest problem with the controls,
though, is simply the switching, and when it does
versus when it doesn't. For example, it seems
like common sense that if your player is knocked
out that the game would change control to one
that hasn't fainted on the ground; however, this
doesn't happen, and the delay until a new character
is selected is quite large. This process can be
skipped by pressing L or R, but in the heat of
the game this is something that needed to be automatic.
Their is a large amount of trouble in regards
to the goalie as well. A common problem in relation
to this is that the player will be running toward
the goal, let's say to the left, to try and tackle
someone; unfortunately, if the opposing team is
close enough to the goal the game will change
the controls to that of the goalie, which is problematic
when he starts to run left (inside the goal) and
leaving the team as a whole defenseless. A far
better solution would have been to have the goalie
always controlled by AI when they don't have the
ball, which would have ignored this problem altogether.
In regards to hit detection, the
game seems a little off, although nothing severe.
The main problem is mostly when it comes to "sliding"
or "side checking", which sometimes
hit even though the other character hasn't quite
reached the other yet. However, a likely excuse
for this is simply that each player has the same
amount of hit detection, so it looks off when
a small character like Kamen Rider gets hit although
it would look normal on the larger ones like King
Ghidorah.
On a side note, I don't understand
why the experience point interface wasn't made
simpler. For the points that the player has to
distribute, they have to manually select which
character to place them into. The problem is that
each push of either Up (to increase) or Down (to
decease) only moves one point, and can't be held
to speed the process. So, for example, the player
has to hit a direction 250 times for each team
defeated in Season 5 (and it only gets worse from
there). If the boredom of this time consuming
practice doesn't get to the player, carpal tunnel
likely will.
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| To the game's credit, Tournament
mode, played from beginning to end, will last
the player more than a week of pretty heavy play.
Unfortunately, there is very little incentive
to play past the 5th season. Speaking personally,
I found it motivating to continue playing once
I discovered that there were secret characters
that showed up in Season 3, which are Kudara and
Queen Mansa, as I wanted to see who else might
pop up. Sadly, there are no other secret characters,
which made every season that followed increasingly
anti-climatic. Honestly, it became a choir to
battle through the last seasons as my enjoyment
of the game had long petered off. I became pretty
frustrated the first time I made it to the 8th
season too, as I lost and was sent back to the
start of the 7th season. To put this into perspective,
if the player wins every single match, first try,
in season 7 then it will last them one and half
hours. So that's a huge setback.
As for the game as multiplayer
experience, the lack of balance in the unleveled
teams ruins this, while the overly long passwords,
when someone wants to use their already leveled
players, are unpractical to use when someone else
has to wait through the whole process.
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| Battle Soccer is a
hard game to get into. The leveling aspect, and
ability to manipulate the roster through wining,
make it addicting for awhile once the initial
feel of the game is down. However, this enjoyment
often isn't enough to encourage someone to actually
progress their way through the entire tournament.
The interesting mix of different intellectual
properties, though, is a good incentive by itself
to at least check the game out, even if Battle
Soccer itself is nothing special.
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