Finally got around to playing Asura's Wrath in my backlog, and I'm glad I did. While the game has its share of shortcomings, damn if that wasn't one of the most memorable videogame experiences in years.
Short review: Do you like watching epic melodramatic fist fights between two people where each gives everything they have and keep standing up because the weight of their beliefs are carried on their fists?
If yes: Play this game
If no: The game might not be for you
In video form:
Basically you can tell whether this game is for you by watching the last 5 mins of the non-story relevant, fanservice bonus Asura vs. Akuma from street fighter fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwSS8cuyB0Y (skip to about 10:30 and watch the last 5 mins)
Long review:
The pros:
+In a lot of ways, Asura's Wrath really feels like Japan's reaction to God of War and doing an eastern anime-influenced take on ANGRY [NOT BALD] MAN RAGING against the gods in ridiculously epic scale set pieces and QTEs. Even Asura's story of why he's raging feels lifted right out of God of War as does his daughter-stuff which is very reminiscent of God of War III except not terrible.
+But comparing Asura's Wrath to God of War isn't really doing it justice. Asura's Wrath's set pieces completely obliterate GoW's most epic large-scale moments. The stuff in Asura's Wrath just has to be scene to be believed. It's a lot closer to Gurren Lagann by the true DLC ending of the game, and all of that stuff makes it quite a bit of fun.
+Absolutely incredible cutscene direction. Especially in terms of action direction. The story is extremely enjoyable and a large part is the cutscenes are just so kinetic and wild and enjoyable. The interactive QTEs are great and do a really amazing job at bringing the player into the cutscene and makes you feel the punches and the action as it happens. This game absolutely sets the bar and will probably keep that position for years to come as the best QTEs and best action cutscenes in a videogame. The final DLC ending fight is insane.
+Yeah, from a cutscene direction/story direction/interactive fiction direction, some of these fights are going down as the best "fights" in the entire videogame genre.
+The humor. The game is "serious", in the same way a Stephen Chow movie is. It knows it's over the top and ridiculous and pushes that ridiculous in ways to keep a smile constantly on the player's face. There aren't dumb goofy gag humor things you find a lot in Japanese comedy, but rather seeing people get punched to the moon in FULL SERIOUS and explode and stuff is just really silly fun. In a lot of ways the scenes in the game play out as if they were dream action scenes out of the imagination of a 6 year old playing with figurines. Kind of brings out that childhood joy of ridiculous entertainment everyone enjoys deep down.
+The art & graphics are really impressive. From the character designs and all their details to the world and special effects designs the game looks incredible. The graphics are also extremely impressive and the constant screen tearing is actually reminiscent of those Treasure game days where you'd have massive slowdown but it'd just make the scenes seem more impressive that they were so epic they're destroying your system. The fact that Asura's Wrath is basically always tearing on PS3 is almost like the scale and set pieces are too next-level for the PS3 and it's kind of hilarious.
+I also want to give credit to the really nice pieces of 2d art between every chapter by a handful of fantastic artists to help flesh out the background story. Just real nice stuff. Makes me want to pick up an art book.
+Another fantastic visual effect is how the faces deform from punches. Because the game is entirely about punching.people.in.the.face.really.hard it's great to see the faces react and move with the punches and the sound effects give those moment impact. CC2's visual style is hard to top, all you need to do is take a look at the special attacks form the latest Naruto games and that's pretty obvious.
+The music is really nice too. The soundtrack by Chikayo Fukuda is great on its own and just adds so much to the cutscenes along with the cutscene direction. Fukuda, who does all of CC2's soundtracks from .Hack to Solatorobo to Naruto is a very underrated musician as Fukuda proves with this soundtrack. Very good stuff.
+The story is real satisfying. By the end of the true ending DLC, the game has been a good length and there's good satisfaction. After an exhilarating intro, there's some downtime of about 1-2 hours and then the rest of the game basically feels like the last 5 hours of a 60 hour game and is non-stop finale type action that just escalates and escalates until the very end.
+The world view. The world of Asura's Wrath straight from the start feels fresh and interesting. Sci-fi space ships, people jump kicking giant space monsters through space give Gunbuster/Diebuster flash backs, as the game progresses, the worldview is expanded in the background and without wanting to spoil, CC2 created one of the most interesting settings for game in a while. Very unique.
Negatives:
-The game at release got knocked a lot for lack of "gameplay" and being all cutscenes and QTEs. What's kind of ironic about this is it's the "gameplay" that is there that sucks while the cutscenes and QTEs are near-perfect. The core gameplay consists of fights or panzer dragon-esque rail shooters. Both of these are incredibly shallow.
-The core combat is barely decent on some boss fights where you at least have patterns to learn and dodge, but for grunt combat it's a complete bore of mashing O until your rage meter fills up and then you can finally get out of the fight. For an action game, all the best action and enjoyment came from the interactive cutscenes, which thankfully are 75% of any chapter. But man does that other 25% drag. You'd think if CC2 put a little more effort into the combat it would have been leagues better, but nope, it's like a Simple 2000 series game.
-Likewise the rail shooter parts are just far too simple and have the control issue of having to both MOVE and AIM with the same analog when they really should've have put aiming on the right stick so you can aim to the right without moving rightwards into a giant beam. Again the rail shooter feels like it belongs in a Simple 2000 series game and pretty much sucks outside the visual splendor of shooting down meteors and stuff.
-It's worth mentioning that the game is a bit misogynist in how it portrays women. The only women in the game are basically wives, daughters, or boobs and it really sticks out when the one female antagonist's only scenes in the game are her getting abused and tied up and she doesn't even get a fight.
-Really outside of the combat and rail shooter parts sucking (but they are about 25% of the game), and lack of good female characters, there's really nothing much else negative about the game. Everything else is pretty much perfect.
Overall:
The game has some flaws, and being 75% an interactive anime movie about punching.people.in.the.face.really.hard, it's not gonna be for everyone. But for people on the fence, those interested, the game is worth every second (including all the DLC which is about $10 worth these days). Asura's Wrath delivers on a extremely entertaining and engaging epic sci-fi action tale that takes the God of War formula, makes it even crazier and more epic, and somehow ends up with you punching through planets. The amount of times characters get punched, knocked or stabbed to or through planets probably holds the entertainment medium record on that type of stuff.
It may not be a great "game", but it's one of the best "experiences" of the PS3/X360//Wii generation of systems. When all is said and done, 20 years from now I'll probably think back on Asura's Wrath as one of the top games of that near-decade and I'll be glad to have my copy and hopefully a working PS3 somewhere in a garage to replay it someday.
A-
PS. As an aside, considering Asura is one of Capcom's best new characters of the last decade, and all the great Capcom love shown in Asura's Wrath, I'm kind of bummed that Asura hasn't been appearing in other Capcom titles in the last couple of years as a fanservice cameo. I mean he's not even in Project x Zone 2 which he should be a shoe-in for a game like that, if not as a character in Street Fighter V or something.
Short review: Do you like watching epic melodramatic fist fights between two people where each gives everything they have and keep standing up because the weight of their beliefs are carried on their fists?
If yes: Play this game
If no: The game might not be for you
In video form:
Basically you can tell whether this game is for you by watching the last 5 mins of the non-story relevant, fanservice bonus Asura vs. Akuma from street fighter fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwSS8cuyB0Y (skip to about 10:30 and watch the last 5 mins)
Long review:
The pros:
+In a lot of ways, Asura's Wrath really feels like Japan's reaction to God of War and doing an eastern anime-influenced take on ANGRY [NOT BALD] MAN RAGING against the gods in ridiculously epic scale set pieces and QTEs. Even Asura's story of why he's raging feels lifted right out of God of War as does his daughter-stuff which is very reminiscent of God of War III except not terrible.
+But comparing Asura's Wrath to God of War isn't really doing it justice. Asura's Wrath's set pieces completely obliterate GoW's most epic large-scale moments. The stuff in Asura's Wrath just has to be scene to be believed. It's a lot closer to Gurren Lagann by the true DLC ending of the game, and all of that stuff makes it quite a bit of fun.
+Absolutely incredible cutscene direction. Especially in terms of action direction. The story is extremely enjoyable and a large part is the cutscenes are just so kinetic and wild and enjoyable. The interactive QTEs are great and do a really amazing job at bringing the player into the cutscene and makes you feel the punches and the action as it happens. This game absolutely sets the bar and will probably keep that position for years to come as the best QTEs and best action cutscenes in a videogame. The final DLC ending fight is insane.
+Yeah, from a cutscene direction/story direction/interactive fiction direction, some of these fights are going down as the best "fights" in the entire videogame genre.
+The humor. The game is "serious", in the same way a Stephen Chow movie is. It knows it's over the top and ridiculous and pushes that ridiculous in ways to keep a smile constantly on the player's face. There aren't dumb goofy gag humor things you find a lot in Japanese comedy, but rather seeing people get punched to the moon in FULL SERIOUS and explode and stuff is just really silly fun. In a lot of ways the scenes in the game play out as if they were dream action scenes out of the imagination of a 6 year old playing with figurines. Kind of brings out that childhood joy of ridiculous entertainment everyone enjoys deep down.
+The art & graphics are really impressive. From the character designs and all their details to the world and special effects designs the game looks incredible. The graphics are also extremely impressive and the constant screen tearing is actually reminiscent of those Treasure game days where you'd have massive slowdown but it'd just make the scenes seem more impressive that they were so epic they're destroying your system. The fact that Asura's Wrath is basically always tearing on PS3 is almost like the scale and set pieces are too next-level for the PS3 and it's kind of hilarious.
+I also want to give credit to the really nice pieces of 2d art between every chapter by a handful of fantastic artists to help flesh out the background story. Just real nice stuff. Makes me want to pick up an art book.
+Another fantastic visual effect is how the faces deform from punches. Because the game is entirely about punching.people.in.the.face.really.hard it's great to see the faces react and move with the punches and the sound effects give those moment impact. CC2's visual style is hard to top, all you need to do is take a look at the special attacks form the latest Naruto games and that's pretty obvious.
+The music is really nice too. The soundtrack by Chikayo Fukuda is great on its own and just adds so much to the cutscenes along with the cutscene direction. Fukuda, who does all of CC2's soundtracks from .Hack to Solatorobo to Naruto is a very underrated musician as Fukuda proves with this soundtrack. Very good stuff.
+The story is real satisfying. By the end of the true ending DLC, the game has been a good length and there's good satisfaction. After an exhilarating intro, there's some downtime of about 1-2 hours and then the rest of the game basically feels like the last 5 hours of a 60 hour game and is non-stop finale type action that just escalates and escalates until the very end.
+The world view. The world of Asura's Wrath straight from the start feels fresh and interesting. Sci-fi space ships, people jump kicking giant space monsters through space give Gunbuster/Diebuster flash backs, as the game progresses, the worldview is expanded in the background and without wanting to spoil, CC2 created one of the most interesting settings for game in a while. Very unique.
Negatives:
-The game at release got knocked a lot for lack of "gameplay" and being all cutscenes and QTEs. What's kind of ironic about this is it's the "gameplay" that is there that sucks while the cutscenes and QTEs are near-perfect. The core gameplay consists of fights or panzer dragon-esque rail shooters. Both of these are incredibly shallow.
-The core combat is barely decent on some boss fights where you at least have patterns to learn and dodge, but for grunt combat it's a complete bore of mashing O until your rage meter fills up and then you can finally get out of the fight. For an action game, all the best action and enjoyment came from the interactive cutscenes, which thankfully are 75% of any chapter. But man does that other 25% drag. You'd think if CC2 put a little more effort into the combat it would have been leagues better, but nope, it's like a Simple 2000 series game.
-Likewise the rail shooter parts are just far too simple and have the control issue of having to both MOVE and AIM with the same analog when they really should've have put aiming on the right stick so you can aim to the right without moving rightwards into a giant beam. Again the rail shooter feels like it belongs in a Simple 2000 series game and pretty much sucks outside the visual splendor of shooting down meteors and stuff.
-It's worth mentioning that the game is a bit misogynist in how it portrays women. The only women in the game are basically wives, daughters, or boobs and it really sticks out when the one female antagonist's only scenes in the game are her getting abused and tied up and she doesn't even get a fight.
-Really outside of the combat and rail shooter parts sucking (but they are about 25% of the game), and lack of good female characters, there's really nothing much else negative about the game. Everything else is pretty much perfect.
Overall:
The game has some flaws, and being 75% an interactive anime movie about punching.people.in.the.face.really.hard, it's not gonna be for everyone. But for people on the fence, those interested, the game is worth every second (including all the DLC which is about $10 worth these days). Asura's Wrath delivers on a extremely entertaining and engaging epic sci-fi action tale that takes the God of War formula, makes it even crazier and more epic, and somehow ends up with you punching through planets. The amount of times characters get punched, knocked or stabbed to or through planets probably holds the entertainment medium record on that type of stuff.
It may not be a great "game", but it's one of the best "experiences" of the PS3/X360//Wii generation of systems. When all is said and done, 20 years from now I'll probably think back on Asura's Wrath as one of the top games of that near-decade and I'll be glad to have my copy and hopefully a working PS3 somewhere in a garage to replay it someday.
A-
PS. As an aside, considering Asura is one of Capcom's best new characters of the last decade, and all the great Capcom love shown in Asura's Wrath, I'm kind of bummed that Asura hasn't been appearing in other Capcom titles in the last couple of years as a fanservice cameo. I mean he's not even in Project x Zone 2 which he should be a shoe-in for a game like that, if not as a character in Street Fighter V or something.
