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Launch Player

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Preview

Battle Fantasia

Format Xbox 360

Developer Arc System Works

Publisher 505 Games

Genre Beat 'em Up

23-Sep-2008 So a teenage priest, a viking and a magician rabbit walk into a bar...

Excuse the clich�, but this really is a fighting game with a difference.

More accurately, it's a fighting game with a tea-serving waitress, a viking with a jet-pack and a teenage priest armed with a mace. Oh, and a magician rabbit. Called Watson. Who summons bear traps out of carrot patches. And then jumps into a book. What?

Battle Fantasia is the weirdest, loopiest, craziest, strangest game on Xbox 360 to date. It's the first Xbox 360 fighting game by Arc Systems, developers of the Goth-flavoured Guilty Gear series on PlayStation.

When you consider that series featured a surgeon with a paperbag on his head and someone possessed who crawls along the ground backwards, you can tell there's definitely something in the water over there.

Battle Fantasia simply continues that bizarre tradition, with every character on the roster bringing something completely unique and original to the table.

As a fighting game, it uses the same chain combo system that was used in Guilty Gear, which makes it incredibly easy to string together a couple of combos and feel good about yourself.

It also has a health system that shares more in common with RPGs than it does fighting games of yore, as hit points ping about the screen to show how much damage you're doing.

But nobody really cares about the combos, or the look, or the hit points, or the developer's pedigree. All you need to know is this game features a magician rabbit called Watson who battles against Vikings and teenage priests and characters who ride in and out of the match on a motorised chainsaw. If that doesn't interest you, then nothing ever will.

Ryan King