37 out of 37 people found this review helpful.
Street Fighter Hentai
Date of Review: May 8, 2000
The Bottom Line: yeah
It is without doubt that Dreamcast has the best fighting games available for a console. As a matter of fact, it has too many fighting games available, but the system's 3D capabilities are obviously hard to ignore when developers are thinking about their next project. Capcom, as popular as it is in this genre, has also decided to add a new title to the bunch with yet another one of its cartoonish 2D games. However, the entire arena is too crowded right now with products such as Dead or Alive 2 and Soul Calibur leading the genre, and it would have taken a lot more effort then spent on Plasma Sword to have lived up to the task of releasing a worthy fighting game for the DC.
Graphics 3/10
This is possibly the major flaw of this game, as its 2D backgrounds are downright ugly when compared to Soul Calibur. The character animation is smooth, running at 60 frames per second with special moves that are highly reminiscent of Street Fighter Ex. Everything looks decent, and some of the special moves have some good lighting effects, but you can't possibly compare it to Dead or Alive 2.
Game Play 3/10
Despite the futuristic setting and the 22 combatants, the game play offered is mediocre at best. If you have ever played anything like Street Fighter vs. X-men, or any other hybrid re-creation of the overwhelmingly long Street Fighter series, you will have no trouble getting used to the game play within mere minutes. The more buttons there are to push, the more utterly useless variations of combos you can create. They might look unique, but the damage variant is usually the same or slightly different. It would be a challenge if you could create separate versions of a combo with a good bundle of low and high attacks, but the whole thing is pretty much dependent on whether if you get the first punch through or not. Group battle is good, but its not up to par with team combos and cool double throws you could do in Dead or Alive 2. A nice touch is the training mode in which you can practice different moves. Unfortunately, this has been offered in fighting games since Tekken and its hardly a new addition.
Innovation 7/10
Characters aren't really that interesting, but there are some new touches that should be mentioned. A kewl revenge feature is used to counter attacks, and its a bit different then the usual method of performing a counter. Another nice addendum is performing a deadly special attack after freezing your enemy. Other then that, you are still playing street fighter with different robotic characters or wizards.
Conclusion 4/10
This is not truly a bad game, but its just an unnecessary addition to the crowd that consists of the best titles available for the genre. Only offering mediocre game play with cartoon graphics, Plasma Sword is worth a rent. Although fun to play for a couple of hours, you will start looking for Soul Calibur after your first few days.
