Phantom Breaker: Omnia Reviews

Kurisu Kusoge. Totally worth the $2.

I bought this for Rimi. Whose eyes are those?

"The overcast grey sky was mercilessly pouring down unrelenting icy rain upon my shivering frail physique when I arrived at his abode. I strolled passed the opened iron gate and shakily rang the door-bell as I wheezed under my blood stained hoodie. "H-hello?" The man whom answered was in good health and wearing a rather expensive looking leisurely bathrobe. Sporting wavy blonde hair and a square jawline he was ruggedly handsome with bright green inquisitive eyes. I knew everything about him. His loving wife Wren. His 5 year old son Michael. The fact he used to be a famous magician. I also knew dark forces were after him. "Hey,are you alright?" I couldn't answer his concerned query right away. While life had not been as kind to me, looking at him was still like looking into a mirror. It took me a brief moment to regain my composure. "Warren O'Sheely I presume. There's no time left to explain everything. I have very little to offer you. However, you will need it........" Before he could protest I grasped onto his forearm transferring the last vestiges of my life-force into the man whom was my other self from a neighboring reality. By the time my rapidly deteriorating body was wet dust in the storm we were already one and the same...." ~The Broken Hierophant Back then unconventional fighting games were everywhere! Playing Street Fighter,KOF,Mortal Kombat,Soul Calibur,Killer Instinct,or Tekken is well and good but my inner child has thirsted for something off the beaten path. Something "adventurous". Something that's much more "4Chan" than it is "Instagram". A fighter more in the general vicinity of Bloody Roar,Rival Schools,Fighting Vipers,Dark stalkers,Groove on fight,Power Instinct,Arcana Heart,Red Earth,Battle Arena Toshinden,or Melty blood but like,not as widely known as Melty Blood! Phantom Breaker Omnia is that game. I don't know jack about its' netcode. Don't know if the FGC considers it tournament worthy at EVO. All I know is it actually has a decent dub,fun gameplay,well developed story-line,and an interesting cast of characters. Let me tell you about it! 1. Learn their are people called "duelists" whom use their wishes/life aspirations to manifest neato supernatural weapons. Like in Highlander they all fight for the ultimate prize whilst there can be only one winner left standing. The victor gets to have their innermost desire come true. 2. However,the whole thing seems very fishy and its' obvious the orchestrators of this tournament are professional grifters running some sort of multiple reality version of Squid game! 3. Extra-dimensional time-cops get involved to take names and slap on cuffs! One of them is a purple haired fem-boy Ken Ashcorp variant! He wields a giant severed Gundam mecha hand as a weapon. That's my guy! 4. Proceed to do "alright" but despite reviews saying Phantom Breaker Ominia is a "casual fighting game" I'm being challenged even on an easier difficulty. Seriously,I am better at Soul Calibur 6,Tekken 7,DOA 5 Last Round,Street Fighter V,and KOF 14. How is this game roasting me in spite of having the simplest control scheme?! 5. After much mashing and scrolling thru three different "dueling types" with their own variations for each character I "finally" beat the big bad by spamming mecha-hand-palm lasers. Iron-Man would be proud! 6. Watch the credits scroll to another pleasant soundtrack to see these cheeky game devs and animators reference a lot of internet memes with their endearing ocs. Bless their sweet souls! Phantom Breaker Omnia is delightful for the very reason it is NOT a mainstream tournament fighting game. It's functional mechanically,nice to look at,and has a soundtrack/voice overs up there with more professional productions. Yet it is just offbeat weird enough and trope-ridden enough to make trend-chasing-tourists,corpo-boomers,and normies flee in droves! How could I NOT appreciate that? Pros +Fun +Interesting characters + Stein's gate cross over (If that's your jam) +Very good voice overs and music + Environments are empty but have an isolated surreal liminal spaces vibe that is "perfect' for this kind of strangeness! +Three different "duelist styles" that effect how ever fighter plays. +Roster is not too big and not too small. +Ideal for couch co-op! +Story-line is a simple concept yet executed in an enthralling way that peaks your curiosity. Cons -Wish Arcade mode limited the ladder to 6-8 fights. Instead you fight "everyone". Sheesh! - Don't know jack about the netcode. You are on your own! -Seems like there's no gallery. A pity! -In story mode certain matches require you meet specific criteria to advance. It's haphazardly done as there are a lot of main characters whom progress their plot-lines merely by winning rounds whereas with the rest you have to "do the thing" or get held back.

It would seem controller bindings are screwed for this game. I like to use dualshock 4 for most games but can't seem to get it to work no matter what I do. Regardless of whether or not I have it plugged in when starting up the game or whether I have steam input enabled, disabled, or even if I have the supposed fix in community layouts selected nothing works. Plus when using keyboard, enter isn't accept for all prompts. I had to guess that accept was bound to "B" instead of simply being able to press enter again after the first prompt on startup. I understand this isn't as big of an issue but figured I'd mention it regardless. Please fix.

Quite a good game! I love the characters, writing, and voice acting but when it comes to the actual fighting game portion I think the game falls flat just a bit with a lot of the combat kinda feeling a bit button-mashy and repetitive at times. The story mode is also great (at least for the main story, fuck whatever dev that decided to make the Extra challenges basically impossible) and really gets you to root for the good guys over the bad ones. Worth a pickup if you liked the spin-off Battle Grounds and wanted to see it's source material like I did for sure!

This is the first fighting game with buffer where buffering an input makes it NOT come out.