The Basics
First off, the X game is a fighting game. You get to play many of your favorite X characters and kick the crap out of all the other characters. In the game mode, you pick one of the Ten no Ryu or one of the Chi no Ryu, and fight all the members of the opposing side in order to win. When you win you get a nice pic of the character you played in some scene from the anime/manga, a short piece of dialogue pertaining to that scene, and then some more pics during the credits. You also earn points, which you may spend to unlock pictures, sounds, and animations from a large gallery. Some of the pictures are just cells from the anime, others are newly drawn for the game, and come with snippets of dialogue. If you beat the game with all the members of one side, you get an ending animation: a nice happy one for the Ten no Ryu and a dark one (which I enjoyed a great deal more, actually) for the Chi no Ryu. Both are brand new and never featured in the anime in any way.
You fight inside a kekkai, which either you or your opponent creates. There’s no gravity in these kekkai, apparently, as you float and fly around at will. Xian pu has thrown me through one once, and it shattered - I was playing Seishirou and she was playing Fuuma - but we’ve never been able to do that again. If you know how the hell we did this please email me and tell me. That aside, you have a number of moves; a ‘fireball’ or ranged attack of some kind (unless you’re Arashi) which is either strong or light, a close range attack - whether it’s a punch or kick or something else depends on the character - with the same two options. Also a close range ‘throw’ move - again, differs on the character; Kusanagi picks you up by the head and slams you into the wall, Seishirou and Fuuma stick their hands through your chest - which is fairly powerful, and whole range of special moves, which are wholly character dependant.
Except for the floating part and the unlocking pictures and sounds part it’s pretty much what you’d expect from any fighting game. However, to add some modicum of challenge you have a power bar that you use to ‘cast’ your special moves. It starts at 100%, and goes up as your health bar goes down. You use this power to block special moves and fireballs, too. (Which is what makes Subaru SO VERY CHEAP, but I’ll get to that in the character section). You also have dash buttons that let you fly around the screen more quickly, and allow you to dodge the special moves and fireballs (except Subaru’s, because it’s too fast, but again, I’ll get to that later). Like most fighting games, you can do combos with your close range attacks and special moves, or a mixture of both.
As fighting games go, for pure game mechanics, I’ve played a lot better. But that isn’t the point of the X game. The point is that you’re an obsessed X fan, and towards that end the game downright DELIVERS. It’s all in the details… but I’ll get to those below.
The Graphics
In the game itself, the graphics are nothing special- they’re blocky and choppy, and years behind where the gaming industry standard is for fighting games these day, especially for a game released so recently. The characters are all clearly recognizable, and so are the backgrounds, which include places like the Tokugashi Shrine, the Diet building, and Rainbow Bridge. The pictures in the gallery are nice, though. Hardly as good as CLAMP’s own drawings, but even the new pics are up to the anime standards. The characters with the most anime/new pics are, well… who do you EXPECT, really? Yuzuriha? Come on people, Bandai knows the names of the four young men that sell the series as well as CLAMP does.
I like the original ending animations best, though. I would be very, very pleased if CLAMP decides to end the series with something similar to the Chi no Ryu’s ending. The Ten no Ryu’s was, essentially, a condensed version of the anime ending, but still nice considering I belong to the ‘They all need to die!’ school as far as the ending of the manga goes. The opening animation was decent, too, with ‘eX Dream’ as the opening theme.
The Sounds
The BGMs are all nice instrumental metal/industrial themes, which I like a lot, and have been generally well received by the other people I’ve had over to play. I might even steal them and put them online… we’ll see. They work well for the overall theme of the game, I find. Many people use metal and industrial for X music videos, so I’d say it’s generally agreed that it works - at least for the building explosions and fight scenes in X - and fits with the game nicely.
The characters also toss out one-liners when they win or lose, which are generally appropriate quotes from the manga. Yes, the manga, NOT the anime. I know ‘Boku wa… anata wo…’ all made us cringe in our seats; but it’s nicely reverted to the ‘boku wa… kimi wo…’ that broke all of our hearts, here. And the plot of the game seems to run in a slightly different universe than the anime, because it goes further along the manga plotline before branching off into it’s own- Nataku, for example, gets the manga ending for him (which I won’t spoil if you don’t know it) rather than the anime. The voice actors are the same as the anime, which is nice. Kamui’s little noises of pain sound oddly sexual when I hit the repeat button again and again… or maybe that’s just me. I’m sure Fuuma agrees, though.
The Gameplay
As I said: as the genre goes I’ve seen a lot better. Yet... nothing quite compares to being able to pick your favorite characters from your favorite manga and beat the crap out of the characters you don’t like. S/Ser? Reenact Rainbow Bridge, using all the right powers and getting the appropriate quotes. Pick Seishirou and beat the tar out of the Kamui for hitting on your man, or Fuuma for laying his hands on your property. S/Ker? Pick Subaru, and beat down the ol’ ball and chain for ruining your life, or have Kamui do it for him. F/Ker? Teach Kamui his place, or show Fuuma he can’t treat you like his bitch. Sorashi fan? Show Sorata some prophecies can be fulfilled any time he wants, or smack Arashi around for leaving you without saying a word. Fan of some other pairing? Lay down the law on the pretty boys for stealing your pairing’s page time. Though, really, they should have made CLAMP into a playable character, so we could have a go at them for this ‘three month break’ bullshit. DIIIEEE!!!!
The Details
These are what impressed me the most, and what makes the game worthwhile. There are so many little details I wasn’t expecting: the special moves, for example, are all things we’ve seen in the manga- not just that, but they’re pretty much ALL the powers we’ve seen used in combat so far. Throw a shiki, turn inuki into a sword, turn your ribbon into a pentacle, and tie someone down to a cross in order to drive your shinken through their chest. Hell, as Seishirou, you can cast a maboroshi - how dope is that? Subaru and Seishirou even chant for some of their moves.
The one-liners are, quite possibly, even better. They actually bothered to match them up to the pair fighting, if possible- you can get so very many lines from Rainbow Bridge if you pit Subaru up against Seishirou, and lots of manga lines from the various meetings between Fuuma and Kamui if those two fight, as well as for matchups like Karen/Nataku, Sorata/Arashi, Kusanagi/Yuzuriha, etc. Or, how about this: play in game mode with any other Chi no Ryu, and your last battle is Kamui, over Tokyo. Play with Seishirou and your last battle is against Subaru, over Rainbow-fucking-Bridge. I wasn’t expecting that.
The pics are another wonderful touch. Some are just plain stylish, others are hilarious. (There’s one of Seishirou putting his sunglasses on Subaru- Subaru’s expression is just priceless.) Still others are cute, like a pic of Karen teasing Aoki at some kind of formal event. You have to beat the game many times over to unlock them all, which adds to the game’s replay value.
The Characters
You can play six Ten no Ryu and five Chi no Ryu. You have to unlock Karen, the sixth Ten no Ryu, by beating the game with all the other Ten no Ryu, and you don’t get Aoki. This is more or less just to balance out the sides- Satsuki and Kakyou aren’t exactly close-combat fighters, so you don’t get them either. You’ve seen American Idol, right? I’d imagine they gave Aoki the boot based on who was the least popular. I can’t say I’m shocked. There are pics of him in the gallery, though, if you can’t bear the thought of X without him, and of Satsuki and Kakyou. Some of the minor characters, too. There’s a lot more Hokuto than Kotori, which I found very pleasing, and some sweet TB pics to boot.
Now, I’m an old fan of fighting games, and I can tell you that it’s hard to make the characters balanced. You’ll almost always have characters that are slightly more powerful than everyone else, like Ryu in the old Street Fighters, and characters who are weaker. The X game, though, is just plain BROKEN. I’d take on TWO of any of the other characters with Subaru or Fuuma, if the game would let me. Because that’s the only way they would be a challenge. And, as much as I love Arashi in the manga, she’s downright worthless in the game. She has no fireball. AND her sword is LESS powerful than, say, Sorata’s fist. Now, I’m aware that a lot of my breakdown of the characters and their moves is purely opinion, but it’s based very much on real game experience and stats. I’m also willing to prove it, if need be. Just tell me if you’re going to one of the Cons I frequent and I’ll pack my Playstation and the game- if you’ve found a way to take Fuuma to school, please, show me. Or, if you want, I can demonstrate the Subaru fireball trap for you… and how disgustingly powerful it is. There are ways to break it, but only with Fuuma or Seishirou.
For strength, I had each character perform their moves on Fuuma, and recorded the amount of damage by the numbers on the life bar. For the fireballs, everyone was pretty much the same, except Yuzuriha was bit above the pack and Kusanagi a bit below. For close range attacks, the field varied more widely. The characters are presented in decreasing power, from left to right.
Light attack: Seishirou-Sorata-Kusanagi (all at 6), Arashi-Karen-Fuuma-Yuuto (all at 5), Kamui-Subaru-Yuzuriha (all at 4), Nataku (3).
Strong attack: Kusanagi (18), Sorata (14), Fuuma (13), Subaru-Arashi-Karen-Seishirou-Yuuto (all at 12), Kamui-Nataku (at 11), Yuzuriha (10).
Throw: Everyone but Kusanagi (all at 18), Kusanagi (16).
Overall: Kusanagi (40), Sorata (38), Seishirou-Fuuma (36), Arashi-Karen-Yuuto (35), Subaru (34), Kamui (33), Nataku-Yuzuriha (32).
Now, you’re probably saying ‘oh, that looks fine’ and ‘how does that make Fuuma and Subaru the best?’ at this point. But there are two more factors to be considered: speed, which often makes or breaks a character (like Orchid, in Killer Instinct- one of the weakest characters, but the fastest, so actually one of the best), and the special moves. Simply put, Subaru is your daddy when it comes to speed, and his special moves are some of the best in the game. Subaru’s fireballs- he throws white shikigami birds- are the fastest in the game. Which means, if you don’t already know from previous fighting games, that he wins all fireball wars. He can pump them out faster than the power bar regenerates, and, since it takes power to block fireballs, you have to rush him or die. Even using dash to move, though, I guarantee a decent Subaru player will land about three (if you’re good at dodging) or four (if you aren’t) before you even get there. That’s a lot of life gone before you even get into close range. And, here, Subaru really shines: he has two extremely powerful close range spells, and he has the speed to pull off some unbelievable physical combos.
Fuuma, on the other hand, while also fast, reigns supreme because of the sheer power behind all his special moves. He does the most damage for the least power cost, AND his strong fireballs cut through everyone else’s. Which is how he can beat Subaru- he can rip his shiki apart, which means Subaru has to stop throwing them, and use other powers. And no one - oh no one - is better than Fuuma with the other powers. He’s strong, fast, and a good physical fighter too. My favorite thing to do with him is back off into a corner and blast apart the other character’s magic and damage them until they get desperate enough to charge him, then do Providence Hell, which usually finishes them off.
I’d probably put Kamui and Seishirou next in line power-wise. Keep in mind that it isn’t even CLOSE, though, between these two and Fuuma and Subaru. Those two are so powerful it’s ridiculous. Kamui is basically a weaker version of Fuuma- his attacks are very powerful, but not overwhelmingly so like his twin star. Providence Heaven, for example, does the same damage as Providence Hell, but costs a lot more energy. Seishirou is more of a skill character, the key to him being the versatility of his moves. He’s the only character than can teleport, for example, which means he can break out of Subaru’s fireball trap and appear right beside him - ready to stick a hand through his chest. He also has a dodge move that breaks out of all combos, and his maboroshi makes it so that the other character can’t gain any power back and he can. His fireballs are heat-seeking and stay on the screen, too. I like to wait until my opponent uses an expensive move, then cast a maboroshi and pepper them with fireballs that they can’t dodge or block. Then maybe teleport behind them and finish them off Hokuto-style. His strength is that he has powers than no one else has, and is strong in the other powers as well.
Next, Sorata and Nataku. Sorata has strong magic and physical attacks, but his fireballs are only average and he’s a tad on the slow side. If Kamui is a weaker version of Fuuma, Sorata is a slower version of Subaru. He's not quite as powerful, either - though close - but without the speed he loses out on a lot of the things that make Subaru so damn CHEAP. Since you can hit characters while they’re casting, a slower character like Sorata leaves room for a lot of attacks. Nataku, on the other hand, is in the top group for speed, and his ribbon is very difficult to avoid. I was almost tempted to put him up with Seishirou and Kamui, until I tried a few test matches and realized he doesn’t stand up to either one of them. Seishirou can teleport in past his ribbon and proceed to beat the tar out of him and Kamui’s attacks break the ribbon. Nataku is very weak in close range combat, too.
Then comes Karen, Yuuto, and Yuzuriha. Karen and Yuuto are basically the same- average speed, average physical power, average special moves- just a different element. Played well, they’re almost a match for Sorata and Nataku. Yuzuriha is pretty good, too. She’s weak but fast, and the key to her power is that she can call in inuki in from off screen, which makes him hard to dodge or block. The trouble with her is that just about any other character (besides Kusanagi, I’ll get to that in a moment) is better in physical combat, and inuki isn’t that fast, so it’s easy to get in close. She can turn inuki into a sword and improve her close range combat, but then she becomes as much of a victim as Arashi. Overall, though, I have to say she doesn’t suck, because inuki is hard to dodge if you aren’t used to it, and the computer seems to be downright baffled by his attack patterns.
Lastly, there lies Kusanagi and Arashi. I say that because they might as well be dead for how well they stand up against the other Dragons in this game. Arashi has no fireball and her magic SUCKS, and Kusanagi is so damn slow, he might as well not have any either. Sure, Kusanagi is the physically strongest, but that doesn’t help him when every other character in the game can go Bruce Lee on his ass. My little brother threw down the controller after a little while of playing him (and he’s better at fighting games than I am) when I wouldn’t even let him get an attack off against any of the other characters... and his magic BLOWS. Arashi, on the other hand, just makes you play a demented game of ‘keep-away and fireball the Shrine Maiden’. I expected her to kick ass in physical power to make up for it, but no, apparently the folks at Bandai felt she needed to suck even worse - and made her average. She has easy combos, but so what? So does half the cast. Grr… that makes me a very disgruntled fan, because I really like Arashi. Ah well, they made the Four the most powerful, which pleased me, but I was expecting that.
How do I think this stands up against the manga itself? Well, I do agree that the Four are probably the most powerful, but I would have put them in a slightly different order. Fuuma’d be the most powerful, of course, then a tie between Kamui and Seishirou (anyone remember their fight? I don’t think either one of them was losing), then Subaru. Instead, Subaru can beat up his old man like no tomorrow. Which gave me no end to delights when I first played the game- ‘Take that old man! You aren’t sticking your hand through my chest now, are ya’, eh, bitch? Now who yo’ seme?!’- but other than that it’s where I would have put them. I think Karen and Yuuto are probably more powerful than Nataku in the manga, but not so in the game. I also think Arashi and Kusanagi weren’t intended as FODDER in the manga, but there you go.
There’s a handicap you can use in the player-versus-player mode, though, and I highly recommend using it if you intend to play either Subaru or Fuuma, or Kusanagi or Arashi. Even with the full handicap, though, and match-up like Subaru versus Kusanagi is still going to be a pitiful waste of time.
The Verdict
Simply put, if you like X enough to squeal with delight at the one-liners and the pictures, and the thought of making your own death-matches between the characters you love makes you happy in the pants, buy the game. If not... DON’T. Save your money to import FFX-2. On the other hand, if you’re even reading this, there’s a good chance you fall into the first category. Email C for details on how to get the game.