Inuyasha - Feudal Combat
Inuyasha Feudal Combat is based off of the long running anime featured on Cartoon Network. Fans of the show will be delighted by this package since all of the characters are faithfully represented here with a look that compliments the series. Because this is a straight forward fighting game there really isn’t much story to follow. Fans will revel in playing as the half demon but newcomers may chalk this up to a poorly executed anime fighter without much personality.
To say that the game feels uninspired would be an understatement. We have been spoiled by series like Street Fighter, Tekken and Soul Calibur, but Inuyasha Feudal Combat is most certainly neither of those. The game is ridiculously short and shares a similar feel to Power Stone from the days of the Dreamcast but just isn’t nearly as fun.
Gameplay:
For starters there are three separate modes to choose from (four if you count Practice) but in order to unlock playable characters you’ll have to fight your way through Story Mode so let’s look at that one first. When you start working your way through the story the first character you’ll use is Inuyasha, who is feverously searching for the Shikon jewel. His tale plays out across a few chapters of in-game cut scenes and I was flabbergasted by how short it was. There are literally only a few battles to go through before you beat the game. Once you finish it you unlock another character’s Story Mode (there are four all together) that is equally short on play time.
Unlocked characters can be used in the Battle Mode (which is your typical versus mode) and Mission Mode which is slightly different. Instead of playing through a story or mindlessly fighting an opponent, the Mission Mode offers you specific goals in order to complete a stage. It’s nothing as in depth as we saw in Soul Calibur 2 but it’s a similar concept. You can power-up characters and relationships here but it adds only a very small amount of replay value.
That’s essentially a quick rundown of the various modes in this game, but what about the actual gameplay? One of the first things that you’ll notice is that you can team up with a partner instead of taking on everyone by yourself. This mechanic is fun to tinker around with but doesn’t provide all that many practical uses. Your AI partner is pretty stupid at times and does little to assist other than hack and slash and follow you where you run to. Things get even worse once you realize there is nothing more to fighting other than mashing buttons. You can sit and block all day long or try to implement some form of strategy but in the end each character has precious few attacks and they are all performed the same way.
That keeps things on a very simplistic level and with more technical fighting games on the market there’s no reason for this game to be so ridiculously easy. What’s worse is that many characters are very unbalanced with their power and moves. This means that randomly attacking and pressing buttons will destroy an opponent no matter who they are. The simplistic nature of combat also means that this game is unbelievably on the short scale. I beat all four story modes and completed a couple of mission modes in a few sparse hours and that was stretching my play time thin.
An uncontrollable camera affects gameplay in a negative way as well. It will pan out randomly and will often be positioned so you can’t see your character or what’s happening on screen. A cardinal rule of fighting games is that you must be able to see all characters at all times. Inuyasha Feudal Combat unfortunately ignores that law. Oh I forgot to mention that it also ignores the need for responsive controls. Several times that I pressed an attack button I was met with inaction by my digital counterpart. Other times the character would do maneuvers that I didn’t even press buttons to do.
Overall the control and gameplay in this game is extremely sloppy. Fans of the show may be able to overlook these downfalls but anyone seeking a fun fighting game is better off looking elsewhere. If more combat depth and length were added to the game it would have been a much more enjoyable experience. As it stands that’s not the case.
Graphics:
From a visual standpoint, Inuyasha Feudal Combat is a mixed bag of quality. I really enjoyed the overall design of the game and felt that the cel-shaded characters closely matched their anime counterparts. Unfortunately animations are fairly choppy and there is quite a bit of aliasing at times. The environments also leave much to be desired with bland design and a distinct lack of detail. Overall the game is above average looking and this is the area that it would appear most of the attention during development was given.
Audio:
On a surprising note the game features the voice cast from the anime and is very faithful to the show. There are a lot of nice performances here but the dialogue gets repetitive rather quickly and brings the presentation down a few pegs. The sound effects and music do their job as well but neither really impresses. The quality is suspect here as well and several times I encountered dialogue being cut off half way through as another sound seemingly interrupted it.
Conclusion:
Inuyasha Feudal Combat is one of those games that will only appeal to the target audience, which is a fan of the show. The gameplay is simplistic, repetitive and comes up short in the length and variety department. The graphics feature some nice cel-shaded effects but choppy animations and dull environments hurt the presentation. It’s also nice to have the English voice actors for the show provide dubbing work here but their phrases are used over and over during battle. In the end this is a fighting game that is worth little more than a rental unless you’re a fan of the anime. Rent It