Year: 2007
Platform: PlayStation 2
Genre: Fighting
Review Date: 9/2/07
Rating: *

The enormous-breasted girls of "Ikki Tousen" jiggle their way onto the PlayStation2 in this traditional Japanese anime girl fighting game. The Japanese love their fighting games to have substance, so there's an endless stream of Japanese text and narrative drama to wade through before actually getting to do anything. The core game mechanics basically involve taking your preferred femme fighter and beating the hell out of a bunch of school kids that gang up on you. After they're gone, you face the boss of that particular gang or school and have a one-on-one duel with them. Much like the anime, breasts bounce, clothes rip, and panties flash, but none of it is particularly interesting. The graphics and animations are serviceable, but simplistic. More than anything, it reminded me of "Evil Zone" in its presentation. Your character has two standard attacks (high and low), a guard move, and a special attack. From what I can tell, skills can be purchased and powered up by spending points that you earn in combat. Unfortunately, everything is in Japanese, so anything beyond "OK" and "Cancel" is completely lost on me, and there is a considerable number of menus and text-based decisions to make throughout the game. The uninteresting gameplay, uninspired visuals, steep learning curve, and rapidly increasing difficulty made me lose interest after about thirty minutes. Curiously, the game features the standard story mode and mission mode, but looks to be completely free of a versus mode, making it a solitary experience. Perhaps that's not so surprising given the nature of the anime, which is primarily a shameful guilty pleasure for perverts. That said, one has to wonder why I bothered tracking down and playing this game. I suppose my desire for female fighting games knows no bounds, causing me to desperately lunge at anything that looks like it might satisfy that particular craving. Sadly, they almost always disappoint.