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Kabuki
Klash |
| Gamefan
review
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It's a miracle! The two Neo fighters we get this month are beyond godly... and NO MORE ARE IN SIGHT! Yes! Instead, we have two shooters and (compose yourself...) an action game. Not just one non-fighter, but three.
Pulstar, Metal Slug, and Sonic Wings 3 are on the way for September releases... but I digress. The matter at hand is Far East of Eden: Kabuki
Klash, based on Hudson and Red's achingly awesome
RPG series Tengai Maskyo on the trusty 'Engine. Luckily for Tengai and fighting fans alike, the same level of power exhibited in the RPG's has been faithfully duplicated here.
In the realm of gameplay, Klash is very similar to Samurai in that each character has weapons that he/she can lose, A=B slashes, dashes, rolls, etc. KK expands on Samurai by adding an ultra-powerful "super fierce" performed with
B+C, air blocks, and at least two supers per character, performed with simple tap-tap commands. All well and good, but very few characters can throw fireballs at will. Its true that each character has a projectile, your weapon, but in most cases it must be reclaimed. There are a few SF2-style two-in-one-based combos, but Kabuki also goes the Fatal Fury 3 route with "connect-the-dots" repeated button-press combos specific to each character.
The art in KK is impressive, and second only, in my opinion, to KOF '95. The characters are animated in perfect Tengai Makyo style, and, despite their small size, are highly detailed. The characters' minute stature (probably due to the fact that most supers, specials, and even some "super
fierces" take up the whole screen) is very strangely offset by the final boss,
Lucifeller, who gets the "largest sprite ever in any fighting game" award,
easily trouncing Sentinel, Earthquake, and even Juggernaut. There is indeed slowdown when you're fighting him, but it's minimal enough to where slightly larger player characters wouldn't seem like a problem. The backgrounds, too, are very nice, but only a few of them sport any parallax to speak of, and the ones that do
occasionally slow down.
The BGM is excellent, as in every Far East of Eden game, ranging from powerful orchestral tracks to the wacky, ultra-Japanese, trademark Tengai tunes. The
"WHA-CHING!" sound effects seem to be lifted straight out of Samurai, and the ample voice samples were recorded by the same voice actors as in the RPG's.
If you're a Tengai fan, you simply must own this game, in whatever format- it is total joy. Taken simply as a fighting game, it doesn't hold up to either Samurai... but it's still excellent. If you have the cartridge system, I would recommend you get KOF '95 instead, but if you're buying CD's do not pass up this
worthy addition to the Far East of Eden saga. -Nick Rox
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