Phantom Breaker: Omnia, the anime fighting game finally arrives in the West | Review

Phantom Breaker

Fighting fans can finally rejoice in the arrival in the West of Phantom Breaker: Omnia, the title that combines the beauty of Japanese anime with a no-holds-barred fight that has delighted the audience of the Rising Sun over many years. Are you ready to make your most hidden desires come true with the sound of sticks?

We have reviewed the game with the following PC:

GPU: Zotac RTX 3070 Twin Edge OC MOBO: Asus ROG STRIX Z370 -F RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16GB DDR4 3200MHz CPU: AMD CPU Ryzen 5 5600G SSD: Sabrent SSD 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Keyboard: ASUS ROG STRIX Scope TKL Deluxe Cherry MX Red Mouse: Razer DeathAdder V2 Mini Headphones : Logitech G930 Monitor: Samsung C27HG 70 Quad HD 144Hz HDR

Phantom Breaker: Omnia, the ostentation of 2D

The years pass, the technologies of the gaming world advance, but there seems to be an unwritten rule and - apparently - immutable that concerns the association of Japanese anime with fighting games: when it comes to putting together anime and fighting games, the 2D solution is the only one that manages to reproduce all the beauty and characterization of its characters. Some changes of direction and the evolutions seen over the years in Street Fighter and Kingdom Fighters, or the "hybrid solutions" seen in titles like Dragon Ball FighterZ and Demon Slayer have managed to win over the fans.




The Phantom Breaker series arrives in the West charged with all these premises, with a brand new title for the occasion, Phantom Breaker: Omnia available for PC (Steam) for this review, but the game is also planned for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S and Nintendo Switch.

In fact, the title was developed by Rocket Panda Games, a development team that arose only in 2020, but the Phantom franchise Breaker was originally designed and developed by MAGES in 2011 for the PS3. Also considering the subsequent versions "Another Code" and "Extra", this "Phantom Breaker: Omnia" is the fourth version of this fighting game, which under this new guise will mark the debut of the series in the United States and Europe, including in its Story Mode all the details of the plot of the previous games. A plot that places the wishes of the Phantom Breaker fighters at the center of the clashes.




We are in Tokyo, in the beating heart of Japan, where a dark and mysterious man, known only as "Phantom", has begun to plagiarize the minds of adolescents, arming them with extremely powerful mystical weapons known as “Fu-mension Artifacts” to instigate them to fight, resulting in a great conflict. Phantom's purpose is initially unknown, but in exchange for the fight, he has promised to grant the wishes of all who survive.

L'Omnia Style

The Phantom Breaker: Omnia roster features 20 characters, including 2 guest characters: Kurisu Makise by Steins; Gate and Rimi Sakihata from Chaos; Head, and two unreleased characters created specifically for this new edition.

Entering the heart of the battle, Phantom Breaker: Omnia features the same controls as Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds, one spin-off of the series, which presented moves already combined by simple and unique pressures, with special exploits that set aside the old gameplay linked to the management of the energy bar, making everything more immediate. However, in Battlegrounds, the original game mechanics were thus distorted. In this new episode, to embrace an ever wider audience, the developers of the Rocket Panda Games team have introduced three fighting styles available: Quick, Hard and Omnia.

While Quick refers to the mechanics just described, that is a lot of speed but with a lower health bar, the Hard style to the original one with 100% health, while the new Omnia Style wants to be a compromise between the two previous styles, combining speed, technique, special moves performed with the press of a single dedicated button as well as advanced strokes available with the press of two buttons at the same time.



The pace of the game is really challenging. Depending on the fighting style, this requires excellent reflexes and a good command of techniques, although the game does everything possible to win the sympathies of less experienced players.

From a visual point of view, the fighters are all strongly characterized, animated in a satisfactory way, even if we are far from the quality of the traits seen in other titles of the genre and, in any case, very far from the quality seen in the initial opening. The shadowy tones desired by the menacing Phantom are muted by often gaudy colors and lights that accompany the most explosive hits. A truly remarkable contrast.





After finishing many of the character stories and several sessions of the arcade mode (here called "Single"), we wanted to challenge other players in the dedicated online. However, before the launch of the game there were no beta presses organized to test the goodness of the work done by the developers, and as we write these lines a few days after the title was published in all the stores, we were unable to have a match on the net. who he was probably rehearsing the title with. So, at least for the online sector, the judgment is postponed ...

Japanese for all

With the arrival in the West of Phantom Breaker, the intention of the development team to make the most usable as possible this new title is there for all to see, thanks also to the precautions taken from the point of view of the game language. In fact, Phantom Breaker: Omnia features a dubbing in Japanese and English (for the first time in the history of the franchise) and all the game texts present the languages ​​English, Japanese, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. . In short, you have no excuse to fully understand the protagonists and their desires that lead them to the fight ...





To enrich the frenetic fighting sessions, but already to starting from the opening, the excellence that concerns the original game music (with soundtrack available to accompany the Steam game), all remixed for the occasion, with the possibility of selecting the original versions as well.

Phantom Breaker: Omnia is an "old-fashioned" fighting game, which however wants to embrace a rather wide audience thanks to the introduction of three fighting styles, in time and for the occasion of his arrival in our shores. The title manages to shine with its own light, thanks to a technical sector far from other great titles that still use 2D today, but still really enjoyable. A whole new title for those who want to approach new stories while holding their hands, while also remaining an excellent alternative to the "usual suspects".