Fantasy Strike doesn’t want you to concern yourself with move memorization, preferring to get to the heart of fighting game challenge as quickly as possible.
For most fighting games to be played at any kind of serious or competitive level, you’d have to spend a great deal of time learning complex movesets and combos until they become second nature. You cannot find yourself guessing at which input does what if you hope to have any chance. Those challenging inputs have been removed from Fantasy Strike, with all of your abilities being tied to single-button inputs. Now, you just need to take the time to know which button does what, removing a big barrier for entry.
Not that the folks behind the game have removed the complexity of fighting games in the process. The interplay between moves, knowing when you should be doing which attacks, and how you should position yourself are all key in a fight, but you can now do this without worrying about missing a directional input of fumbling a move. It still offers the moves and split-second decisions that make the genre so compelling, but without asking the player to practice for weeks, months, and years just to make sure they can execute the move they need.
Fantasy Strike offers a compelling list of characters to choose as your own as well. Warrior painter, cog-hurling time travelers, and gambling pandas make for a wild roster to choose from. Not only this, but these fighters can battle across platforms seamlessly, allowing you to fight opponents no matter which system they own. Sounds like quite a compelling package for anyone interested in fighting games.
Fantasy Strike is available now on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Steam.
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I’ve owned it since Early Acess, and it is so good. I hadn’t been able to get into fighting games prior. More telling is that the player population doubled after launch, and I find myself being defeated by very new players who are coming in from other fighting games.