BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma is the third major chapter in Arc System Works' stylized fighting series, and on PlayStation Vita it stands as one of the best-looking games in the entire library. The foundation is two-dimensional fights with hand-drawn sprites carrying an incredible number of animation frames, so every character feels like a living animated series. The fighters are deliberately very different from one another: one fights with the help of a phantom, another controls gravity or sets traps on the field, so learning a new character essentially means learning a new game. Systemically the game works with defensive mechanics that let you break out of an opponent's pressure, and a boosted mode that changes the properties of attacks near the end of a match.

Beyond the fighting itself, the game offers an enormous amount of story content. The narrative unfolds through extensive text and voiced scenes that continue from previous entries and develop a tangled plot about time loops and fates that repeat themselves. Anyone who wants to see it all can easily spend dozens of hours on the story alone. The music is typically rock and energetic, with distinctive themes for individual characters, and it's one of the series' hallmarks.

Reviews praised the visual execution, the depth of the fighting system, and the generosity of the content; criticism pointed to it being an extremely complex game for newcomers, with a dense story that's hard to jump into. The BlazBlue series had a major impact on the more modern generation of two-dimensional fighters by showing that hand-drawn graphics can be technically top-notch and timeless at once. That's exactly why Chrono Phantasma still looks great on Vita today and ranks among the titles worth showing off on the console. It's helped by a wealth of extra modes, from tutorial lessons through challenges to lighthearted mini-games, giving the player plenty to do even without an internet connection.