Yatagarasu Attack on Cataclysm - Here comes a new challenger

HAZ CLIC AQUÍ PARA LEER ESTA ENTRADA EN ESPAÑOL.

Hello everyone! How is it going bouncing around with Wizorb? Having some nice retro style fun? Hope so! Anyway, as I´m sure many of those who follow daily all the happenings that take place in this industry of pixels and polygons that we all adore so much, in the late years we´ve been assisting to some kind of “resurrection” of the 2D fighting games, some kind of “second golden era” for this genre that so much glory brought to the game industry during the 90s after Capcom gave way to the storm of punches, kicks and energy balls of all shapes and colors with the timeless classic Street Fighter 2, and in which we can also find other franchises that have written their name in golden letters in the history of gaming (and the minds of millions of gamers around the word), like several of the tittles of the legendary SNK such as The King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown y Art of Fighting, and, in a relatively smaller scale, others such as World Heroes, Mortal Kombat or Killer Instinct. Although the genre didn´t never quite completely disappear, in the decade of the 2000, except for Japan where the genre has always been popular since its beginnings, specially in the competitive scene, things cooled down a bit (actually a lot) for Ryu, Ken and all their friends despite the birth or new fan-favorite franchises such as the popular Guilty Gear series. In fact, things cooled down so much, that it was during these dark times for the 2D fighting genre that Capcom officially announced their retirement from the genre that they once ruled together with Osaka neighbors SNK, as they though the genre was not relevant anymore in times where the new tendency was the 3D and the Hollywood style cut-scenes, till a few years later, Capcom, as the proud champ that just cannot leave behind his former days of glory, changed their minds and decided to bring back the genre big time with the fourth installment (leaving aside the trillions of updated versions) of their successful fighting franchise, which just like its predecessors, was critically acclaimed and topped the sales charts around the world, and which was followed by new entries in the above mentioned series Guilty Gear and The King of Fighters, together with other classics such as Marvel vs. Capcom 3 also from Capcom and Mortal Kombat, on top of the birth of new franchises as the impressive BlazBlue, starting like this the above mentioned second golden era of 2D fighting games that continues nowadays, and which seems it will not end anytime soon, for not only recently we could witness the release of the A-M-A-Z-I-N-G Guilty Gear Xrd (still cannot believe what Arc System Works guys were able to pull off with this game), but soon we will receiving also new entries from Street Fighter itself and other games such as BlazBlue and Mortal Kombat for the new generation consoles, including a Dragon Ball game for Nintendo 3DS from the fathers of Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, and which looks pretty promising. Although probably the genre will never recover all the former glory and glamour of the first golden era back in the 90s, when it was able to summon legions of fans eager to show off their new moves in front of the expecting crowd in the local arcades, the future for this genre that not so long ago seemed to be decided to leave Ryu, Ken and all their friends jobless (or begging for money in some weird Japanese pachinko machine) seems now very promising, and is precisely inside this future that we can find the game I want to talk about in this entry, a humble doujin game that pretends to compete with the titans of the genre that fight for the heavyweight champion title of the 2D fighting games genre, a game that I always wanted to talk about since I first saw a previous version of it a couple of years ago. Have you ever dreamed of a 2D fighting game that mixes the more strategic rhythm of Street Fighter 3 with the frantic combats of The King of Fighters series? Well, I introduce you all Yatagarasu Attack on Cataclysm.

I know what many of you might be thinking after you the read the word “doujin”, you are thinking something like “there we go again with one of those weird Japanese games with the gameplay completely broken and full of young girls showing their underwear”, but that couldn´t be further from the truth, for that cliché not only it doesn´t work with Yatagarasu (although you surely can see some underwear here and there), but the has such a SOLID combat system that it can easily look face to face to the titans mentioned above and some other classics. Before I start describing some of the main features of the game, I would like to say that Yatagarasu is a very special game, a game that does not intend to please to general crowd like for example Capcom´s Street Fighter 4 does with its spectacular pseudo 2.5D graphic style, rather than that, the game is aiming to please a more specific audience of the 2D fighting games, so those who are looking for a flashy (and easy) fighting game might as well keep looking, for the won´t find it in Yatagarasu, now, those who are looking for a deep and demanding classic style experience like the ones we could experience with games such as Street Fighter 3 and The King of Fighters will find in Yatagarasu the game they´ve been looking for a looong time, for that is exactly what the title delivers, in fact, as I will explain now, the game borrows many of the features we could see in those games and takes them to a new level, and I must add that, in my humble opinion, it does it really well. The first thing that should be said about Yatagarasu, for it will help to explain some of the weak and strong points of the title, is that the game has been developed by an indie Japanese team formed by just 3 people who have been working for 8 long years to sculpt pixel by pixel what had been a dream for them for a long time, although it must be said also that those 3 people are not “just 3 people”, for they are 3 ex-SNK who worked shoulder to shoulder in several titles of the golden era of The King of Fighters franchise, in fact, one of them was also competing in official tournaments of Street Fighter 3 in Japan, so it´s just normal that Yatagarasu reminds of these two titles in several aspects, in fact, you could almost say the game is some kind of mix between them. Almost. It would be unfair to say that Yatagarasu is “just one more clone”, for it even the game surely draws inspiration from the arcade classics of the 90s, the team has managed to imprint enough personality to the title to make it stand out from the rest.

As for the gameplay of the title, rather than the long and complex combos of more modern fighting games such as Guilty Gear or BlazBlue, Yatagarasu aims for a more conservative, simple and direct playing style closer to what we could see in the arcades of the 90s in which the game is inspired, although that doesn’t mean the game´s system is not deep. Just like we could see in the Neo Geo franchise that starred Kyo, Iori and many others, Yatagarasu makes use of four buttons for the attacks, 2 which are designated to the weak and strong punches, and the other 2 designated to the weak and strong kicks. On top of these 4 buttons, which other than the normal attacks will allow us also to perform all the typical special attacks you can find in most 2D fighting games, the game makes use of 2 more buttons that are designated exclusively to one of the main features of Yatagarasu´s gameplay: the parries. Yatagarasu is surely not the first game to ever use this feature, other games have used it previously in one or another way, with Street Fighter 3 being perhaps the most representative case, specially after Japanese pro player and champion Daigo Umehara performed he´s already legendary deed against American pro player and also champion Justin Wong in an official tournament of Capcom´s classic, but Yatagarasu, far from being satisfied with just imitating it, goes one step further, refining even more the formula. As I said, Yatagarasu has 2 buttons to perform the parries, on for the high parries, and another one for the low ones. Every time we successfully perform a parry we will leave our opponent completely exposed to our attacks (or we to theirs the in case we get the parry), although we will have to be really fast to counterattack if we want to take advantage of the opportunity that has been given to us. But that advantage that won´t be “for free”, as it will imply great risks, for as well as punishing brainless button mashing, Yatagarasu also punishes pressing the parry button “just to try”, so every time we press the parry button and miss, the attacks of our opponents will inflict more damage, which will force us to make sure it´s the right time to press the button or else they will hurt us bad. On top of this, in those cases where our rival starts unleashing a flurry of hits on us with one of their combos, we will also be able to use the parry buttons to reduce the amount of damage we will take with each attack of our rival´s combo by pressing the corresponding parry button for each hit. This will give us the (very much appreciated) option to defend ourselves rather that just sitting down to watch how our rival beats the crap out of us. To help us with all this, the game will display parry icons right underneath the health meter at the top of the screen during the combats that will indicate us which parry buttons we are using in each moment (high or low), and top of indicating if we pressed the button to soon or too late, which just comes to prove how important this feature really is for the game. Although it will surely take some time to master it (and even more nerve to pull it off in the middle of the heat of a combat Daigo-style), this feature definitely adds a huge amount of deepness to the gameplay as well as it helps at the same time to set apart the more veteran players from the rookies, on top of adding an extra pressure to the combats by forcing us to always plan well our attacks if we don´t want to be exposed to our rival´s counterattacks, till the point where in some combats the game will sometimes become some kind of mental fight between the players, who will try to trick their rival into using the wrong parry so that they will leave themselves exposed, and all with just 2 buttons. Who said you needed many buttons to make a game more complex?

Of course, there is more to Yatagarasu than just its complex parry system, as the game also includes many other features that we can find in other 2D fighting games, such as the typical throws (and the possibility to cancel them), the possibility to jump back quickly to avoid our opponent´s attacks, the possibility to accelerate or slow down the speed and which we will stand up after we are knocked down, or a defense gauge that will deplete every time we defend ourselves of our rivals attacks, leaving ourselves completely exposed to of rival attacks for a few seconds if the gauge depletes completely. The above mentioned parry system together with all these (and other) features provide Yatagarasu with a deep and agile combat system that will allow the players to speed up or slow down the rhythm of the combats at their will (provided they have the skills to do so), which, as I said at the beginning of this entry, makes the game´s gameplay feel like some kind of crossover between Street Fighter 3, which it´s strategic combats in which parries are a essential part of the game, and the The King of Fighters series, with its frantic combats. This will sometimes make us feel we are playing a match in Capcom´s classic, waiting to the right moment to do the perfect parry to deliver a devastating counterattack, just to suddenly find ourselves adopting a more offensive style unleashing a flurry of hits on our rivals like it happened in SNK´s legendary series, getting the strange (albeit nice) sensation of playing both titles at the same time. Although of course, as solid as a the gameplay could be, any fighting game wouldn´t make it that far without a rooster that is up to the challenge, and luckily for us, Yatagarasu also does pretty well in this sense. Following the “less is more” philosophy, the fighters rooster of Yatagarasu is made up of just 11 characters, a number that could fall short when compared to the large roosters that many modern fighting games feature nowadays (although in the only we always see the same “projectile shooting” faces...), although this is something that might be understandable when you thinking of the limited resources of the developing team when compared to other bigger teams, however, as short as the rooster might be, the game surely compensates it with the huge personality of each of the characters included on it, which range from your typical projectile spammer a.k.a Ryu, to the typical fast agile character in the vein of Fei Long/Chun Li/Cammy/Vega, including the typical big boy who likes it “close and personal” like Zangief, each of them with their unique and well defined playing styles. The characters will be:

                                                     Aja                                                          Azure

                                                  Chadha                                                       Crow

                                                  Hanzo                                                     Hina

                                                     Jet                                                      Jyuzu

                                                  Kotaro                                                   Kou

                                                                            Shimoo

Each of them will have their own unique attacks and special techniques. The game makes use of a gauge located at the bottom of the screen that will fill up every time we perform or receive and attack. Once this gauge fills up, we will be able to perform one of the 2 “Assassin Arts” or our character, which are devastating techniques similar to the “Ultra” attacks on Street Fighter 4. Before starting each combat, we will be given the option to choose which Assassin Art we will use as our main attack, and even though we will be able to use any of the two Assassin Arts during the combats, the one we selected will get a damage bonus. Furthermore, like it happens with Street Fighter and the EX Attacks, we will be able to use part of this gauge to unleash a more powerful version of our special attacks. As you can see, Yatagarasu is pretty complete, at least in gameplay terms, but perhaps not so much in other aspects such as game modes. The game includes two arcade modes, one which is the typical story mode where the characters spit your typical 2D fighter mumbo jumbo stuff between the combats in order to tell us what is supposed to be some kind of story, another arcade mode which will be the typical mode in which we have to beat the different characters in successive combats, an offline versus mode, a very complete training mode, and finally the online mode, which is another of the points that the game could/should improve, for not only does not include many options, but also counts with some technical issues that could sometimes stop us from fully enjoying the game, something that a game designed for the hardcore fan base (which is normally the most demanding) cannot afford, although the developing team has already promised that they are working on improving this, and they better do, for it will be the community who decides whether Yatagarasu is just another wannabe, or if in the contrary we are talking about the next big thing in fighting games, specially among the competitive scene of the genre which the game seems to be aiming for. And talking about the competitive scene, the games includes an option (that we will be able to turn off) that will allow us to display on screen comments by some of the most famous players from the fighting games competitive scene, which will vary depending the happenings that take place during the combats, thus we have that while we (or our rivals) will get praised for pulling a nice combo, we will also get humiliated every time we blow it big time. This option pretends to bring the excitement of the official tournaments to the game´s matches, specially when playing against other players, and just shows how much the designers had the competitive scene in mind during the development of Yatagarasu.

As of the graphics of the game, Yatagarasu makes use of some nice old-school pixel art, with the characters displaying their pixilated (and extremely detailed) sprites with pride over elaborated (although perhaps a bit empty) pre-rendered backgrounds, with fluid animations that manage to perfectly capture the personality of each of the characters, evoking a feeling similar to the one that the classic arcade games did, which is surely risky as some might seen on this just on outdated style, specially the younger players used to the crispy and shiny HD graphics of modern fighting games such as BlazBlue, although the most veterans players, which are the main target of this game, will surely appreciate it. However, the same cannot be said about the sometimes simple and rather confusing menus of the game, which is another of the points the game could/should, and which shows again the title´s indie roots. I know maybe I´m being just too picky, but it´s a real pity for they make the game look a “bit cheap” when actually the art is truly amazing, but probably the game´s arcade nature and the lack of resources of the team had something to do with it.


Anyway, as probably many of you might have already figured out by now, Yatagarasu did indeed managed to touch me a nerve. The game is just what I expected, and it even actually exceeded my expectations in some points. It´s been a looong time since I felt that kind of emotion I only felt when I entered an arcade and was standing in front of one of those “magical boxes full of pixels”, but Yatagarasu has definitely managed to take me back on time and make me feel exactly the same. Don´t know, perhaps I just became another of those old dogs always yearning for the past as some might say, but soon we will know if there are so many “true fans” of classic 2D fighting games as some claim to be, or if all was really just another excuse to criticize anything new for the sake of “good old times”. For many Yatagarasu will probably be nothing more but a trace from a past that doesn´t need to come back, but I´m completely sure for all the lovers of there of classic 2D fighting games that grew up during the golden era of the genre in the arcades will find in Yatagarasu a more than worthy successor of those times. For now, the game is available for PC on Steam, and on the arcades of Japan. Enjoy!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT7qmOutKk0