Battle Arena Toshinden PS1 Review

The early months of the PlayStation produced some truly memorable and quite influential titles to help to spawn an entire generation of gaming franchises and fans alike. 

One of the genres that came into popularity during this time was the fighting genre as games were starting to go through their transition from going from the likes of 2D fighting games that you would have seen with the street fighter series and the early Mortal Kombat games to moving into more arcade focused styled fighters with 3D Fighters showing up in arcades all across Europe and Japan and America. 

And most notably one of the earliest 3D fighters to see huge success would be Sega's Virtua Fighter and later with Sony and Namco producing the Tekken series that also reached great heights and popularity on the original PlayStation console and even beyond. 

While many of those games were straight up fighters that utilize more hand-to-hand combat style mechanics there wasn't really any weapon-based fighters on the system until the release of battle arena toshinden that released during the first few months of the PlayStation's launch period that initially was a PlayStation exclusive for the first year of its release but then was later ported to the Sega Saturn, PC and was later seen on The Game Boy and the game would later get a re-release on the likes of the PlayStation Network through the PlayStation Portable, PS3 and Playstation Vita. 

And the first battle arena toshinden would become quite popular during the early months of the PlayStation as there wasn't too many fighting games available but then with the release of tekken, the battle arena toshinden series started to dip in popularity but even while so still managing to produce a number of different sequels to extend the life of the franchise before inevitably being long forgotten after the fourth entry in the series. 

The first battle arena toshinden game was also the first 3D based weapons fighter that had ever been seen in both either arcades and even on consoles at the time and the sequels carried on that trait but it would only be later or succeeded and bettered by namco's excellent Soul Edge or Soul blade in other regions that went on to become the Soul Calibur series and is among some of the greatest fighting game series ever created. 

And while battle arena toshinden did see some success on the early days of the PlayStation the game would later get a port to the Sega Saturn with additional features that wasn't seen on the Playstation release to try and appeal to a variety of different types of audiences throughout the consoles lifespan. 

For an early Playstation release it had really good graphics and visuals with a really unique anime style for the characters and the effects that the game had to offer where you had the selection of a number of different characters each with their own move sets and characteristics and abilities that could suit a variety of different play styles throughout the course of your playthroughs. 

While it had some nice visuals and some unique gameplay aesthetics, the gameplay would be somewhat lacking because compared it to the Tekken series which came out not long after the first game came out Tekken was a lot more fluent in terms of how it played. 

The main grievances with battle arena toshinden as yes it played quite well for a 3D fighter and was very fast paced but the controls could be somewhat at times a little bit on the sluggish or unresponsive side and it just felt clunky overall but with the addition of being able to move around the environments within the 3D space also helped to add more depth to the gameplay that you could avoid attacks. 

The problem with it was is the fact that the camera while you're avoiding attacks would sometimes not be able to keep up with the characters movement, therefore the camera will be completely off so if you were trying to attack someone you would miss time the attack or completely miss them altogether or the camera wouldn't follow the person around and enough and it would completely throw you off as to exactly where you were on the map at any given time and it left you open to attacks where your opponents could literally just obliterate you.

And the difficulty curve of the game as well, like what a lot of those early fighters was apparent in this game just as much as there was no real room for error and there was no real basic entry point for most players to get involved with the game as even on the easier difficulties it would still be quite difficult to understand what to do and to defeat opponents especially the further you got into the game because the computer generated opponents at a lot of times would block most of your attacks and they would usually just spam the same move over and over again which caused a lot of frustration. 

So it would actually cause a lot of gamers to move on to other types of games and it was apparent with the later entries in the series as well because of a lot of these clunky traits that even with the sequels they did try to improve on it and they did to some degree but never really reached the full potential that many other popular fighting series managed to achieve on the PlayStation. 

Because by the time games likes of the Tekken series, Tekken 2, Tekken 3 even Soul Calibur and a number of other fighting games that come out in the PlayStation, the battle arena toshinden series had started to die down and become less popular as a result. 

While at the same time when you look back even though it may not have been as popular it still does have quite a cult following, there are a number of websites and fan pages and blogs online that cater to the Love of the Game series and while it wasn't perfect it definitely started the process of allowing players to become more aware of these new style of games that were coming out at the time. 

And like with these early games because of most developers 3D gaming was definitely a new thing, it wasn't going to not only just not appeal to everybody but there was always a lot of workarounds and ideas that people had to get used to with these type of games that sometimes caused a lot of confusion and as a result sometimes the games would be overlooked which ended up being a pity because the games did genuinely have a lot more to offer but it was the case that you had to really sit down and play them for any length of time. 

But at the same time if you manage to have good reflexes and skills with fighting games you would have a good chance with them but if not if you were just a Casual Gamer then there was a very good chance that you probably wouldn't be able to get used to it would just frustrate the hell out of you. 

Even when I go back to my own personal experience with battle arena toshinden it was among some of the very first games I'd ever played on the console way back on Christmas of 1996 and I had originally played the first game on a demo. 

It was actually on the demo one CD that a friend of mine had and you had games with the likes of Wipeout, there was ESPN extreme games, Loaded and a multitude of other games on the CD and among them was the first battle arena toshinden game. 

And I remember when playing this I was blown away by the visuals and how good this actually looked but yes it was tough I'm not gonna deny that and even going back to playing the game It's still as tough as I remember but I was never really the best at fighting games anyway so I suppose I can allow myself that to some degree. 

But I really enjoyed it and I played it quite a few times but again it was tough it took quite a few tries to win a couple of fights and a lot of times more often than not ended up winning just by pure luck if it anything else. 

You could play as two playable characters in the demo and you could go through a number of fights but I found myself just playing it for a while because I really enjoyed it. 

It was a fun game at the time but when I compare it to later games that I played mainly likes Tekken 2, Tekken 3, Soul Blade and other fighting games there was apparent differences in those games. 

They were definitely easier to get into compared to battle arena toshinden but it still doesn't take away from the presence that it made me feel when I played it for the first time because again like I said it was among some of the first games I ever played on the system so to me it was an entirely new experience so to be able to play any type of game in any shape or form that was in 3D and the fact is for me it was totally new at that point it was just an experience all in itself that I'll never forget. 

So while battle arena toshinden may not be my favorite fighter on the PlayStation it definitely does hold a special spot for me because it was the first 3D fighter that I actually did play on the system itself, mind you it wasn't very good at it but sure it doesn't matter because the way I see it is I still enjoyed it anyway and it helped to snowball the effect that the PlayStation had on me at that time because I got to experience more games as I got to witness and play and get more opportunities to play games months and even years down the line. 

And when I look back it's funny because had I not played games like battle arena toshinden, my experiences could have been very different. So I do believe that playing a lot of these games do in some way shape how you experience future games or future experiences that you will have on consoles. 

So this is among some of the best ones that I had at the time and I'll never forget it. But I would love to know your thoughts of battle arena toshinden itself if you have played it and what were your first experiences of the game. 

Did you manage to play it during the early days of when the console was released back in 1995 early 1996? 

And if so what do you think of the game itself and even the series, in general, are you a fan of the game and the series or maybe not so much or did you prefer other fighting games on the PlayStation? 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this game and what you really think of it so be sure to share it down in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to Battle Arena Toshinden, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...