Gamer--freakz

Gamespot score:n/a

my score:7.0

(+)Pros:-Solid team based combat,-provides story scenerios for more than just touma,-characters have interesting battle styles,-great voice acting,-good anime styled visuals,-great soundtrack during battle.

(-)Cons:-Limited characters,-many characters focus too much on being "punchy",- not much in game content.

Gameplay time:10 hours+

Been awhile since I did an anime game review, but heres one in a long time. To aru no majutsu has been one of my favourite animes, and Im stoked that theres a game for me to play an review. Anime game tie-ins arent usually very good, a good example are some of the bleach, naruto, hitman reborn and one piece games. Anime games that are classified under the fighting or action genre usually do not end up being very good. Luckily, to aru no majutsu no index takes on a different style of fighting than most of the other anime fighting games, and taking that fact into consideration, you get a pretty good fighting game. It may not have alot of depth like some of the more "in" games like street fighter or blazblue, but  all that matters in the end is that is a unique brawler that provides some good fun.



Anime tie-ins always follow a rule, and that rule is that the story in game usually matches with that of the anime. Index is no different, the game follows through the story of season one and two, all in touma's perspective. Luckily, to prevent the game from being only focused on touma, we get stories with other characters as protoganists as well, such as accelerator, kanzaki or that rank 4 level 5 esper. Of course, these characters have different stories of thier own, different from that of touma. It doesnt take long to finish these stories, I would say about 20 mins-30 mins per story, provided you don't skip the conversations and cutscenes, while touma's story would be about twice as long.

Misaka and touma duking it out...something that happens quite oftenly in the anime.

To aru majutsu no index, as mentioned earlier, is a 1v1 fighting game. While the combat is 1v1, you can select another character as an assist to call out in combat. Combat is a simple 1v1 brawl. You pick a character, choose an assist, and you're ready to go. In battle, controls are pretty simple. There are 2 attack buttons, one button for dodging/blocking, one button for calling assists and of course one button for an overdrive super. As you can see, theres not much going on, but even with the simple controls combat is still a blast. Even against the AI, you are constatly kept on your toes. Before each battle starts, theres a standoff where you pick to either, light attack, heavy attack or block. Its acts as a simple rock, paper, scissors game, and decides who get first strike. AI will obviously get the upper hand, but its always fun to just guess, and if you get it right, just start off a combo.

As mentioned, the AI's abilities in combat are not to be overlooked. Most of the time, whatever character they use, they will have good chances of being able to beat you, provided you set them to a decent difficulty. If you friends, all the better, its good to have a face off between friends and show off what you have in store for them. While most of the game can be better off played by just doging/ blocking, then followed by a flurry of heavy and light attacks, assists can play a big part of battle, such as opening opportunities for combos, shaking the opponent off you, or giving you chances to extend your combos. All in all, the system is pretty in depth to have good fun, though it only features 2 attack buttons, mixups and assists add much to the depth.

Anyone would know how awesome of a matchup this would be.

Now lets talk about some of the characters. Index has a good cast of characters, though there should be more, some of the characters that could fit into a fighting game are not here. Agnese and crew, sherry cromwell and lazard too, these could make good fighters, but they didnt make it into the roster. Not that Im complaining, the roster is already not bad as it is. We have some of the obvious game characters to add, like touma, misaka and accelerator. We also have other characters, such as stiyl, kanzaki, tsuchimikado, kuroko and others. There are even some of the more unknown characters, those not known to the anime yet. That ranked 4 esper (dont know her name), the sage arqua and a kazakiri that fights.

While the characters are kind of limited, they have interesting fight styles that at least help differentiate between them abit. Stiyl fights by placing runes all around the area, kanzaki draws her enemies in for deadly melee attacks, misaka attacks her enemies from afar, while touma just goes blitzkreig right at the start. There are also assist only characters, like index and last order, they dont fight at all, and can only be chosen as assists. There should be more of these characters, I can think of at least 10 more assist tier characters. Come on, how awesome would it be to have komoe sensei as an assist eh?



Damn touma just wants to keep punching people.

As in anime tie-in game, to aru majutsu no index is fated to have flaws. For one, theres too little characters. As mentioned earlier, theres alot more characters that fit into this game, but didnt make it. If they wanted to, the game could easily have 20 playable characters, and about 10 assist ones. But well....thier choice, maybe they couldnt find the voice actors, since the voice acting for this game is particularly pretty good, they used the original voice actor for each character. Also, many of the characters ended up being too punchy. There are many characters with weapons, which is cool and all, but characters like touma, tsuchimikado and oriana thompson end up being too punchy, many of thier attacks are based on punches and kicks, lol. Im okay with touma doing that, but they should totally give tsuchimikado something diffrerent from touma. Lastly, the game is short on content. You will play through story once, then spend all your time on Vs cpu, which can last you a long time if you like experimenting, but other than that, the game is rather dry.

To aru majutsu no index, as an anime tie-in, manages to do pretty ok. Compared to a game like bleach heat the soul, I would pretty much prefer index. While the game could use more content, the fighting is pretty good, and we have some good character choices. If they were to make another game like this, putting in more characters and throwing in more content would really make the game more enjoyable, and definetely more lasting. Overall, a good game, to aru majutsu no index is a game suited for any fan of the anime series.



Happy gaming.