REVIEW: Phantom Breaker: Omnia


Title	Phantom Breaker: Omnia
Developer	MAGES. Inc., GameLoop Inc.
Publisher	Rocket Panda Games
Release Date	March 15th, 2022
Genre	Fighting
Platform	PC (Steam), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Age Rating	Teen
Official Website

When I first saw Phantom Breaker: Omnia was finally coming West with some new features, I was pretty stoked. I wanted to get my hands on this ever since I played Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds a few years ago. Rocket Panda Games has put in quite a bit of work to bring this one to us, so let’s see if their hard work paid off.

The story begins as a man called “Phantom” appears in Tokyo. For his own reasons, he seems to be manipulating people into fighting each other by dangling the thing they wish for the most, in front of them. He grants them mystical weapons of great strength known as Fu-mension Artifacts, and promises to grant their wish if they win enough duels. What these fighters are unaware of, is that these fierce clashes using these artifacts have caused distortions in space-time. This has compromised the boundaries between parallel universes. The “Phantom” needs a total collapse of reality if his powers are to become absolute.

The story here is pretty basic, like you would expect in a fighting game like this, but that’s not really a bad thing. The characters here have a lot of personality, and each one has a different reason for fighting. Some of these are selfless and will warm your heart, and others are not as noble, they’re downright insane. I think Cocoa was probably my favorite, but who can resist a cute chunni gamer girl?

In the sound department, I have to say, this is one the best soundtracks I’ve heard in a fighting game in quite a while. The tracks are all upbeat and get you pumped for combat. I liked the new remixed tracks better than the original ones, but this can be swapped out at anytime depending on which is your favorite. Phantom Breaker: Omnia is fully dubbed in English, and the voice actors they got to perform these roles do a great job. I played with the English dub for about half of my 10 hours of game time, and felt they captured the characters personalities pretty well. The Japanese audio is here as well for those that prefer it, but keep in mind, they made the subtitles as “Dub Sub” rather than just outright subtitling the Japanese. This leads to times where the Japanese audio will say two words and there will be a whole line of text, or vice versa. This only mildly bothered me, but I know for some this would be a bigger deal.

The artwork and character designs here are top tier. There is a large variety of fighters to choose from, and each one has a slew of color options as well. The backgrounds are all very different and can range from a hospital, to magically flying over Tokyo on a light platform. The story mode features some nice CG artwork for each character, and there is an unlockable art gallery with these and other goodies to unlock. The game runs at a solid 60 FPS, and I experienced no issues during my playtime.

Now let’s dig into the meat of any fighting game, the combat system. When I first picked this up, I was sort of confused about how it worked, but it was actually much simpler than I anticipated. Attacks are mapped to one of four buttons. These consist of a Light, Medium and Heavy attack, as well as a special button. Using the D-Pad and tapping the three attack buttons will allow you to do many simple combos against your foes. I’m like the world’s worst at discovering combos, and I was pulling off 15 hitters in a matter of minutes. If you tap a direction and Special button, you will do a variety of special moves. These vary greatly by character, and if you add the Light attack button in there, you will get a lighter version of the move. Adding the Heavy attack button will consume some of your Burst Meter, but will grant you a much more devastating version of that move. When your Burst Meter is at least 200%, you can press the Hard attack and Special buttons together with no direction to perform the characters Phantom Breaker. These ultra powerful moves can turn the tide of battle in a second. Some characters will have more than one of these, and the one you use is dependent on the style you select.

Speaking of styles, let’s dig into that a bit more. In Phantom Breaker: Omnia, there are three different styles you can choose at the beginning of each fight outside of Story Mode. These styles change up the characters stats a bit and give them access to different types of moves. Quick style will give you more speed and easy to pull off combos, but lower health. Hard style will make you move slower, but you can do a lot more damage in a pinch to turn the tide of battle. Last, the new Omnia style is the middle ground. You won’t be quite as fast as Quick style, or do as much damage as in Hard style, but in this mode you can pull off combos with just one button. I found it very fun to experiment with different characters, using each style, to see which one fit the way I play the best.

This combat system actually goes much deeper than I can go into with this review, but I feel like I covered the basic elements of it. What I loved here is it’s very simple to pick up and play, but had enough depth to keep you coming back for more. There are plenty of modes here to keep you busy in single player as well. These include a Time Attack, Survival, Arcade and a Story Mode for some characters. There are some online options as well, and I wish the online matches were ready to go as of the writing of this review. I haven’t been able to check out an online match to see how good the netcode is, so your mileage may vary there.

At the end of the day, Phantom Breaker: Omnia is a good anime fighter. There are plenty of unique characters to choose from, and even a few special guests from other MAGES titles. I wasn’t really impressed with some of choices made with the subtitles, but this is a minor complaint that doesn’t really take much away from this one. Combat here is simple to pick up and play with enough depth to keep you interested for hours to come. There are plenty of modes to mess around with offline, as well as some online modes to take on your friends. If you’re a fan of anime style fighters, at the $39.99 price tag, you should probably give this one a go. I feel like there is enough meat here to keep you entertained for hours. If you are new to fighting games, this may be a good title to start with, since it isn’t overly complicated to play, but it is a lot of fun.