This off the wall brawler from Atlus is full of humor, but the fighting kills the fun.
Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble is a quirky 3D brawler being brought to us by the folks at Atlus and Spike, featuring a heavy Japanese sub-culture theme of urban kids battling it out for district superiority while away on a class trip. If you've ever watched a school fight stylized anime before, then you have a rough idea of what to expect out of this one as far as the story and theme of the game goes. It's a pretty fun set-up, with a lot of super Japanese culture stuff infused with the game, right down to the loading screens that explain little bits of terminology that you'll hear throughout the game.
As it starts, you'll take on the role of high school student Takashi, a rough and tumble type of guy that has a small group of friends that manage to put up with his gruff exterior. You're on your way to a school trip to Kyouto, meant to be a learning experience, when you come to learn that other Bancho from different districts in Japan typically gather on this site every year and battle it out to see who is the most badass among them. With this knowledge in mind, Takashi decides to shrug off the schoolwork and take to the streets of Kyouto, which is divided up into a number of areas within the game. Going from location to location, you'll pick fights with various dudes in the hopes of getting clues to the current whereabouts of the various Bancho that populate the game world, around 45 or so guys that you need to fight against and defeat.
It's not quite as easy as just picking fights though, to find the Bancho you'll typically need to take out run of the mill students as well, and steal their itineraries, which will in turn give you a heads up as to the time and location that you can find the Bancho for each school. The game is divided up into a series of days with an in game clock, and the days are divided up into morning, afternoon, and evening sections. Since the city of Kyouto is pretty large, you don't have to walk to every location, and can opt to take a taxi, bus or other transportations to get to where you need to go. The transportation system in Kenka Bancho is a little needlessly convoluted though, as different types will only take you to certain locations, so you often need to find the right type of transportation that's going to take you where you want to go.
Once you find a group of guys that look like fighters (not everyone that wanders the street is looking for a fight), you need to enter a stare down contest with them. This is where the wackiness of the game starts to kick in, as you unleash your Menchi beam, a small beam that shoots from your eyes and locks onto your opponents own Menchi. Once you connect with someone this way, you'll get to toss out a predetermined insult, which the game gives to you as a sentence and then you're required to piece it together over a series of options. If you ace this, you'll get the automatic first hit in the fight, but if you screw it up it'll be the other around. This is funny the first few times you're given the option, but it does become a little tedious after the 100th fight, so the appeal of it all wears a little thin considering the sheer number of fights you'll get into.
Once that's out of the way, the battle begins, and oftentimes you'll be paired up against multitudes of enemies. You can opt to bring a partner into a battle, either the friend you come into the game with, or other Bancho you've already defeated, and you can contact them via the in-game cell phone option. However, more often than not, you'll be facing off alone against various guys. The biggest drawback to Bancho is the actual fighting, which is a real shame since it's the main gameplay component featured. It's a little clumsy, as a lot of 3D brawlers tend to be, and the action is a little too slow for my tastes, only allowing you the most basic of three hit combo's, various fierce attacks, and a couple take down options per fight. There's some other stuff to pay attention to, including a spirit meter that will deplete over time and need to be recharged, a heart meter to let you know whether you're getting tired, and one more indicator that's a little vague, but basically keeps track of whether you're being brave or a weakling in your approach to combat. So much attention is spent on this stuff that you think the developer would have made the combat a little more polished and fun, but as it stands the fights are pretty much the worst part of the game. Because of that, it's hard to get through the entire game, unless you become particularly attached to the humor and setting, both of which are quite good.
Still, as much as I want to like Kenka Bancho, I can't really suggest it as a great 3D brawler. Even something that's a little comparable, like God Hand, has a more interesting combat system involved than Kenka's basic attacks and options, regardless of whether the game was actually lacking any polish or not. Kenka nails the theme, setting, and humor that I expected, but actually fails at being particularly fun to play. I think most people will grow bored with the gameplay after a couple hours, and considering there's a pretty lengthy game tied into all this fighting, it's going to be a tough ride to enjoy throughout. Unless you're really, really into quirky Japanese brawlers, I can't say that I suggest picking up Kenka Bancho outside of a possible rental or price drop, but I would like to see the gameplay refined a bit more into a better game in the future.
