Resuming my odyssey through the Umihara Kawase games… there’s this fighting game crossover detour.

Developed by Studio Saizensen, the modern stewards of the UK franchise, this fighting game also crosses over their other main franchise Code of Princess (plus the minor life sim Doki Doki Poyacchio), as well as some of the properties Nicalis has claimed (Cave Story, 1001 Spikes), and a few other guests (Shovel Knight, Gunvolt, Binding of Isaac). I’m uncomfortable supporting Nicalis (who also published this) given what I’ve heard about their culture and practices, but this was on sale and I was too tempted by the UK story content, so here we are.

“Indie crossover fighters” these days tend to be platform fighters in the Smash Bros. mould, so it’s interesting seeing this more traditional fighting game with heavy anime stylings taking characters, some quite unconventional, from across the indie space both East and West. It makes for a unique package, and one that purports to aim for both hardcore technicalism and casual accessibility.

I must say, being far on the casual end of the spectrum myself for games of this kind, I didn’t feel well catered to. The four face buttons are your different attacks, but I found it hard to mentally map each to their functions, especially when you factor in the many combinations of two or even three at once. These multi-button moves can be mapped to spare inputs, which helps a bit, but the game is still hardcore at heart and there’s only so much you can do to cater to a newbie while the essence of the game is fast and complex.

I contented myself with trying some of the simpler combo challenges, and setting the story mode to “super easy” and playing through with the characters I was interested in (the four from Umihara Kawase, Curly and Quote from Cave Story, Shovel Knight), checking out their animations, their interstitial cutscenes, and their stages. It’s a bit of a mixed bag: Quote is sadly silent, but Curly gets a nice moment or two, and their redesigns are cool. Shovel Knight ends up feeling shallow and overly masculine. The UK characters get some much needed fleshing out and come off well despite the cheesecake factor.

Yes, the game leans hard into anime inspiration, including a poorly-explained plot about all-powerful computers in a virtual world manifesting as barely-clad women (although most of the dialogue is between comic relief server boxes with legs). Most of the characters are redesigned to fit a consistent art style, and have lots of flashy and dynamic animation, but it’s heavy on jiggle physics and embarrassing outfits (Solange, who’s set up as the main character, is a particular offender). Sometimes it’s cool and fun, sometimes it’s absolute cringe (there’s mutliple references in dialogue to characters’ busts… eugh).

Since I was mostly here for the story mode, I was a little disappointed that the main plot is usually repeated (with two main variations) despite the game touting unique stories for each character. Still, I savoured what it could deliver to me in terms of character insight through the brief conversations and the introspective interlude at the climax (although not every character gets one…). In that sense it’s actually a nice complement to the Umihara Kawase series if nothing else, because those games are light on that kind of stuff despite actually having some deep backstory if you go looking for it. And since that’s why I played this in the first place, I found it pretty satisfying especially for the price I paid. Also, Noko’s cyber-tonfa and Emiko’s giant cat are really awesome.