Publisher: Arc Systems, PQube
Developer: A+ Games
Platform: Nintendo Switch, PS4, PC
Genre: Fighting

Am not a lot into anime-based fighting games, especially something as notable as Dragon Ball or Naruto Shippuddin. Kill La Kill IF is not much different from many of the games. But I'll say this with much contradiction, I loved Dragon Ball Fighter Z and I became a fan of Arc since I started playing Guilty Gears X2.

Though it doesn't seem like they developed this title, rather published it with Studio Trigger's blessings. The developer being it, A+ Games doesn't have much of a resume for games, nor any good ones. So I believe that they followed Arc System's supervision.

Did the product deliver itself to glory? Not quite.

Story

The game plays out few parts of the story based on the anime, although it skips the first act and jumps right knee deep on the end of the 2nd act. You only play as few of the characters in the roster with each having upto 10 episodes in the campaign.

Am not telling you the story though because the anime is a blast, I would be just ruining it for you. Well, if you're into weeb stuff that is. If not, why are you reading this review?....I kid, I kid :D

Though it should be worth mentioning that you won't enjoy the story if you haven't watched the anime at all. Not even Glossary will tell what's going. I wish they added the entire anime in the game, that way people would just watch and enjoy while enjoying the epic battles in the game.

But am guessing this game was made solely for fans. Though not quite making a good impression might I add.

Gameplay

The gameplay around KlKI is based on 3D space, where you move in any dimension. Even though you're mostly locked on to your opponent. All the complexities you get from a fighting game are mostly gone. You press Square repeatedly or you press once, wait a third of a second before pressing it again to initiate another combo. It gets pretty messy. Most of the fighting just works fine if you're button smashing.

But there are key nuances here and there, mostly around timing your attacks. You can't beat on enemies when they are face-down. So timing is everything. Using Dualshock 4 controller, basic attacks are from Square, Range attacks from Triangle and you break guard with Circle. Holding L1 while pressing the following buttons initiate special attacks, again though, timing is everything.

With R1, you stand guard while moving left analog to dash. Jump is X, pressing X twice allows you to rush attack your opponents. Now all of these sound like they're easy to learn, that's because they are. Mastering them takes quite awhile though as you have to properly get the combo right in sequences to pull off no. of hits which also increases your special gauge bars, of which you need to pull of special attacks or break off attacks from enemies consuming two bars each time.

Then there's the gambling system called Bloody Valor, basically you press both L1 and R1, consuming 3 bars to begin this rock, paper, scissors game. Choosing which bonuses you want, if you win, you get a level bonus of say damage or increase in special gauge bar. If you lose, you lose health. Getting upto 3 levels, drastically increases your attack combos and damage, rendering you a deadly force and upon initiating Bloody Valor on your enemy in that state, you instead finish them off instead. I liked this, but it's too risky and doesn't pay off most of the time.

If you need practice, there's the training mode. But for just smashing A.I bots and garnering points of sorts, there are modes which you could play like survival challenges and COVOR challenges.

Unfortunately, that's as much depth the combat has than anything else I've played. It doesn't offer much though. But Arc System has magically laid the foundation for what makes a game like this enjoyable so while it's good while it gets going, it doesn't offer much fun factor in the long run. Learning how to play the game and even if you master them, they're just not much complexity and depth behind them with more intrigue as other fighting games out there.

Local/Online

For PvP, there's casual and ranked online play mode. It's the same as Injustice, basically you can defeat your opponent twice before you win the match. But winning doesn't mean you step into the next round because there isn't any, any health you lost before you beat your opponent once will stay that way. It's the same for the offline modes but you catch my drift.

I didn't delve myself into the online components much better the fighting mechanics were difficult to master, I wasn't really going to spend so much time for that though.

Production Value

Its got great cell shaded graphics, that's a given. Nothing phenomenal however.

Audio is very anime centric, so know what you're getting into. However, I like the range of dialogues for each of the combos you set up. Lot of variations. Music, well it's somewhat original but also borrowing aspects of it from the anime.

It ran fine on my PC, so no performance issues whatsoever. Of which also speaking, doesn't require beefy specs to run either.

Score

Yeah this title is nothing special out of all the fighting games out there, if you're a KILL la KILL fan, you'll like this game as a treat. But besides that, it's an above average fighting game.

There are loads of collectibles to unlock, but like I said, wish they added the anime along with it as well.

6.5