If anyone ever needs any hard proof that there is no justice in this world, they need only look at the sales figures for The Wonderful 101 and Asura's Wrath, two absolutely amazing examples of the positively orgasmic heights of raw, pump-your-goddamn-fist-in-the-air emotion and spectacle our humble medium has to offer, that sold roughly a couple of dozen copies between them. I'm not here to lay blame or point fingers, because I didn't buy Asura's Wrath at launch either so I'm just as responsible for this injustice, but I just need to tell you dorks about this stupid, incredible video game I just played.
So, how many games have you played where your character gets so angry that his angry-ness blastwave alone reaches from the surface of the planet into low Earth orbit and destroys half a fleet of attacking space dreadnaughts? How many games have you played where you hammer a QTE to resist the laser blast of a planet-sized entity powered by 7,000,000,000,000 human souls harvested over a period of 12,000 years and then amplified even further for good measure? How many games have you ever played where you square up for a fistfight against LITERALLY GOD, and just when you think you might actually be able to punch him hard enough to win he pulls out a set of ELECTRIC NUNCHUCKS? And then it turns out that he wasn't even the final boss! HE WASN'T EVEN THE SECOND-TO-LAST BOSS!
Asura's Wrath is part anime, part QTE game, and part dreadful character action game, and if you resolutely ignore all its extremely obvious flaws then it's an absolute 10/10. It plays out as a sort of anime/video game hybrid, split up into short episodes with their own title cards, mid-episode bumpers, つづく cliffhangers and even a framerate that must hover around the classic anime 12FPS mark for most of the game. The best parts of the game are the hype-as-fuck QTE sequences, and the worst are the actual gameplay parts where you get to pit a godawful combat system against a bestiary of rubbish enemies and slowly run after super-fast bosses warping around huge arenas hoping you can get a hit in. A great combat system could have made this game a true classic, and honestly cutting the combat entirely and only having QTEs would probably have been a better decision than what it is now. There are some straight up abysmal encounters here, particularly some of the late-game and DLC bosses. Oof.
I swapped between the Japanese and English voice tracks, only to find that both are dialed down so absurdly low in the overall sound mix that I couldn't hear a goddamn thing anyone was saying in either language and just resolved to watch for subtitles the whole game (no individual volume sliders). And, of course, this is the game where Capcom sold it without its True Ending and then made you buy it back for a few dollars more. I'm a little conflicted on this point, because I think the game's standard ending is actually pretty good and conclusive, and the first few episodes of the True Ending DLC are honestly pretty bad. But then you hit the final final episode, and the spectacle ramps up to a degree that makes Bayonetta's Jubileus feel like a casual slap fight, and I feel like there's enough good there that you can't play Asura's Wrath without it.
There's never going to be a sequel to this game. Probably not even a remaster. Nobody's asking for Asura in Smash or Mahvel, and I can't even really argue that the game itself is an absolute masterpiece like its brother in arms The Wonderful 101 is (Kamiya's magnum opus, fite me irl if u disagree). But, oh man, what a VIDEO GAME.
So, how many games have you played where your character gets so angry that his angry-ness blastwave alone reaches from the surface of the planet into low Earth orbit and destroys half a fleet of attacking space dreadnaughts? How many games have you played where you hammer a QTE to resist the laser blast of a planet-sized entity powered by 7,000,000,000,000 human souls harvested over a period of 12,000 years and then amplified even further for good measure? How many games have you ever played where you square up for a fistfight against LITERALLY GOD, and just when you think you might actually be able to punch him hard enough to win he pulls out a set of ELECTRIC NUNCHUCKS? And then it turns out that he wasn't even the final boss! HE WASN'T EVEN THE SECOND-TO-LAST BOSS!
Asura's Wrath is part anime, part QTE game, and part dreadful character action game, and if you resolutely ignore all its extremely obvious flaws then it's an absolute 10/10. It plays out as a sort of anime/video game hybrid, split up into short episodes with their own title cards, mid-episode bumpers, つづく cliffhangers and even a framerate that must hover around the classic anime 12FPS mark for most of the game. The best parts of the game are the hype-as-fuck QTE sequences, and the worst are the actual gameplay parts where you get to pit a godawful combat system against a bestiary of rubbish enemies and slowly run after super-fast bosses warping around huge arenas hoping you can get a hit in. A great combat system could have made this game a true classic, and honestly cutting the combat entirely and only having QTEs would probably have been a better decision than what it is now. There are some straight up abysmal encounters here, particularly some of the late-game and DLC bosses. Oof.
I swapped between the Japanese and English voice tracks, only to find that both are dialed down so absurdly low in the overall sound mix that I couldn't hear a goddamn thing anyone was saying in either language and just resolved to watch for subtitles the whole game (no individual volume sliders). And, of course, this is the game where Capcom sold it without its True Ending and then made you buy it back for a few dollars more. I'm a little conflicted on this point, because I think the game's standard ending is actually pretty good and conclusive, and the first few episodes of the True Ending DLC are honestly pretty bad. But then you hit the final final episode, and the spectacle ramps up to a degree that makes Bayonetta's Jubileus feel like a casual slap fight, and I feel like there's enough good there that you can't play Asura's Wrath without it.
There's never going to be a sequel to this game. Probably not even a remaster. Nobody's asking for Asura in Smash or Mahvel, and I can't even really argue that the game itself is an absolute masterpiece like its brother in arms The Wonderful 101 is (Kamiya's magnum opus, fite me irl if u disagree). But, oh man, what a VIDEO GAME.
