They do tend to add a bit more strategy to the game as you fight your opponent your beast energy bar will charge up. There was one glimmer of hope in the gameplay department and that was the beast transformations. Combos take practically no practice to pull off and usually involve doing multiple punches and kicks right in a row, leading to senseless button mashing if you are ever doing bad. To add a little more variety they made a ?super-beast? button and the triggers will sidestep. Buttons are limited to a kick, punch, throw/block and a beast button. Once you pick a character and enter the game you will find a ridiculous lack of buttons and combos for each character. Of course, this is about where the area of decent selection ends. There is a decent sized lineup of 14 regular characters and two hidden ones all with their own custom beast form that you can transform into during a battle. At first glance it looks like a decent fighting game. The gameplay is the section of Bloody Roar Extreme that is probably the most lacking and under-developed. Of course this game is also suitable for those of you that MUST own every fighting game for a system, or that really liked those goofy animorphs books. Then again, this game is perfect for those younger games (13 and under) that might struggle with the enormous fighting systems found within other fighting games currently available. It has pretty graphics, different buttons you can press and it?s own gimmick: having your fighter change into an evil beast (or a penguin? more on that later), but it just isn?t enough in the end to make this game appealing to a hardcore fighting game fan. To be perfectly honest, this game looks like it has what it takes to be at least a decent fighting game.
Bloody Roar Extreme is not one of these games. Yes, now and again there comes a game that will completely blow your mind with its new and innovative features and characters. Soul Caliber integrated weapons and so many different moves per character that your head would spin. Killer Instinct gave birth to genre of combo systems. Mortal Kombat brought us realistic and very graphic brawling. Every once in a while a fighting game comes along that really pushes everything we know about fighters to the next level.