Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate Brings Side-Scrolling Moe Action
Fans of cute girls and great side-scrolling action rejoice for Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate is here! Good side-scrollers are hard to come by nowadays; it's always open-world this and MOBA that, so when I got the opportunity to take a closer look at this new game by Rocket Panda I was intrigued.
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate is a remake of 2013's Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds, which is itself a beat-'em-up spin-off of the 2011's Phantom Breaker. This is a complete remake, which means former DLC characters like Steins;Gate's Kurisu and Robotics;Notes's Frau are ready to fight. Cultured gamers can join these moe girls on the battlefield of nightmares on April 17th, 2025. Here is what I thought of the game.
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate Fights Off the Nightmares Again
Mages (then known as 5pb.) released the original game back in 2013 and while various ports have arrived since then, Rocket Panda Games has now given us the proper, complete remaster with all the bells and whistles included.
Mikoto, Waka, Itsuki, and Yuzuha take center stage as they fight other girls with unique gifts. The evil Phantom pulls strings behind the scenes to force those with special gifts to fight, thus rending space and time asunder to weaken his bonds. Phantom has spirited their friend Nagi away, and the girls must fight their way through vicious hordes to save her.
Heroines With Unique Points of View
Players have only the four main girls to play with at the start: Mikoto, Waka, Itsuki, and Yuzuha. Not to worry, they come with alt colors and even a cosplay option. They each have different experiences during the story mode. Other characters — including the villainesses — are also available for unlocking.
Players will have fun getting used to the roster of characters and choosing their favorites to mow down whole groups of enemies (and even playing as the bad guys from the Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds universe). I've been using Mikoto Nishina with cat ears for a while because nothing beats a cute girl with a giant magic sword.
Players can choose to go in solo or with a group since co-op is available at the start. Crossplay for PlayStation and Switch is available and although we had early access I didn't have any trouble finding people to play with. Players can team up to take on enemies together in PVE games or go head-to-head in eight-player PVP matches.
As I said before, story mode plays out differently depending on who is chosen to go through the story. Arcade mode takes out the story parts and measures how good the player is.
Moe Heroines Tear Through Armies
Fans of side-scrollers and beat-'em-ups know what to expect from the genre. For full transparency, I'm not a pro gamer. I have some trouble with these sorts of games. However, I have been able to get through the stages, doing the best I can so I would say that anyone at any skill level can enjoy Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate.
The girls — both heroines and villainesses — dash around to pick up gems and food whenever they kick the tar out of various enemies. They can throw enemies whenever they're not punching or slashing enemies by the score. If things get too tough, special skills can even the score and knock down even the largest of enemies.
Every Battle Makes You Stronger
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate has a few RPG elements to make things interesting. Characters level up after every mission and grant skill points to increase character stats and unlock different skills such as double jump and special attacks. The characters level up independently, so gamers will have to use each girl starting at level 1 and work from there.
Rocket Panda Games perfectly uses a fluid sprite animation style in this game. The characters move brilliantly through the battlefield. Every detail was painstakingly refined for this performance.
The chibi styles are as cute as one would want, and the animated reactions — such as when a certain character was robbed of her power and tossed into another dimension — were funny to see.
Music to Fight By
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate retains the classic music fans heard in the original release or its ports. They can also enjoy a new and remixed soundtrack performed by the all-girl J-rock band The Phantom Breakers.
There's nothing like smacking down hordes of enemies while jamming out to good J-rock songs.
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate - Thoughts
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate is a fun side-scrolling beat-'em-up game. It'll suck most people in during the first level alone. Nothing beats moe girls tearing apart weird enemies to great music. Shifting between the background and foreground is a fun mechanic. Normal difficulty should suffice for any gamer, but easy and hard difficulties are available for people to fine-tune their experience.
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate publishes on April 17th, 2025, for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Series X/S, and Windows.
Anime Atelier received a review code for the game.