Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia is an entertaining video game, very much in the vein of Pokémon Sword and Shield and Yokai Watch. It does not reach the level of quality of either license, but it offers the essentials: fighting, exploration and a nice story to become the best Bakugan trainer of all time.
Are you ready for a super effective bout of nostalgia? Bakugan Returns! Once again, the Bakugan leave Vestroia , their home dimension, to land on Earth, befriend the human children, and fight each other. You sure remember this anime. It began its broadcast around 2007 and left us around 2013. Obviously, Bakugan was born in the slipstream of Pokémon. But while Nintendo collectible animals are cute, adorable, and cuddly, the Bakugan have always been badass. Their creatures are shaped like dinosaurs, robots, and mythical monsters. Once you bother to get to know them, you discover that they appreciate friendship as much as Pokémon, only that they have a greater propensity to fight. They love to fightThey are addicted to fighting .
Bakugan is an anime series very typical of its time, of that confused and crazy first decade of the year 2000. Perhaps because of this, because it is not more flexible or because it ends up being devoured by its direct competitors, that is why the anime left deflating until disappearing. However, in the middle of 2020, in the most unpredictable year in our recent history, they return to Earth. And they do it with a very intelligent video game, which knows how to adapt to the times and which is perfect to start in Bakugan or to return to it. In the artistic section, the title bears many similarities with the recent Pokémon Sword and Shield. The modeling of their characters are similar, also the choice of the color palette, the presentation of their characters and environments; but in rhythm and tone it is much more like Yo-Kai Watch . Because Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia draws on manners, walking around the city, talking with friends and portraying a society in which the Bakugan are already well established … despite the fact that to find one you have to find them in the interior of the crater produced by a meteorite. The mix is well worked out, and it’s easy to imagine the same kids who were thrilled by the games that devour this Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia is based on.
This is how the Bakugan fight in this Champions of Vestroia video gameplay on Nintendo Switch
The fights are eternal, very long, and they are slow, very slowAnd I am referring to that especially young audience because due to the rhythm of its action, the way the fights are planned, its online, the number of Bakugan to collect or the tone of the action itself, it is a video game that limits its options to address them and guide them to what is important: combat. It is the truly important thing . The main campaign is long, full of side missions and fights. With them you will level up your Bakugan and train your team, obtain Baku-Coins and buy passive and active abilities for your creatures. There is a story, but it is very little relevant. Everything is an excuse to battle, battle and battle, get better skills and not get too distracted from the heart of the matter. In order not to confuse the player too much, there is onlyAbout 80 Bakugan to collect, they are repeated a lot during combat, which makes it easy to quickly understand what each one is for, its classes, strengths and weaknesses. Not getting them all is the biggest problem either.
Bakugans, into combat!
The battles are fun against colleagues, but against the AI they get heavy
The Bakugan fight in teams of three. Each one has four abilities that they can use, either attack, heal or support. Unlike Pokémon, there are no turns as such here . Each skill has a cooldown time, so you have to wait until you use one or the other; but to use them you have to do something else. As the huge Bakugan stare at each other and hit each other, trainers scamper across the stage, gathering energy that they hurl at their creatures. This feeds them as gasoline to, once the cooling time allows it, to start their special attack. And where is the grace? Well, in teasing the rival by stealing his energy, blocking his advance with our body, and obtaining passive skills that allow us to manage energy better than him.
It’s a nice return to Bakugan, but lacks rhythm
It is because of this approach that playing online is fun, as long as you do it with friends and being close to each other, because against strangers, trolling can be hellish. This way of understanding struggles works for young audiences, but it is not for everyone. The fights go on forever, very long, and they are slow, very slow. Although there is some depth to the use of the powers themselves or the choice of creatures, there is no rhythm of the game that makes them enjoyable . These fights work when playing with friends when their Bakugan are already well prepared, but during the campaign they become very heavy. The game is capable of reaching twenty hours in length, and more, but because these fights can last six or seven minutes, and you have to do a lot. That is to say, there is a good basis, I understand the idea, but the adventure has made me very heavy because of this excess. Also, the enemy AI is a mess , they are dumber than a broomstick.
It lacks depth, refining its combat, adding agility to its pace of play and polishing a graphic sectionTo these problems, which are solved once you can fight against colleagues, it is added that he is not able to contribute anything special in the development of the plot or in its gameplay to the references it takes. Loading times between zones are long and there are drops in the frame rate. For all these reasons, Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia is a video game that knows how to update and refresh Bakugan, and does so with interesting ideas, but it lacks depth, refining its combat, adding agility to its rhythm of play and polishing a graphic and artistic section who cannot stand out. It will work very well for the kid who has eaten Pokémon and wants more, but not the “young adult” who already knows this genre well and has been consuming it since the nineties.
“Regular”
Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia
Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia is a good return to the franchise, but only for a very specific audience. If you are your age and you are a fan of the genre, do not expect to find another Nexomon or Temtem here, but rather a proposal very thought out for those who start in it, with very specific ideas designed for them. It has some technical glitches and the combat takes forever, but it is a pleasant reunion with Bakugan.
- The mix of references is well managed
- The Bakugan are huge and well modeled
- He dares with new ideas in the typical combat between creatures …
- … But they only work really well online
- The battles are eternal and somewhat boring
- Some other technical problem
