HUDSON’s Best Kept Secret - Bloody Roar Primal Fury Review.
Developed by Eighting.
Published by Hudson/Activision.
Gamecube[Emulated on Wii].
Released March 19th, 2002.
Purchased copy.
Zoanthrope Nation.
The decided to grant the new breed, the Zoanthropes, their own nation, having peacefully resolved the differences between Humans and their Zoanthrope cousins.
This new development seems to have mellowed out former villains like Xion and Shenlong.
The horrible experiments from the past are still haunting the Zoanthropes, so a tournament is being held to expose all of this; of course.
ARCADE is the story-delivery-system which has the same opening for each fighter, and all but one character has their own fully animated ending cutscene.
The animation quality is average at best, using a lot of shortcuts, like panning and zooming a still image, but it’s a nice step up in presentation, and not what I would have expected.
The other neat feature is some of the cast have different sub-bosses and end bosses, meaning the story isn’t too static, and ultimately is on par with most fighting game stories.
Superior Fighting Instincts.
Because I played the first 3 Bloody Roar games on a Dualshock, I had to adjust to using the Gamecube controller for this entry.
Thankfully the Gamecube Controller is a surprising;y perfect fit for a fighting game.
Regardless of the controller, the fundamentals of the series remain largely the same, so even if I hated using the Gamecube controller, my opinion wouldn’t have been solely based on that fact.
After years of trying, Nintendo still has yet to top this controller, imagine that!
Everything runs so much better, and it feels better to play, Primal Fury boasts about running at 60FPS, meaning the game has been sped up from its predecessor.
Controls are tighter, and more responsive, with more fluid animations; moves and actions now have to be made in a split-second to survive!
It would be hard to argue that this game is a total upgrade from Bloody Roar 3, even if it’s an enhanced port, it completely makes that game obsolete!
The loading times are almost none-existent here, and that might be benefit of the Gamecube disc’s smaller size, which would hypothetically have all the data closer together, thus being easier to read.
Turns out, the Gamecube (just try to ignore my Nintendo bias), was the perfect system for this game, it fixed most of the technical issues from Bloody Roar 3, and is better looking.
The fundamentals of this 3D fighting game are largely carried over from the previous game, Bloody Roar 3, though they’re enhanced in many ways.
The basics of combat revolve around lightly utilizing 3D space in an otherwise 2D plane, were both fighter’s movements are always relative to each other.
One fighter is determined the winner, if they have more health than their opponent when the in-game timer runs out, deplete their opponent’s health bar, or knock them out-of-bounds of the stage.
Players will have to combine proper spacing with the analog stick, attacking with the dedicated Punch/Kick buttons, and Guarding with the dedicated Guard Button, and combing the Guard Button for more advanced things like throws, or other advanced defensive options.
Combing punches and kicks creates basic combos, and combining analog stick motions and attacks create special moves.
Certain special moves, called guard attacks (I call them counters), are executed regardless of an opponent’s actions, and that fighter is invulnerable until that move’s animations are complete.
Combing Guard and holding the analog stick forward creates a basic throw, and just holding guard nullifies most incoming attacks.
A fighter can escape a throw by pressing the Punch, Kick, OR Guard button right before a throw would be executed, to cancel out the throw entirely.
With precise timing, a fighter can completely avoid all hit or block stun, and all incoming damage, this Guard escape is pulled off by pressing Guard right before an attack would land.
This has been improved by tethering it to the guard button exclusively, which makes it simpler to pull off, but the player has to correctly press guard with perfect timing, each time they want to pull this technique off.
Primal Fury has the best fighting system in the series so far, because the player has to master a mix of offense, defense, and grappling no matter which they prefer, thus no matter what a player’s preferred approach in fighting games, they still have to rely on their skills to dominate their opponent.
Ultimate Onslaught.
In place of a traditional super meter, each fighter has a “Beast Meter” that fills based on that fighter’s actions; it gradually fills on its own, when a fighter takes damage, and it fills at its fastest when a fighter is dealing damage.
When the meter fills with a blue bar, a fighter can Beastorize, or wait till the yellow bar fills completely; once transformed the Beast Meter will no longer fill, only drain under certain circumstances.
Beastorizing is done with the push of a button, that then gets re-purposed while transformed.
A Beast’s meter will drain whenever they take damage, and that fighter won’t gain any meter; if a fighter is knocked to the ground when their Beast Meter is completely drained, they will revert back to human form.
While in Beast Form, a fighter gains an additional attack button to perform more combos and special moves, their health regenerates to the dark-blue part of their health bar, and their combos will do chip damage to blocking opponents.
While transformed a fighter can gamble their entire Beast Meter for one devastating super move called a Beast Drive, that plays a small cutscene and deals a huge chunk of damage.
Each fighter has two of them, and every pair has the same two input commands: Two quarter-circle motions either towards OR away from the opponent and the beast attack button.
These inputs are now required because the dedicated Beast Drive Button has been removed, but the motions aren’t that difficult to begin with.
I don’t have a problem with this change, because Beast Drives still require a fighter to land them, otherwise they are throwing away their entire meter for nothing.
Replacing the dedicated transformation button, is a dedicated Hyper Beast Form button.
Now the worst mechanic in the series is even easier to abuse, and it may shock the reader, but they made the Hyper Beast Form even worse!
In Bloody Roar 3, entering this form, did give a fighter plenty of unfair advantages, but at least once a fighter’s 12 seconds were up, they couldn’t transform anymore.
The Hyper Beast Form can be used more than once within a match, and now all it does is drain the Beast Meter to zero, then revert that fighter to human form.
The worst part about this, is that there’s no option to toggle this shit off; absolutely no method to disable it.
The Beast Mechanic has the player approaching the standard super meter in a new and interesting way, ignoring bullshit like the Hyper Beast Form, it’s the best thing about the Bloody Roar series!
The Animal Kingdom.
The entire base roster from Bloody Roar 3 returns, and they’re even better this time around.
The base roster is comprised of 12 playable fighter, 2 returning unlockable fighter from Bloody Roar 3, and 2 entirely new characters were added as well, bringing the total roster to 16.
The faster and more responsive fighting engine makes every old character far more enjoyable to play, now they all feel like they should.
It’s great to see this series keeping it’s roster intact, and not arbitrarily shuffled around between entries for no reason.
I make one exception in the character roster being excellent, that would be Ganesha; he’s the absolute worst fighter in the roster, playing as him was so terrible, I almost wanted to quit playing altogether.
Thankfully nothing is unlocked by playing as Ganesha, he’s the worst character in the series so far, even worse than the albino circus gorilla man!
It just goes to show how fighting games become abysmal to play when the player isn’t playing their MAIN, it’s always important that players be able to choose their own character(we’re all looking at you Mortal Kombat 9/10).
He has no combos and the only real moves he has, require the input commands of a special move; I have no clue how to link his moves together, but of course when the COM player controls him, he’s a fighting god that can link devastating chain grabs back-to-back!
I was excited that his beast form was an elephant, but in practice it just makes a bigger, slower target.
Ganesha is just a worthless character.
Chronos is the new end boss for the ARCADE, he fills the role of the End Boss character really well.
In human form he has devastating and difficult to deal with combos, and a ton of busted super moves; many of his moves allow him to zip across the screen, and they come in at weird angles that are unintuitive to defend against.
His beast form is a perfect example of why every character in a fighting game needs to be within the same build, he turns into a half-sized penguin, which means the player will naturally assume their regular Mid/High attacks will miss.
Naturally the player can attack and defend against Chronos’ beast from, but I often found that I would forget this.
His beast form has plenty of tricky low attacks and special moves, and it’s his beast forms tricky nature that makes him hard to deal with.
Chronos is the only character that has TWO transformations, what replaces the usual Hyper Beast Form, is his Phoenix form.
His phoenix form has all the benefits of Hyper Beast Mode, but in many ways his normal size makes him easier to deal with, though he has even more devastating moves that can obliterate the opponent’s health bar.
He’s a blast to play, and he’s almost as broken as Uranus, the super boss of this game, he is the only character that somewhat justifies the Hyper Beast Form, because it’s approached from a different angle; Chronos the Phoenix is a great addition to the cast.
Primal Fury hosts two tough super bosses in the same game, up the amount of challenge, and keep in mind Xion is still a force to be reckoned with!
I’d say all the enhanced fighting mechanics put just about every character in the same league, they all have a chance to win.
I won’t lie and say this game has a balanced roster, but it has plenty of favorites, and victory will never come easy no matter who the opponent is.
I found my permanent main in Shenlong-The Tiger-, he makes the best use of the game’s faster speed, by having fast basic jabs, and combos that link into crushing attacks that either guard break or send an opponent flying.
He’s completely viable, solely in human form, but his Beast form is an exact copy of Long’s, so it’s just fine.
Primal Fury has a great roster, that has come along way since Bloody Roar 1, and they wisely only added a couple characters with each new entry, there’s no bloat, no filler, and plenty of potential choices.
Painted Fur.
A majority of the extra content in Primal Fury is unlocked by playing the ARCADE Mode a certain number of times; this has the benefit of allowing new players to try every fighter out.
SURVIVAL is carried over from Bloody Roar 3, but other staples make their glorious return/debut in Primal Fury(i.e. TIME ATTACK returns from Bloody Roar 2).
A new game mode called TEAM BATTLE MODE(which has a 2-player VS option as well) is introduced in Primal Fury.
It plays like the main entries in The King of Fighters series, where the player can select 3 playable fighters and fights against other teams of 3, until one team wins.
Teams can be cranked up to 5 fighters, but there are already plenty of repeating faces, so it’s best to keep the team number at 3.
The customization options from previous games have been re-purposed as “Cheats”.
Cheats are unlocked through the ARCADE, and after being absent from 2 entries, they all return, with some new additions!
Aside from character model modifications, removing the walls of a stage, or setting the difficulty to MAX, the player can set restrictions on the game’s transformations.
Characters can be locked into Human/Beast/Hyper Beast form, where the fighters can’t transform, and their actions no longer affect the beast meter.
As far as extras are concerned, this game has everything!
Not only is everything here and more, but most of it blends in with the other game modes, fulfilling my annoyances with Bloody Roar 2&3, it’s just great to have everything here, when the modern fighting game genre wants to nickle & dime the consumer!
The Perfect Specimen.
Bloody Roar Primal Fury is not for advanced player, but it’s not for beginners either, it’s for intermediate/adept players like me; I enjoy learning a new fighting game’s mechanics, but it stops being fun when I start having to train every single day.
The Gamecube was a great platform for this game, it has a great controller for fighting games, hardly any loading times, and it looks pretty good for a low-budget title.
Primal Fury has a stellar cast of really great fighters, and the upgraded fighting mechanics make almost every character enjoyable to play.
This game has plenty for casual fighting game fans, but plenty of advanced mechanics to master along the way.
Primal Fury is a total upgrade from Bloody Roar 3, it has a mix of all the best features in the series, which makes this one endlessly replayable.
Side Step Dodging Is the only feature required to turn this game into a legend.
Eighting & Hudson made Primal Fury like it was the last game in the series, and it shows, it’s the definitive Bloody Roar experience!
RATING:
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