Kaiju Big Battel: Fighto Fantasy - An exhaustively comprehensive review

It's been a while, huh? It's been some months since my previous rambles about Laser Lords, but this time I have not a tale of claymation and voice acting but of Kaijus and turn-based wrestling.

A wonderful combination, of course.

I recently had the pleasure of finishing Kaiju Big Battel: Fighto Fantasy, a JRPG made using the OHRRPGCE engine, and it left quite an impression. This is not my first foray into the wonderful world of OHRRPGCE and the genuine heart and quality it can offer, so my expectations going in were high. I'm glad to say the game lived up to my expectations!

As the name implies, KBB:FF (Kaiju Big Battel: Fighto Fantasy) takes strongly after Final Fantasy in both its combat system but also its general progression. Combat is strictly turn-based as in the oldest FF games, characters earn EXP through battle, level up, gain stats, learn new abilities and shuffle around equipment. Likewise, the plot starts out simple but steadily spirals out of control until all hell breaks loose and reality itself is at stake.

REALITY HINGES UPON THIS FIGHT

But who cares about that?! This is a game about KAIJU and BATTELS! It becomes immediately clear as the game's intro plays that the tone of the game is definitely more lighthearted and goofy than your typical fantasy quest. Things start not with a cozy town being raises by an evil empire but a title match between the quintessential face of the Kaiju Big Battel troupe, American Beetle, and the dastardly heel and head honcho of the villainous posse, Dr Cube!

FIGHTO!

Naturally, the villainous heel pulls out some heinously illegal moves with an iron chair and the fiendish SPACE DIMENSIONAL SLUG 1, setting off a chain of events that will lead to the END OF ALL THINGS. And that's bad. But what's even worse is that he totally ruined the title match. The Kaiju Big Battel troupe is completely scattered throughout time and space and the very fabric of reality is in danger of facing massive distortions.

Dr Cube truly is a giant jerk and you just don't want that guy to win, do you? 

Dr Cube is truly a master of villainous banter

So it's up to the Kaiju to track down Dr Cube through time and space, rescue the imprisoned and lost Kaiju and restore peace to the timeline. So they can win that title match, of course.

So let's dive into the world of Kaiju Big Battel: Fighto Fantasy and see what sets it apart, character-by-character, area-by-area and round things off by taking a short look at some other aspects of the game to round things off. It's going to be a long blog, so I made sure to bring some home-grown images.

Characters

The core of the game's charm comes from its cast of playable characters. Kaiju Big Battel: Fighto Fantasy's main cast is mostly taken from the real life wrestling troupe, which makes for a colourful cast of characters and an interesting challenge on how you convert a real property into a JRPG format using a limited game engine. In many ways KBB:FF succeeds at making character distinct and seem true to their real life personas, but there are some pitfalls and the game doesn't quite manage to avoid all of them. 

American Beetle

As the face of the group, Cube's opponent in the title match and the first character the player gets, American Beetle is the closest the game has to a default main character and main protagonist. It quickly becomes clear from Beetle's dialogue that his motivation is not quite as grand as the game's eventual cataclysmic stakes would imply, for the most part he just wants to get back to that title match so he can win the Championship Belt. 

This quickly becomes a recurring trend among the cast, as the cast never seems to be as worried as they ought to be about the potential ramifications of all their mucking around across spacetime. They might nominally be heroes and they are willing to lend a hand, but it should be clear that the Kaiju probably aren't the most competent or dependable bunch.

What Beetle really wants to do is to viciously pummel Dr Cube and his minions with his fists of fury and this is reflected clearly in his stat spread and skills. As the protagonist he has no dump stat with a lean towards physical attack and most of his skillset is focused around clean and simple punchy wrestling moves as well as taking on the inspiring leader role with cheers, training montages and taunts.

To my surprise, near the middle of the game Beetle actually briefly becomes the party's magical powerhouse with the party-wide fire-elemental magic attack Hero Creed, where he channels his heroic face-ness into a wave of fire with which he burns the enemies to a crisp. This actually led to me completely altering Beetle's equipment to focus exclusively on his Magic and MP stats to act as potent crowd control in random encounters. This is the sort of party planning that the game is rather skimpy on at first but strongly develops over the course of the game, it's always a good thing when a new ability makes you re-evaluate the best way to use your character.

Gasp!

Dr Cube asks the best questions. He has the best questions.

A rather interesting detail is that despite his name, American Beetle doesn't really come across as jingoistic or nationalistic at all. His default language is Spanish rather than English, his speech has some commonly known Spanish words there and there that aren't translated by the universal translator and Dr Cube even orchestrates a smear campaign against him by casting doubt on American Beetle's heritage. I was expecting American Beetle to be all about America, but it comes up about as much as his being a Beetle does. All in all he's just a righteous insect, which makes for a good central character for the rest of the cast to bounce off of.

Silver Potato

As the second party member, Silver Potato is the foil-wrapped foil to American Beetle. With a love for dancing, puns and hazardous cooking techniques, Silver Potato is definitely groovier than American Beetle. Silver Potato joins the party right from the start and early on acts as a voice of dubious reason to American Beetle, though he later falls into the role of the guy who makes puns and judges the worthiness of the often half-baked puns other party members attempt to make.

Like American Beetle, Silver Potato is mostly in it just to stop Dr Cube, and he brings an arsenal of food-themed spells to serve this purpose. Taking up the role of the black mage, he can butter up, boil, bake, microwave, mash and refrigerate the enemy to exploit elemental weaknesses as well as buff up allies' magic defense and chip away at enemy's magic defense. 

Alriiiight, time to #GetBaked 

Theming the skillset as "meal magic" is a fun way to go about it and it fits Silver Potato's nature as a foil-wrapped potato. It also makes for some amusing attack descriptions when Silver Potato uses his attacks and the omnipresent announcer calls the attack.

Silver Potato is actually somewhat of a powerhouse early on because his spells are pretty cheap to use, deal more damage than melee attacks and can exploit elemental weaknesses, but for the most part with him you'll just be figuring out what weaknesses each enemy have and then just using that spell over and over, most of his spells are just variations on the same basic "deal X elemental damage" spells and some of the enemy weaknesses aren't very intuitive, such as robots being resistant to electricity rather than weak to it or Tetris Blocks being weak to water. It'd have been interesting if some enemies shifted their elemental weaknesses somehow or had reactions to certain elements being used to add a bit more of a puzzle element to Potato's moveset.

>:[

The game drops some hints here and there of Potato's past and temporary involvement with Dr Cube as a heel and backstabbing of valued party member Pedro, but it seems to be limited to backstory lore only. Silver Potato doesn't get much to do plotwise once the party's numbers start to swell, it seems like his past actions are already behind him and forgiven by the start of the game's plot so it'd have been interesting if it somehow came back to haunt him at some point during the time travel escapades.

Dusto Bunny

Dusto Bunny is the incredibly handsome, impeccably brilliant and absolutely not disgusting or horrifying brain behind many of the Kaiju Big Battel's operations. He's an absolute star on the dance floor, but not very appreciated since he scatters dust all over the place. Dusto Bunny starts off offering support through the Kaiju Big Battel HQ, but he joins the party under the guise of a follower of Unut to help the party get access to a pyramid in the Egypt area of the game. If you don't know who Unut is then google it for yourself.

As the above image implies, Dusto is much more levelheaded than the other party members and generally serves as the solo voice of reason during the game, reminding characters that there is more at stake than a title belt and not every scenario can be solved by flexing. Dusto is the only character who really seems to grasp the giant risks associated with wanton time travel, though his protests mostly fall on deaf ears with both ally and foe alike.

Dusto is a mess. Dusto is a waste. Dusto is a big, fat mistake.

Dusto isn't all business however, he also hosts a radio show! He gets to perform a live segment with every party member if you choose to do so in the HQ. These segments do a good job of fleshing the characters out as Dusto asks them questions and often gets rather bizarre answers in return. They tend to go off the rail however, often forcing Dusto to cancel the segments early. These segments were great really, whenever I found a new party member I was always looking forward to interviewing them and never felt let down by the results.

Oh my!

In combat, Dusto takes on a supportive role as a White Mage, using a variety of dance moves to heal allies and cure status ailments, though he can also raise physical defenses and gets a very useful stunning ability. His ability to raise his own physical defense paired with his innately already good defenses and high HP make him surprisingly tanky as well, so once he joins the party the difficulty takes a noticeable drop. His basic single-target heal is pretty cheap and usable both inside and outside of combat, meaning you don't need to rely on items for all your healing needs anymore either.

His damage output is rather abysmal however, while his Magic stat is the highest in the whole party he gets no offensive spells, and his physical attack is the lowest of any party member. He does get the Hop ability which functions like the Jump command from FF, but it isn't very useful since the game has no telegraphed big attacks and you usually want your dedicated healer to be healing rather than spending two turns for a moderately powerful attack. Dusto can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction with one easy trick though.

Absolutely horrifying.

And no, not the wrestling kind of pins where you pin someone down. The wrestling kind of pins which you pin on your shirt. Or your incredibly gross and dusty body.

The game's equipment is classified into four distinct types: Weapons, Accessories, Gemstones and Pins.

Weapons are unique to every party member and for the most part follow a linear progression of power throughout the game, though often you can temporarily get ahead of the curve by getting weapons from sidequest. Accessories are for the most part shared among all party members and offer a variety of stat boosts or useful side effects. Gemstones are obtained by trading away Purple Gems which are sorta like the game's secondary currency and can be found hidden away in chests, and they offer boosts to HP, MP or elemental resistances.

Pins

Pins are unique however, they are mostly bought from the pin machine in the Kaiju Big Battel HQ which offers random pins for $100, and while most of them offer minor stat boosts or elemental resistances, there are some pins which can give characters extra abilities to use in combat without any MP cost. You can give characters a free healing ability, a double standard attack, or a non-elemental magic spell.

By giving Dusto the Ghost Pin, he gets to put that sky high Magic stat to use and spam a nonelemental magic attack whenever he doesn't need to use his healing or buffing spells. It took me entirely too long to discover this strategy, but it turns Dusto from one of the weaker party members into an absolute powerhouse. This is definitely recommended if you want to have the safety net that a healer provides without sacrificing any of the damage output, and it goes to show that thinking outside of the box can be very rewarding.

Pedro Plantain

Pedro is a revolutionary, a family man and a giant banana. He's also the best character in the game. Rounding up the party as the fourth member, Pedro is a Kaiju with a backstory and a clear vision he is not at all shy about. Hailing from an nonspecific South-American country, Pedro valiantly fought against unspecified tyranny alongside his brother Pablo and they formed a powerful wrestling duo, until in a shocking betrayal Silver Potato zombiefied Pablo! Somehow. I'm really not too sure on the details, but KBB:FF is gracious in giving the player enough information they need to make sense of the deep Kaiju Big Battel lore so that it both stays accessible to newcomers to the franchise while also having some nods for the seasoned fans to enjoy.

I screenshotted so many Pedro lines, and I'm gonna to cram them all in somehow.

While most of the Kaiju Big Battel are well-meaning but bumbling and don't follow any greater ideology than just protecting the world from evil Kaiju, Pedro stands out by having very strong stances on topics such as property, capitalism, power dynamics and monarchy. This frequently puts him at odds with the rest of the party, as his frequent warnings and observations are met with a resounding shrug or ignored altogether for the sake of short term benefits.

Capitalism in the moon. Tim Curry does not approve.

This makes for a lot of amusing moments where any typical JRPG hero would just blindly accept whatever is going on, but Pedro instead takes a moment to point out the root causes behind problems and how beating up Cube's minions isn't really a long-term solution to those problems. One of my favourite instances of this is in the 70's Boston area, where through timeline shenanigans the US is using Kaiju in the Vietnam war and there's a massive protest going on between the side who fights for Kaiju civil rights and disagree with Kaiju being forced to participate in the war as second-rate citizens and the side who thinks Kaiju are terrible and shouldn't be allowed to even serve in the first place. And then this happens.

Hell yes. Any other JRPG protagonist would have just shrugged and waited for an actual dialogue prompt to come along, but Pedro is here to point out that Nervous Cop's both sides argument is in fact very stupid. I love that. You zooking tell that NPC how dumb he is you gorgeous, marvelous banana man. 

Another moment that just had me laughing is when an NPC informs the party that he's taken the liberty of opening the next area they need to go to as thanks for their help and Pedro just interjects with this line.

Pedro is always on. He never turns off. It doesn't even have to make sense, it can be a total non-sequitur, but if you say one of several keywords Pedro will be there to remind you that you've strayed from the righteous path. And the entire rest of the party will be there all the same since this is just how it always is. 

Indeed he is.

Anyway, Pedro doesn't disappoint in the combat department either, using a variety of guerrilla warfare tactics for a more versatile moveset than the previous characters. He can sabotage enemy attack power, lecture down their magic attack, or expose vulnerabilities to lower physical defense, but he can also buff the party's attack power with propaganda and fiestas, sacrifice HP to redistribute to allies and summon his family members to deliver powerful but MP costly attacks.

This varied moveset makes Pedro useful for most encounters for both crowd control and general damage dealing purposes, but he especially shines in boss battles since boss enemies aren't immune to his attack/magic attack debuffs, which cuts that stat by 20% each time it's used. Part of what makes certain endgame bosses so hard in the first place is their love for purging buffs and debuffs to neuter this strategy's effectiveness.

One issue I do have is that it's not really clear which of Pedro's actions count as magic or phyasical attacks. Lecturing enemies seems like a magic attack, but then he seems to just throw books at enemies so maybe it's physical? Is making the enemies eat a tasty salsa magic or melee?! Who knows?! I don't! I wish the game would tell me!

Slo Feng

SLO FENG IS THE NUMBER ONE BEEFIEST KAIJU OF ALL KAIJU BIG BATTEL, TOWERING OVER ALL OTHERS LIKE A GIANT FROM THE DAYS OF MYTH, HAILING FROM SWEDEN AND POSSESSING ALL THE STRENGTH OF THE MIGHTY ODIN HIMSELF. FOES COWER BEFORE HIS MIGHTY HAMMER AND HIS AWESOME BIKE. 

... That's what Slo Feng says, anyway. He's right about being a beeftower though! Slo Feng easily outbeefs the other Kaiju, but those boisterous boasts do little to hide Slo Feng's slobbishness and lackadaisical attitude towards anything that doesn't involve him getting more famous. Slo Feng's the fifth Kaiju to join the party and he doesn't seem all that interested in any of that spacetime warping or the great responsibilities that come with being a hero.

I see no problems with this approach

This boisterousness and Slo Feng's somewhat lacking wits make most of his dialogue ridiculous non-sequiturs and it's pretty amazing. Slo Feng perfectly embodies everything that makes the Kaiju ineffectual and unreliable heroes and it becomes pretty clear from certain interactions such as his interview for Dusto's radio show that perhaps behind that grandiose exterior is a more fragile, vulnerable Slo Feng who puts up a mask to cope with the inherent existential angst of living in an absurd reality, knowing full well that at any time reality itself could come completely undone as the stakes of the Kaiju Big Battels fluctuate between arguments over who ate the last slice of a pizza and dealing with unstoppable multiversal threats.

Anyway, Slo Feng's immense bulk and lazy attitude translate over directly into his gameplay, having a chunkier HP pool than any other character and innately high attack strength, but his lazy attitude also means all his special attacks take between 1 and 3 turns to charge up.

A 3-turn charge attack can be very powerful, but...

This is actually quite a problem, since these charge times really add up for the stronger attacks, and that sort of time investment just takes too long during random battles which you want to deal with as quickly as possible and boss battles where you don't want to lock yourself into using one attack for several turns in case you need to adapt to a move used by the boss. 

This means that Slo Feng mostly just sticks to using his basic attack, which thankfully can be boosted with a Hit 2x pin as well as his powerful ultimate weapon, but he just doesn't bring the same level of utility other party members bring. So while the integration of his character into gameplay functionality is good, the result isn't as satisfying to use. The one viable strategy for really using Slo Feng's special abilities I do see is to use one of his multiple round charge attacks and having the rest of the party focus on buffing him for a powerful OHKO attack, but it's a gimmicky strategy at best. 

It is satisfying however

I'm not sure how exactly I'd fix it. Perhaps making it so that while his specials do lock you into using them over several turns, you get some sort of benefit during those charge turns? Perhaps Slo Feng takes less damage while charging and draws enemy attention, or perhaps he performs his special ability each turn but he's locked into that same action for several turns. As it is Slo Feng's abilities just feel rather inefficient, and as suitable as it is to his character, it makes him a party member I didn't use frequently.

Robox

Out of all characters, Robox is the most mechanically complex and undergoes the most development. A robotic Kaiju, Robox was created to combat evil monsters by the Kaiju Regulatory Comission in the 70's. Despite his robotic speech patterns, Robox seems to have some level of sentience, free will and capacity to understand and process emotions.

In somewhat of a twist, it turns out the KRC is less benevolent than they seem at first, forcing Robox to go through a series of hacking tests, making him fight failed experiments and installing a tracking device so they can always follow Robox's moves. Robox doesn't take to kingly to figuring all of this out, and these segments all have a more somber and sinister tone to them than the rest of the game.

Yes, this definitely is what hacking looks like.

Robox's special talent outside of combat is hacking into computers to collect data and open electronic locks. While every party member has a special ability for use outside of combat, these hacking segments are unique in that every hacking segment plays out like a distinct mini-adventure. These segments start out rather simple, but as the game goes on they start to become increasingly more bizarre and sinister.

This one goes in the bizarre category.

I ask myself this question every day.

Most of these hacking segments can be played over if desired, but the game constantly plays around with its own rules in these hacking segments, there are many secret triggers for other events and easily missed bits of dialogue hinting at some darker corruption infecting these hacking segments, perhaps an influence from the timespace distortions? One recurring trend that somehow even works its way into the real world is the question haunting Robox of what happened to "Robert".

Dusto are you ok? Are you ok? Are you okay Dusto?

One particular hacking segment takes place inside Robox's programming himself, with a map shaped like Robox and friendly NPCs wandering through Robox's body who turn out to be past AIs used for old Robox models. The only interactive element is a switch to purge all failed AIs. This irreparably breaks all NPCs and surrounds Robox's body with a swarm of robotic ghosts wildly moving around. Normally if you finish a hack and try it again everything is reset to the state the hack is in before Robox entered it, but in this particular hacking segment...

These hacking segments were absolutely one of my favourite parts of the game, so I'm glad the game had plenty of terminals to hack! They are just constantly changing around, like one hack which plays out like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel which doesn't even involve any walking around! They really reminded me of small quests I used to make in a very simple JRPG-maker engine, though far more polished and effective in conveying a certain tone. The love and care put into the game is really clear from these segments as the game could have easily just put in a rather boring puzzle system instead, but this is far more interesting!

And that isn't even the only reason to be excited about Robox joining the party.

SCANNING...

That's right, Robox is the game's Blue Mage, which means he can scan enemies in order to gain a small stat boost and learn new skills. Almost every enemy in the game can be scanned this way and gives unique skills, meaning a player who takes the time and effort to Scan every enemy will be rewarded with significant stat increases and the most versatile skillset in the game. I'd even go so far as to say a dedicated Robox is the single most powerful party member in the game, having access to a giant toolbox of skills that cover all needs from healing to magical and psyhical attacks as well as buffs, debuffs and status ailments. Basically, if another party member can do it, chances are Robox might be able to do it better anyway.

The game is also very generous with Scans, you're able to backtrack to old areas to scan the enemies there but the game also has a fight arena where you can rematch enemies and bosses from every area as well as fight some bonus bosses so you don't need to even backtrack to get all scans. And yes, even bosses that you can refight but Robox wasn't around for during Round One can still be scanned for new skills. These scans can even be sold at a premium to buy certain items for back in the HQ, so there is an incentive to scan enemies you've scanned previously. I wish other games would take notes on how to make a Blue Mage character that feels rewarding without being a total pain in the ass to master. That's looking at you, Final Fantasy.

Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup

Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup is not like the other heroes. He is edgy. He's an anti-hero. He's Chaotic Neutral. He doesn't like the label but he totally is a rogue. Joining as the final mandatory party member, it is disputed whether Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup contains any real chicken, but that can and those preservatives do contain a powerful force of will that is solely focused on one thing: Completely irresponsible and reckless behaviour.

A loose cannon, Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup is not an ally to be trusted, but perhaps the ally the Kaiju need nonetheless. The end of the world and a group of villains he gets to punch without people disapproving might just be motivator enough for Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup to get along with the other Kaiju. But on his own terms, of course.

Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup sensed tension and came as fast as he could.

Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup's brand of recklessness and bluntness is just what the Kaiju need most when he joins the party. As the timeline is going haywire and things hit rock bottom for the heroes, American Beetle is seperated from the rest of the group and forced to wander alone until he is completely surrounded by enemies on all sides. Luckily, Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup is there to scare them all away with the power of his persona alone and give American Beetle the motivation to keep going despite all odds the way only a rogue could.

A question we must all ask ourselves at some point of our lives.

This dynamic frequently puts Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup at odds with the rest of the Kaiju, there is some sense of unease between them, and only Slo Feng seems to really get along well with Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup since they are both kinda just terrible heroes, though at least Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup will readily admit it. This makes him a good source of comedy, and had me wishing he'd joined the party sooner! Whether it's his put-downs of Dusto, broing with Slo Feng or being completely dismissed altogether by Pedro and Silver Potato, Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup is a controversial and divisive addition to the cast.

I like how the UI just cannot decide on what to call Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup

In battle, Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup takes on the role of a reckless powerhouse fighter, using moves that sacrifice HP or risk hurting allies for extra damage as well as increasing his Rage Lv. whenever taking or dealing damage, which can then be unleashed for a powerful attack or to replenish MP. This suitably doesn't make Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup much of a team player, his rage builds up fastest when he fights alone, though doing so isn't really a viable tactic like my image up there would imply!

The Rage Lv. mechanic is interesting in that it rewards an aggressive playstyle since self-inflicted damage also increases Rage Lv., but in general it feels like the Rage Out skill's damage output doesn't scale as strongly with Rage Lv. as it should, it takes a lot of Rage Lv. to equal the powerful attacks of other party members. This is fixed somewhat by special equipment that increases Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup's starting Rage Lv. during combat, but a higher Rage Out damage multiplier and some method of increasing Rage Lv. gain during battle from 10 per hit to 20 or somehow tying it to the amount of damage inflicted/received would have made the mechanic more impactful.

Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup is still a fun party member to use nonetheless, he makes for a fine addition to the party's damage output against both singular targets and groups and against lategame bosses who like to use multiple attacks per round his Rage Lv. can rack up decently quick to make for a powerful finisher.

... So, are you sick of the name Kung Fu Chicken Noodle Soup yet?

French Toast

What is a Final Fantasy-inspired JRPG without a gimmicky secret bonus character?! Not a very good JRPG, I'd say! So it's a good thing KBB:FF has its own gimmicky secret bonus character in the form of the exquisite French Toast. Joining the party as a reward for beating a sidequest late in the game, French Toast is a suspiciously waffle-like Kaiju and part of a well-balanced breakfast. He is also aggressively French. He is so aggresively French in fact that even the universal translator doesn't know what to make of his "Sacre blue!" exclamations. And that's a shame, since it's the only thing he ever says.

There's not much to say about French Toast plotwise and sadly he has no special overworld abilities either, so let's just skip to French Toast's combat utility!

It's free real estate.

French Toast is far too snooty and French to listen to any commands the player has, so he won't equip any pins that bestow abilities or use any items in battle. Like any true Frenchman, he fights by going berserk and tossing various objects at the enemies until they stop moving. This can range from water balloons to pillars, houses, steel lockers, flaming meatballs, television sets, sofas, vases or French Toast himself. Problem is, French Toast decides what he's going to toss, so whether the outcome is good or bad is a toss-up.

And yes every action has its own omnipresent dramatic announcer pun

Sadly though, most of the outcomes are somewhat subpar. While a few of the actions are rather powerful and French Toast occasionally hits an enemy's elemental weakness, he also often fumbles and uses a weak attack or hits an elemental resistance or immunity. All actions are also only single-targeting and they don't have any added utility of lowering stats or inflicting statuses, or added bonuses for the party or Waffle Toast himself. There is one single exception though...

AMOR VINCIT OMNIA

Very, very rarely French Toast pulls out an overpowered healing move that recovers far more HP and HP to the whole party than they will likely ever have. It's funny when it happens, but not really reliable.

French Toast does have good base stats, but he also runs into the problem of not having any equipment so he falls behind the rest of the party when they start obtaining their ultimate equipment and skills. 

Since French Toast is an uncontrollable Berserker and a secret character, I think his attacks can stand to be a lot more powerful than they currently are. You lose any sort of control, so it would be nice if more of his attacks had a high damage output, if some of them additionally lowered enemy stats/inflicted status ailments and if he had some powerful supporting moves thrown in as well such as party-wide increases to Attack and Magic or Defense and Magic Defense. As it stands there's not much reason to use him other than for flavour, and that's kind of a shame isn't it?

Dr. Cube

Any proper band of heroes needs a proper villain to defeat. And Kaiju Big Battel has one clear main villain in the form of Dr. Cube. Armed with a scalpel, a doctorate in plastic surgery, a legion of minions and a megalomaniacal attitude, Dr. Cube will stop at nothing to create a world with him on top as the singular perfect being, loved and feared by all.

Dr. Cube starts out not appearing much, mostly working behind the screens and delegating the menial work to his flunkies, he shows up now and then to taunt the heroes but the banter tends not to go on for too long until one of his henchmen is sent out to battle you.

It's only from the Boston segment and onward that we get more of a glimpse of what Dr. Cube is like and that we learn he's actually that guy as he starts to personally stick it to the heroes and common decency itself when he takes an active role in a propagandizing campaign against Kaiju.

And right during Cube's CubeForce+ supplements commercial!

Cube starts hurling insults left and right, calling into question American Beetle's birth certificate, calling Dusto degenerate, calling dear sweet precious Pablo and terrorist and worst of all calls Slo Feng forgettable! All the while he is watching terrible sitcoms on TV, getting filthy cheeto powder over the record player and urging people to buy his terribly-produced merchandise, chumming it up with high-profile CEOs, causing mass pollution to force people to buy his real estate on the moon and ripping people off by charging them to play his crappy RPG maker game.

Oh we will get to you, CUBE RPG.

That all sums up to a sort of familiar image, right? Kaiju Big Battel isn't the first game I've played that throws in indisputable similarities between the villain and a certain prominent political figure. I'm sure you don't need me to point out who.

This one actually got a big guffaw out of me. It just comes at you out of nowhere.

It seems that a lot of people don't really like that sort of thing, but I actually enjoy how topical it is. That sort of awful personality just fits in perfectly as a villain in a game that doesn't take itself too seriously. Sometimes reality is just surreal enough to work in bizarre fiction, and it makes pummeling the guy during the final boss battles all the more satisfying.

Areas

Like any decent JRPG, Kaiju Big Battel has a variety of areas to explore. These follow a chronological order, going from Egypt under the rule of Cleopatra all the way to a bad future ruled by the villainous Dr Cube. The areas are all visually distinct and gradually become more diverse in terms of progression structure and general lay-out as well.

Egypt/Rome

The first two real areas, Egypt and Rome, follow a pretty similar structure where they start out with a monster-infested chunk followed by a safe and NPC-filled town area and capped of by another monster-infested chunk with a boss at the end. It's a pretty typical lay-out by JRPG standards.

There's a lot more beef than in the typical JRPG though.

Moscow

Things get more interesting in the third main area, Moscow. The game takes a huge leap forwards in time and the mayhem caused by Dr. Cube becomes far more clear as the whole city is deserted and put under quarantine. Monsters roam all over the streets, houses and factories are boarded up and there's not a soul in sight. There is no city area, the only safe havens are a few houses, but they're all sealed with locks, and you have no keys.

It's an interesting way to ramp up the stakes and severity, in a game with a more sinister tone it'd almost be like something out of a horror game, but that horror is somewhat lessened by the mushroom people running about and the >:[ shaped tetronimoes tossing themselves at you.

Yes I am re-using this image. Who's going to stop me? >:[

The pacing of the map is very different as a result. The path forward is initially unclear, so I actually found myself exploring the entire quarantined area and the few unlocked buildings before figuring out a secret entrance to one of the buildings, meaning I had already familiarized myself somewhat with the area by then. 

Once you enter this area, you gradually start to collect keys to the locked houses as well as supplies for the survivors who are holed up inside. It's a bit of back and forth to get the keys in sequence and open the corresponding locks, it somewhat reminds me of how you gradually open up more rooms in the mansion in Resident Evil 1 as you collect more keys. This is where most of the exploring happens if you weren't a dummy like me and quickly found out about the secret entrance.

Once you do collect everything, a process that has several enemy encounters and a scattered puzzle here and there along the way, the game opens up one final dungeon where you tackle the root of the mushroom infestation problem. The dungeon itself isn't too interesting, though I do commend the game for making the boss battle a team-up of two enemy Kaiju. It's just a shame the battle itself is still pretty easy, I'd say that Moscow is still in the easy part of the game, the difficulty only starts to ramp up in...

Boston

Boston is probably my favourite area in the game. The city aesthetic really reminds me of Earthbound, and the setting feels very well-realized. Unlike the previous time periods, we get to explore more different facets of Boston since it is divided into four distinct chunks that you can travel between by subway.

I like the small subway cutscene, the NPCs are different each time.

You start with only the Riverside area unlocked, which has some NPCs to talk with as well as several buildings to explore. The middle building is the robotics facility which progresses the plot, but there's also two other buildings filled with apartments. I appreciate you can actually explore several of these buildings optionally, some just have an NPC inside, but another houses a tiny mini-dungeon as part of a larger sidequest. The level of care and detail really shows, most rooms have some unique furniture scattered around, it goes a long way to making the area feel more lived-in and distinct.

Groovy bowling trophy.

Once you do finish the robotics lab the subway station becomes accessible and so do the other three chunks: the commercial district, the park and the ballpark. You can explore these in any order, though you'll need to explore all three before you really have a clear idea of what's going on and what you need to do as even if you do reach the first point of progress it's not immediately clear what you have unlocked.

The ducks are not forthcoming with hints.

The scale of these areas really outstrips anything the game threw at you beforehand, each chunk is several screens big and has its own shops to buy goods from, buildings to explore and a huge amount of NPCs to chat with. The areas are also all distinct, the commercial area is riddled with businessmen wandering outside of a huge tower, the park area is suitably green as well as being the biggest area with the most NPCs to talk to, and finally the ballpark has a souvenir shop to go into, a club, some food stalls and even an optional battle gauntlet with a giant hamburger bear.

BEANS and COLA. Oh yes.

Eventually you have to work your way through the huge skyscraper, which is the main dungeon of the area. That section really reminds me of when you have to scale a skyscraper in Earthbound, you go up and down using the elevator, and each floor is distinct and there's a lot of furniture and whatnot to examine for funny flavour text. It might be my favourite dungeon in the whole game, it's definitely up there at least.

Before you reach the top and confront Dr Cube, you actually get to battle with the CEO of the company running the tower, though the game totally breaks with its established mechanics up to that point to deliver this whammy.

It's not a particularly hard battle, you and the CEO take turns using one of five commands to lower each other's Integrity Points, but it's still a neat gimmick. It once again shows the love and care that went into the game, and how these elements become more prominent as the game goes on.

Once Dr. Cube's radio podcast has been taken off the air there is one final underground dungeon left to traverse in the Park area, though the dungeon itself feels rather generic after everything else the Boston area offered. There's already been several underground/cave areas. The dungeon isn't too long though, and finishing the dungeon leads to one of the game's bigger twists and another favourite area of mine.

The Abyss

The Abyss is the first area in the game, but you only explore a tiny part of it as the game's tutorial on world map navigation. Then it returns with a vengeance when the timeline starts to deteriorate and reality collapses in on itself and all time periods merge into a bizarre amalgamation.

Yum yum crunchy soup time

It's wacky, it's nonsensical, and I love it. The structure of the world is more along the lines of the early areas, starting with some monster-inhabited zones, then a safe haven NPC town and finishing it off with a dungeon of sorts, but the game cleverly masks this by having a lot of weird things happen during this segment of the game.

The game puts in a lot of effects in the monster-infested areas to really sell the feeling of the timeline falling apart as well as making the area distinct, there's lighting effects, the music and sound effects are distorted and the world sometimes snaps, whereas the NPC town is filled with strangely altered NPCs, lots of inane dialogue and a tileset that combines elements of all other areas in the game thus far. The whole thing rather reminds me of Magicant, and I've always had a fondness for areas like that. 

Shoes. Shoes. Oh my god shoes.

The area also houses the game's obligatory Colosseum, where you can rematch with every enemy and boss that has been encountered thus far. This feature is quite useful for picking up on any Scans that Robox missed out on and also insures that no monsters/bosses are ever truly unavailable to the player. Even the bosses that you fought back when you didn't have Robox in the party yet can be Scanned here to learn powerful new skills and gain bonus stats! You might even face some bonus bosses, or perhaps even unlock a secret character.

Nice Citizen Kane reference there.

The area is capped off with a small boss rush that consists of altered versions of the bosses faced in the past areas, though to get to them you first have to go through the shattered remains of those areas. The shattered remains mercifully don't contain any other encounters, so they mostly just work to build up suspense for the big boss of the area, and quite possibly the first real challenge of the game.

Big boy

All bosses up to this point have been pretty easy, their damage output isn't very high and easily covered by your healer and they often use turns to apply minor status effects or lower stats, which isn't too hard to overcome with a full party. Vegetius doesn't mess around though. He uses a special boss music and his damage output is through the roof, he can easily knock out some party members in one attack and can hit the whole party for significant damage, he actually forced me to use items and consider my turns carefully! 

Unlike most bosses he's quite resilient too, so couples with his offense you can't just hammer through by spamming powerful attacks since often you have to focus on healing your attackers instead and your healer isn't always guaranteed to be conscious either!

Much as I welcome this challenge, I do feel the difficulty curve here is a pretty big spike. I'd rather the game had a smoother difficulty curve that gradually got harder, but overall I'd say the game's only hard in the first hour or so and from the Abyss area on, barring some random encounters with a large group of enemies in older areas.

But with Vegetius defeated, it is time for the final area!

The Moon

While the timeline anomalies have been dealt with, Dr. Cube's plans have yet to be foiled and have actually succeeded in the bad future that the last segment of the game takes place in. The Earth has become so polluted that everyone's been forced to colonize to Dr Cube's real estate on the Moon.

I like that for the final segment there's more focus than ever on Dr Cube. His presence slowly builds up over the game, falls by the wayside for the Abyss segment, but it makes its biggest appearance in the big finale. 

u5nj7b56o8-69l=08l;5=9-

The structure of the level itself deviates from the norm again, this time around the level consists of a small hub room leading to various areas such as the staff lounge, the cloning room or the indoor pool area which can be tackled in any order. The place is riddled with funny examination dialogue and with the threat of the total erasure of reality dealt with the game takes a deep dive into zaniness with clones of each party member serving as bosses.

Eww.

These aren't the first clones to appear, two have appeared earlier in the game, but the ones here all get their own little cutscenes and gimmicks to make the fights more unique. The game definitely saved the best boss battles for last! American Baddle here turns out to actually not be evil since American Beetle's sweat is just so Pure and Good, so he just wants a one-on-one fight against his "father", which actually winds up teaching American Beetle his ultimate skill: "Sí, se puede"

Wikipedia tells me this is Spanish for "Yes, we can!" and has long been the motto of the United Farm Workers of America, and has since been taken up by other activist groups. The phrase has also been widely adopted by other labor unions and civil rights organizations and drew widespread political and media attention as a rallying cry during the U.S. immigration reform protests.

So, that's interesting. Loving the distinct take they went for with American Beetle here, it took some diving around but I definitely get the sense the developer put in these hints perhaps hoping someone might catch on to them.

One chair, ah ah ah!
Two chairs, ah ah ah!
Three chairs, ah ah ah!
Four chairs, ah ah ah!

Slo Fang is a copy of Slo Feng, and naturally he's a vampire who loves to count things. Being a vampire, his attacks can drain health, and he also can use some of Slo Feng's powerful moves without having to charge them up over several turns. He really hits like a truck but you still need to keep up the pressure. Again, the difficulty in this part of the game is significantly ramped up and it's a welcome change of pace since by this point your characters should have their full skillsets and hopefully their ultimate abilities and equipment as well.

Both the CIA logos and the NOPE propaganda deserve to be posted, so two images this time.

Pedro and Pedro's dead zombiefied brother's clones turn out to be CIA agents in disguise, engaging in a mass-scale surveillance operation to weed out any opposition to the status quo upheld by the current unjust regime, interfering in foreign politics to delegitimize heads of state that do not serve their interests like Cleopatra as well as put in power a puppet regimes that are friendly to Dr Cube like they did in Rome.

So, you know, typical CIA stuff.

In battle the brothers like to use their Propaganda attack to lower the entire party's attack and magic stats, so if the battle drags on long enough it becomes near impossible to inflict any damage at all, so it's a good idea to strike swiftly and decisively. As one should when dealing with the CIA.

#YOLO

Brobox is Robox but he's also a total bro. I love the bored expression and text on his cardboard that say YOLO and BRO. He's also visibly drunk during battle and does nothing but spawn Cubed Bots that use rather potent magical attacks that also strip magic defense while being immune to most elements. This means that the longer the fight goes on and the more enemies there are, the more damage you'll start taking.

Only by causing the Cubed Bots to self-destruct when they are defeated can you damage Brobox, so you have to make sure you keep pace with Brobox's continuous spawns, meaning you have to change your tactics up and cannot rely on stat debuffing or powerful AoE elemental effects. I really like how the game mixes up its bosses like this!

Oh god it's a Nice Guy

Nice Guy Chowder Soup is the most heinous and threatening of all the clones. Behind that innocent smile and that nice façade lies a cold heart filled with nothing but ruthless evil. In his free time he loves to do nothing more than HUG PUPPIES and DONATE TO CHARITY. Most likely this is a convoluted plan involving EVIL PUPPIES and EVIL CHARITY.

Do not be fooled, this is the hardest challenge the party faces in the game. The existential dread of nonexistence and the encroaching corruption propagated by Dr. Cube are like a limp moist candle in a blizzard compares to the radiant clash of a billion supernovas that is the vileness of Nice Guy Chowder Soup. Expect to die many times and for Nice Guy Chowder Soup to literally jump out of the screen and tear your ass a new one repeatedly. You have been warned.

Oh god oh no Pedro oh god please don't die Pedro.

If somehow though some miraculously miraculous miracle of miracles the miracle happen and you actually manage to temporarily stave off Nice Guy Chowder Soup then congratulations, you have beaten the game and from here on everything else is just an epilogue.

Anyway, once you do beat all the clones and have explored every area, Dr Cube's personal room opens up and with it the most amazing part of the game begins.

Cube RPG is Awesome, and Here's Why

Yeeees

YEEEEEEEEEEEEES

And so we enter CUBE RPG. Dr. Cube's very own RPG. It is the most absolutely wonderful mess of a game ever made and I loved absolutely every second of it. Every detail of the game is perfect in how absolutely sloppy and garbage it is. It is every cliche about a poorly made RPG Maker game rolled into one and was handled with delicate care to make clear just how little care was put into the game. It is peak Stylistic Suck.

It has everything. The music are all terrible MIDI renditions of classical music. It has terrible graphics, lazy walk cycles, a complete lack of any collision anywhere meaning you can walk through every wall, NPC dialogue is misspelled and the text often doesn't even fit in the text box. There are random memes scattered around, the game constantly refers to mechanics that aren't even in the game. You can examine a treasure chest and it says you got an item but you actually don't since it was just a text box without any triggers and the game doesn't have an item system. The King NPC is inexplicably a Freddie Mercury reference. Dr Cube's sprite is way too big and overlaps with other sprites.

EPIC GAMERS RISE UP

LERGEND OF ZORLDA

When a character joins your party you get a total non sequitur backstory for the character and you can just walk though the walls to enter the door to skip having him even join the party. And if you don't let him join the party his dialogue will still appear in cutscenes despite him not being in the party.

DADDY 😍

Every time you enter the world map your location will be set at the castle even if you exited another area, and every time the game will repeat the same tutorial about navigating the world map and what areas you need to explore. The world map is also just a giant placeholder backdrop and visually it makes absolutely no sense.

Here's the final product

If you enter a dungeon you will find out it is incredibly ugly and there's random encounters all over the place. The encounters are terrible. The enemies all die in one hit and they barely do any damage at all. You can choose between using regular and special attacks but they all do the exact same thing. Enemies will inflict status effects on you but no status effects were programmed into the game so they just do nothing instead. Often enemy sprites are just offscreen altogether. Attack animations are wonky and often glitchy. You don't level up or get any items and you can't flee either so the combat is entirely pointless. It's perfect.

SQUARAGA 

You can get your second party member here as well, who is the designated healer of the party. His only action is a healing spell, and he can only target enemies with it since that's the default targeting system. You cannot even skip his turn, so all he does is heal the enemies. It's the best thing.

This is also where the first boss battle happens, against none other than the HORRIFIC DUSTO BUNNY. Dusto Bunny doesn't even have a sprite so they just used a real life photograph of Dusto Bunny with some filers applies while a terrible midi rendition of RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES plays. All Dusto Bunny does is use a weak healing spell you can easily outdamage. It is the best boss battle in the game.

YES! YES! YES!

This repeats for several other dungeons, the water dungeon, fire dungeon and final castle. The water dungeon like any proper water dungeon is a pain to navigate and is filled with invisible warp points while the fire dungeon lets you just walk straight across the lava to the boss to skip the whole thing. And of course each dungeon features its own amazingly terrible NPC dialogue, horrific boss battle backdrops and in the final dungeon's case beta tester and developer notes that were never taken out of the full release start to pop up as well. So let me take this time to unload some of the images I saved.

Okay, this is epic

DRCUBE DESTROYS UNION LEADER WITH LOGIC AND FACTS

Shut up Hell Monkey

HELL MONKEY BTFO

👆😎👆

Once you do make it to the final boss it turns in in an epic twist that Freddie Mercury was the villain all along! If this makes no sense to you then you are completely right, it doesn't make any sense. You fight some glitched enemies and then face the final boss, French Toast, and as the game reaches its end screen it glitches out so badly that it completely wrecks the Moon Base's security system and unlocks the path to facing Dr Cube.

Dr Cube is holding my mind because it is BLOWN

RIP

10/10, GOTY every year

Just beautiful. This whole segment is absolutely amazing and I cannot think of a better way to hype up a villain than by forcing you play their terrible game. I just cannot overstate the quality of this whole experience.

The finale

The game-breaking glitch opens up the door to the final confrontation with Dr Cube, who in typical video game Doctor boss came prepared with a giant battlemech to pilot and a villainous speech.

Oh

So, no speeches this time. I really was expecting a speech of some sorts where every party member gets their turn to retort but Dr Cube was one step ahead of me, so that really just made me laugh. That laugh quickly fades though, as Dr Cube initiates an unwinnable boss fight where he's immune to damage and uses 9999 damage attacks. Ouch.

It's only after a dramatic scene and some speeches that the REAL final battle begins. Dr Cube's still got powerful attacks and he's able to erase stat buffs/debuffs as well as heal himself, so you need to take down the components of his mech before dealing with Dr Cube's cockpit. The battle starts out pretty hard since Dr Cube gets several actions per turn, but his AI script doesn't compensate for the removal of his mech arms so once you're rid of them he won't power up or respawn them, making the fight a lot more manageable once you do get rid of them.

With Dr Cube finally defeated, that's the end of the game, right? Well, not exactly...

Wait what

In somewhat of an odd twist, Dr Cube is dragged away by all the timeline goop monsters that were roaming around in the Abyss. As the party finds Dr Cube's helmet but no Dr Cube in sight and are then surrounded by a swarm of the goops, they form into some weird Dr Cube/Goop hybrid called BEELZEGOOP.

Beelzegoop fights similarly to Vegetius in that he uses powerful Distortion-elemental attacks. He can deal significant damage and easily reduce the whole party to single-digit HP and frequently resets stat buffs and debuffs. However, if you've beaten the bonus boss you can get a piece of equipment that bestows immunity to Distortion attacks, which turns the fight into a joke since the boss can't lay a finger on that party member. 

It didn't really strike me like the game needed a surprise final final boss like this, it comes out of nowhere and the whole timeline thing seemed like it was dealt with already, but it does transition nicely into the ending in which the party uses the Super Dimensional Slug One to go back in time to the title match at the start of the game and pummel Dr Cube senselessly while a confused Silver Potato and American Beetle look on.

Wouldn't this cause a time paradox?

And so ends Kaiju Big Battel: Fighto Fantasy! 

Additional notes

What a game, right? I had a lot to say about it! There are more things to say about it, such as the game's boppin' beats, the copious sidequests or the way the game handles its NPCs, so let's briefly do that!

The beats are, as states, very much boppin'. They really manage to fit the game's strange aesthetic of Kaiju Big Battel and the game has a pretty large number of tracks as well, there's several different boss themes for example and the area music is all great as well. The OHRRPGCE engine has its limitations in what it can do graphically and mechanically, but there is nothing keeping it from having good music, which makes me glad that the two games I played both include good OSTs, it really adds to the experience! Seriously, check it out!

The game has several sidequests, which gradually open up as the game progresses. Some of these sidequests are pretty short, but a lot of them span throughout the whole game and reward ultimate equipment or skills. The game is nice enough to have a dedicated sidequest folder in the HQ menu screen, and once you reach The Abyss there is also an NPC who'll offer free tips on how to solve any currently unsolved sidequests as well as directions to sidequests that haven't been started yet.

The Cult sidequest is the best one, definitely try to complete it!

As for the NPCs, like any good RPG these days the NPCs are written to be worth talking to by toning down on the usual tutorializing and dry dialogue in favour of more humour-laden and often wry dialogue. Something the game does that I haven't seen other games do is that many NPCs will prompt you with two different replies, and the NPC will react accordingly. But then if you talk to the NPC again they won't give the same prompt again but rather give a new line based on your reply. This actually meant I'd consider my dialogue options when talking to NPCs, which one seemed like it'd lead to better banter? You can't see both results in one run unless you save scum.

I also like how varied the NPCs are, every time period has its own set of NPCs and the NPCs are appropriately diverse in terms of race, gender, professions and age and don't stick to any presumed default, which means there's a lot less clones running around and many NPCs have wholly unique sprites not shared by any other NPCs. This is another factor that is increasingly prominent as the game goes on, but definitely there as early as Egypt. It's a small detail, but one that is appreciated nonetheless since it would be very easy to not put in the effort. The game also has a ton of flexing bald bodybuilder NPCs, so obviously I approve of that to the fullest extent.

Perhaps I should consider a career shift and move to The Abyss.

With that out of the way, it's time to round this whole thing up, it's already over 10,000 words long! 

Wrap-up

When I first found out about Kaiju Big Battel from the OHRRPGCE forum (Slime Salad) I was quite looking forward to it, it looked quirky and I could tell a lot of care was put into it, so I was rather cautious when playing the game since I didn't want my expectations to exceed the actual game. The game does start off rather slow, so I was rather worried at first, but as the party fills up and the area design and dialogue becomes more daring and uniquely Kaiju Big Battel I got sucked into the game more and more.

By the time I got to the Boston area I was definitely hooked and trying my best to accomplish all there was to accomplish in the game. While the game does flounder here and there, the combat takes a long time to really get going, my expectations were most definitely met in the end. The love and care shines through more and more evidently as the game progresses and I was heartily laughing my way through the final dungeon of the game.

If any part of this blog inspired you to check out the game, I definitely recommend it! It's only €10 on Steam and no doubt it will go on sale from time to time. Small indie games often get stillborn releases and sadly it does feel like KBB fell victim to this phenomenon, and that's a big shame! No doubt I'd have had things to say about this game even if it was a success, but seeing how it hasn't been one has made me all the more compelled to write this ridiculously long post!