Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax

There's something innately fun about crossovers and characters you'd never expect to see in the same place coming together for one big mash-up. In Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax, fans can finally answer who would win in a fight between many of their favorite anime/manga series. Of course, the actual outcome depends more on how much experience the player has with fighting games, rather than how much love they have for their character. That's because the game does a surprisingly good job of balancing out the abilities of the fighters and their support characters. You can mix and match to your heart's content, but you'll be hard-pressed to find any overpowered (or underpowered) combination. Win or lose, it's always going to be a matter of how you play, not whom you play.

The game's presentation is a bit of a mixed bag. The characters have crisp, colorful 2-D models that look like they've been pulled straight from their respective anime shows. Unfortunately, the movements look more like they were pulled from a flip-book. There's no real fluidity in the characters' motion. This is made more jarring because of the smooth CGI 3-D backgrounds. Despite this, Fighting Climax is still a solid fighting game. The controls are responsive, and the gameplay doesn't really suffer from the animation. It's just a distraction players will have to adjust to.