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So there is a fighting game out there called Battle Fantasia. At some point, I got it into my head that it was very button-masher friendly. I also got it into my head that it has a bunny wizard. Therefore, it seemed like something I should rent from Gamefly, so I put it in my Queue, like so many other games. Then Gamefly sent it to me, and I played it!

I sent it back the next day.

Battle Fantasia has some good ideas, and is competent in some respects. The visuals are pretty great, actually. The 3D characters look very much like 2D ones. They have a lot of expression and life that way. I could see you mistaking a screenshot as all hand-drawn for a few moments, at least. The characters all have a lot of variety in their designs, which is cool.
The game itself is trying to be a hybrid of RPGs and Fighters. Your characters have HP, and you can see exactly how much HP each attack you pull off does, because the damage numbers come out of your enemy, just like in a jRPG. As you land strings of hits without being interrupted, you “Level up.” If you’re interrupted, then you’re going to “Level down.” Everyone’s attacks do different things and have different powers at different levels, which is a cool balancing mechanism, in theory, especially since most projectile attacks require your characters to be at least level 2, which means you have to get in there and be aggressive for at least a few hits before you can really hang back and turtle.

However, that is also really lame. I was playing Watson, the bunny wizard, and I couldn’t really cast any spells until I got in and did some serious Melee damage. That’s not how wizards work! It felt unsatisfying. It also felt much less like I had any control over what I could do, since so much of the Level Up mechanic involves your opponent and variables around him. Some battles, I’d have no trouble keeping Level 3 the whole fight, and then next round I could never level up for more than 5 seconds. Granted, if I had had some higher level strategy, I’m sure I could have countered the assaults that were keeping me down. But as a new player, the mechanic was just keeping me away from trying things and figuring out what they did. Kind of a downer.
The game itself, as well, was much less button-mashy than I was hoping. Maybe I was hoping for the wrong thing, but it seemed really hard to make anything cool happen without really knowing the combos. I never felt like I was even beginning to get effective with ANYTHING during my few hours of play. I didn’t feel like any progress was being made. Maybe I’m just awful, but at least in, say, SFIV, I can start to realize what I’m doing wrong after fiddling around for awhile. I just never really got the mechanics.

The game has a story mode which is, you know, endless dialog scenes followed by a battle. Nothing to write home about. The arcade mode was what made me send it back, though. The last boss requires a gimmick to complete, using moves I didn’t even know existed. Without this gimmick, you literally cannot damage him. After several failures, I eventually looked up how to hit him, and beat him. But it felt like such bullshit, that I wasn’t really willing to put up with the game anymore.

So yeah, I can’t really recommend the game. Go try BlazBlue instead, or just get Street Fighter IV if you need a fighter. I think it was trying to fill a niche that needed filling, at the time, and maybe if there wasn’t all these other top-quality fighters on the 360, I would have been nicer to it. But yeah, Battle Fantasia is not really worth your time.