I’ll start off this review by admitting that I don’t know much about Kabuki Theater. I think it’s show fighting, or something. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that Kabuki theater is the basis for the game which I’m writing about today. I must first question why the developers decided out of all of the consoles on the market to release Kabuki Warriors for the Western centric Microsoft Xbox. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. As I soon discovered not much does in this game. Kabuki Warriors is often heralded as one of the worst video games of all time. While I think that’s a bit dramatic it certainly isn’t a good one.
There’s no real story per-se which is not typical of a fighting game. You play as a team of three Kabuki entertainers going from city to city performing for audiences. These performances are of course fighting matches where you square off against an opponent in a one-on-one bout. You have to participate in these fights to earn money which is spent traveling from venue to venue. At each of these you square off against another trio of opponents. It’s an okay set up but rather than taking advantage of it’s uniqueness the developers made everything feel painfully generic. Kabuki Warriors could have benefited from more scenario or story to guide your progress. Everything feels entirely too disconnected.
Despite it’s 3D polygonal graphics gameplay here is strictly two dimensional. This means you can only move left and right but you can also jump as well. Kabuki Warriors is a weapons based fighting game wherein each character has one armament allowing for more reach than in your typical brawler. Your goal as always is to drain your opponent’s life bar at which point you’re declared a winner and earn money for the fight. You can also taunt your foe mid-fight which causes the audience to throw coins at the stage thus increasing the amount of money you earn at the end of the fight. If there’s one thing Kabuki Warriors does decently it’s the whole theater angle what with the audience participation, curtain pulls, and the painted stage sets as well.
Kabuki Warriors just isn’t that fun to play unfortunately. The game has some very weird design choices right out of the gates. For example, at the start you have access to characters that lack textures. They’re just white outfit, white skin, and almost featureless faces. These guys also don’t have special moves outside of your standard attacks. You can only unlock new characters (ones with actual textures, costumes, and outfits) by defeating teams of other Kabukis. Following a victory you can trade out a character with the opposing team. The same goes for if you lose however with the opponent being able to steal one of your guys (or girls). This system is weird, confusing, and not really explained by the game. I couldn’t figure out why for the life of me I was stuck with the default fighter. I thought the console had glitched or something.
The fighting engine in Kabuki Warriors is poor. It’s very basic, generic, and simply not fun. For starters the game has only one attack button. Some fighters can pull this off, but Kabuki Warriors is not one of them. You can perform different attacks by holding various directions while striking your foe. There’s also a block, roll, and jump (yes, an actual button is dedicated to this instead of simply pressing up). You can win, and easily at that, by repeating the same attack over and over again. Just find one combo that works and spam it to victory. For me this was the upward attack. The enemy blocks so seldom that it’s not going to matter a whole lot anyway.
As I already mentioned the starting characters don’t even have special moves. That’s a baffling design decision and makes zero sense. Even when you do get characters on your team that can use them you’ll hardly notice a difference. It’s actually detrimental to take the time to form any kind of strategy here. The special moves are generic and lame. I’ve never played a fighter in which I cared so little about performing special moves and actually preferred to mash buttons. Repeatedly spamming attacks on the foe is far more effective here in literally every situation. Kabuki Warriors at it’s more challenging is an absolute cakewalk of a game. It’s disappointing because there’s potential with the Kabuki theme but this release certainly doesn’t tap any of it.
I actually thought the graphics are pretty decent here. It’s all surprisingly sharp for a game released for the original Xbox. The framerate is also surprisingly steady with few hiccups, and the action is pretty fast and smooth. Really, the only issue I have is the art style. The generic characters in the beginning are blatantly horrible. It’s like the developers just didn’t care to finish the game and decided that the character designs would be where it suffers. On the other hand I did like some of the painted sets in the background, and some of the later characters look kind of neat. The audio is even worse. The music has a decidedly Japanese flair to it but it’s not catchy in the least. The sound effects (what with the constant bellows of ‘YOOOOOO’) are annoying. There’s really no personality to the audio here.
Kabuki Warriors isn’t as bad as everyone says it is. It is however pretty bad, but ‘not one of the worst games ever created’ hardly deserves a standing ovation. The engine is surprisingly solid and the action is fluid. If only the developers had taken the time to put a little more meat into this one. The simple character designs on the basic fighters makes me think the development on this one wasn’t even completed. I’m sure the developers had good intentions going in, but they squandered these to rush an uninspired fighting game to the market. What’s worse is the fact that this one directly competed with the likes of Dead or Alive 3 to which it offers no competition. Kabuki Warriors is absolutely and painfully mediocre.
