Bakugan Battle Brawlers is the latest franchise to jump from the card game to the the video game medium. In this game you battle with an opponent to try and acquire “gate cards.” The first person to get three “gate cards” wins the fight. The way that you fight is that, first of all, you have to pick a “gate card” to use. After that you pick what Bakugan you want to use and throw their respective ball onto the board. As you are doing that you are trying to stop on one of the cards that is on the field (either the one you placed or the one your opponent chose to utilize). Assuming that you both successfully land a Bakugan ball on a card then the “battle” begins. The way a “battle” goes down depends on a variety of factors. The “gate cards” that were used will have an impact on what happens. “Gate cards” can either boost your G-power, change the rules of battle, or decide which type of battle you will play. A successful strategy in this game will be one where you use “gate cards” that are advantageous to you while being detrimental to your opponent.

The three battles that you will frequently encounter are the power battles, shooting battles and the timing battles. The power battles consist of moving your analog stick back and forth as fast as you can during an allotted amount of time. The shooting battle involves you shooting symbols on the screen to try and increase your G-power and the timing battle is similar to a DDR or a Guitar Hero where you have to hit the correct buttons at just the right time. It’s actually a pretty simplistic game, even for those that have never done anything with the Bakugan license. Newbies should be able to pick up the nuances fairly quickly, especially if they take the time to go through the tutorial. During the heat of battle you will also get to use ability cards. Depending on what card you pick it could be the deciding factor as to whether you will be the victor or go down in defeat. Some other types of battles that you can participate in include tag team battles where you join up with a friend to take on two opponents or the battle royale, which is a free for all four player Bakugan battle. It plays the same way as a regular battle, but there are 4 players.

Going through the story mode you will encounter other Bakugan brawlers that have the same aspirations that you do. Everyone wants to be the best and everyone is trying to prove how good they really are. You have a couple of different options in the story mode where you can go to your room to change clothes, edit your card deck, save your game and do a couple of other things. You also have the Bakugan store where you go to purchase new Bakugan, new cards or to upgrade your existing Bakugan. The way that you get money for these upgrades is in battles. As you continue to win battles you will acquire battle points which is the currency in this game. One place that you can go to practice your battle skills is the park. Here is where you can practice fighting against opponents and “level up” your characters. The more fights you participate in and win the more money you will get and the more upgrades you can purchase in the store. When you are ready and have met all of the requirements you can then go participate in some tournaments which is how the storyline progresses.

Overall existing Bakugan fans should have fun with this title. If you aren’t a Bakugan fan or card games aren’t your thing then this title probably won’t change your mind. As you progress further into the story and such it can tend to get a bit repetitive which I’m sure existing fans will tend to overlook because they are controlling their favorite Bakugan characters. Online play would have definitely helped with this title as well and could have extended the replayability. It is a big missed opportunity to not have that feature in a game that depends on its community to thrive. To be fair though there is local multiplayer. Bakugan Battle Brawlers is one of the better “card games” that I have played in a while and fans of the series should have a lot of fun. Others, however, might want to rent before they buy to see if it is the game for them.

Score 7/10

Originally posted on Totally Gaming Network