Since Street Fighter II's emergence in the early 1990s, fighting games have struggled to balance depth and accessibility.
Hardcore fighting fans like learning new combos, studying frame data, and mastering combat systems' intricacies.
More casual players, however, just want to grab a controller and beat up a friend, without spending days in a tutorial.
Sirlin Games' Fantasy Strike attempts to walk the line that separate those two philosophies by stripping combat down to a less-complex form, while still keeping counters, throws, specials, and supers.
The PC game mostly sticks its landing, though it requires a different mindset to play than your traditional fighting game.
Fantasy Strike is a Steam Early Access game, which means that it isn't in a finished state.
In fact, the $19.99 title is still in its alpha stage, so ou can expect bugs to pop up.
For example, there are occasional animation issues on the prefight character match-up screen, and the tutorial sometimes freezes.
Thankfully, the game's meatiest aspect, the versus fighting, proved incredibly solid over the course of my testing.
A Simple System
Fantasy Strike's combat is unlike what you get from Mortal Kombat XL or Tekken 7 ($39.99 at Humble Bundle) .
While those fighting games require lab time to "get gud," as the kids say, Fantasy Strike revels in its simplicity.
There's one melee-based attack, a throw, two special moves, and a single, powerful super move.
Oh, there's also a dedicated jump button, too; you don't press up to execute a leap.
In essence, Fantasy Strike's control scheme is very similar to the one in the excellent Super Smash Bros.
Ultimate.
The one major difference? Fantasy Strike's Yomi attack.
It's a counter to opponents' super throws that requires you to do nothing.
That's right, by not pressing anything, you automatically counter a super throw.
Initially, the action feels counterintuitive, but once your brain wraps itself around the concept, Yomi attacks become second nature.
Like Super Smash Bros.
Ultimate ($54.99 at Amazon) , Fantasy Strike controls are designed for pick-up-and-play accessibility.
If you've ever seen fighting game novices try their hands at, say, Street Fighter V, there's often random character leaps and flailing as they struggle with the move sets.
Fantasy Strike's streamlined control scheme means that there's need to try and fail quarter-circle, half-circle, and full-circle joystick motions to execute special moves, thus eliminating one of the fighting game mastery hurdles.
You're free to focus on what's truly important: spacing, timing, and deft reads.
Although Fantasy Strike has just three dedicated attack buttons, you can string combos together with jump kicks, strikes, projectiles, and throws.
In fact, you can alter your melee blows by simultaneously pressing a direction on your controller's directional pad and the attack button, much like Super Smash Bros.
Due to Fantasy Strike's simple control scheme, you easily play the game using a keyboard or, amazingly, a Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitar controller.
Unfortunately, there are some control scheme woes.
You can't move your character using a modern controller's analog sticks; it's d-pad or bust.
And your character's X/Y movement involves just jumping or walking forward or back.
If you're used to King of Fighters XIV's runs, dashes, and hops, Fantasy Strike's movement options will feel incredibly limiting (especially if you're using a slow-moving character like Rook).
Roster and Fight Feel
On the topic of characters, Fantasy Strike has a solid 10-person roster that represents the genre's defining archetypes.
There are four zoners (Argagarg, Geiger, Grave, Jaina), two grapplers (Midori, Rook), two rushdowners (Setsuki, Valerie), and two wildcarders (DeGrey, Lum).
They're well-animated polygonal models, and they're quite attractive, too.
The animation facilitates quality combat.
Individual blows and combos carry weight, and armored moves let you blow through incoming attacks in satisfactory fashion.
Unfortunately, some attacks and combos do far too much damage.
For example, Valerie has a basic combo that, if you land it twice, can drain roughly 90 percent of your opponent's lifebar.
That's a ridiculous amount of damage.
Fantasy Strike could definitely benefit from better damage scaling (if there's any in place, that is).
Many Modes
Fantasy Strike has a surprising number of modes, including Arcade, Survival, Daily Challenge, Practice, and Online.
Arcade is what you'd expect in a fighting game, a single-player experience in which you move up the opponent ladder and take in the cutscenes.
Survival sees you battling an increasingly powerful opponent gauntlet.
Daily Challenge is a once-per-day contest to battle your way through enemies.
Practice teaches game mechanics (there are also individual tutorial videos for each character).
Online is the versus competition in which you square off against Fantasy Strike players who game on PC or PlayStation 4.
Yes, like Street Fighter V and Killer Instinct, Fantasy Strike is a rare fighting game with cross-platform play (it's scheduled to appear in the Nintendo Switch eShop in early 2019).
I battled several other people over Wi-Fi and enjoyed incredibly smooth competition.
That stellar, lag-free gameplay experience is one of the advantages of using GGPO's wonderful rollback technology.
What You Need to Play
Fantasy Strike's Steam page states that your gaming desktop or gaming laptop doesn't require muscle under the hood to play the game.
The fighter demands at least a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4302Y CPU, a Nvidia GeForce GT 555m graphics card, 4GB of RAM, and 6GB of storage.
Fantasy Strike is compatible with the Windows, Mac, and Linux/SteamOS.
Fantasy Strike is listed as supporting Steam Trading Cards, but not Steam Cloud.
Hopefully, that cloud-based save feature will come as Fantasy Strike inches it way toward being a finished product.
A Promising Future
Most fighting games are complex; Fantasy Strike is not.
Don't, however, let that lead you to believe that Fantasy Strike is not a true fighting game.
Even with its pared-down control scheme, Fantasy Strike still requires you to master pokes, 2-in-1s, and counters; Divekick, this is not.
Fantasy Strike is currently in an alpha state, which means that some of my issues with the game have the opportunity to be fixed before the final build reaches the public.
But even in its unfinished state, Fantasy Strike is a fun experimental fighting game that's worth the price of admission.
