AquaPazza: Aquaplus Dream Match (PlayStation 3)


AquaPazza is a 2D fighting game staring characters from various other Aquaplus games, such as Tears to Tiara, To Heart, and Utawarerumono. A high school girl is trying to cook herself up a magical love potion, but things go awry when suddenly it causes people from all different worlds to appear. She also realizes she can put people under her control, so she takes advantage of the situation by doing just that and trying to become ruler of this new hybrid world.



In this game, you'll pick two characters for the fights: A fighter and a partner. Your fighter will be the character you use and each have a variety of moves at their disposal. Your partner can be summoned by pressing either the X button, or summoned to use a second move by pressing the X plus either the front or back arrow. Different partner characters have different skills as far as their support, and they cannot be called again until their gauge fills back up.



You'll have a Power Gauge at the bottom of the screen which allows for more powerful moves to be executed. You can fill it up to 5 in regular mode, or up to 3 in simple mode. Characters also have "emotions" which can be raised and lowered in a variety of ways and will affect how well they fight. Like most fighting games, you can change the difficulty, number of required rounds, and time limit for the fights.



There are a few modes to choose from. The regular story mode which explores the main story of the game, "Another Story" follows a second story and you can only use characters with whom you have completed the original story with. There are also online battles you can take part in. In VS mode you can play against friends or the computer if you are alone and friendless like me. There's a practice mode, a score attack mode where the battles get increasingly difficult, and a gallery mode in which you can view movies and images and the like.



Characters:
Ordered from favourite to least favourite and separated by fighters and partners.
Fighters:
Multi from To Heart
Sasara from To Heart
Konomi from To Heart
Chizuru from Kizuato
Morgan from Tears to Tiara
Karulau from Utawarerumono
Riannon from Tears to Tiara
Manaka from To Heart
Touka from Utawarerumono
Hakuowlo from Utawarerumono
Arawn from Tears to Tiara
Tamaki from To Heart
Oboro from Utawarerumono

Partners:
Llyr from Tears to Tiara
Rathty from Tears to Tiara
Ulthury from Utawarerumono
Serika from To Heart
Yuma from To Heart
Camyu from Utawarerumono
Octavia from Tears to Tiara
Ma-Ryan from To Heart
Satsuki from Routes
Mizuki from Comic Party
Yu from Comic Party
Yuki from White Album
Rita from White Album

Overall I had a lot of fun with the game. It has a large playable cast, and a lot of female characters, which I like. The story was pretty great. They kind of tacked one on there, but instead of trying to pretend they didn't, they just had fun with the whole thing and I was laughing pretty hard at a lot of it. The gameplay was also pretty fun. It did get a bit repetitive and there wasn't too much to do with the game though. Also my favourite characters were all partner characters and I wish I could have used them as fighters. This game also might be great for fans of the series featured here, and some of that was probably lost on me because I've never played those games.

Verdict:
LIKED IT