Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia Stands Tall in a Market Dominated by Pokémon
In our hands-on first look at Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia, the classic anime series returns to gaming to win over a new generation of gamers.
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It’s been nine years since the last major video game adaptation for Bakugan, with the anime franchise returning for an ambitious new installment on the Nintendo Switch with Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia. The game has players recruit their own team of Bakugan, extraterrestrial behemoths that can be trained to fight one another for sport, just in time to enter a local tournament and investigate a series of strange earthquakes occurring around town. We were able to get hands-on with Champions of Vestroia’s first three hours of gameplay ahead of its release on Nov. 3.
Players create and customize their own character new to the anime franchise — largely as an expansion of the franchise’s most recent anime series that premiered in 2018 — attending a local high school as they and their friends become increasingly concerned by mysterious earthquakes taking place near their school. Players then receive their very first Bakugan, recruit additional monsters on to their team of up to three combatants, develop rivals, run sub-quests around town and enter in a local Bakugan fighting tournament before continuing on to investigate the source of the earthquakes, all within the first three hours of gameplay.
Of course, the big question is, how does Bakugan compare to its most recognizable counterpart, Pokémon? The overworld navigation style certainly bears similarities — as does the obvious idea of collecting Bakugan, customizing their move set and forming effective teams to combat rivals — but Bakugan does stand proud and separate on its own. The battles themselves are not as strictly turn-based as many other games in the subgenre, with players having to take on an active role in the battle alongside their team.
Bakugan’s techniques and special attacks are fueled by energy discs that sporadically appear throughout the battlefield, with players racing around to grab the discs before their corresponding human opponent and fling them to the Bakugan as they battle against the opposing team in the background. The game effectively walks you through how to carry out this strategy, which certainly keeps the player more engaged with the proceedings, but picking up discs can be a bit spotty at times in terms of placement, and it can grow tedious in the lower-level battles where the margin for error is much more forgiving. Hopefully, with competitive online play or as the game grows more difficult, this mechanic will be more engaging, but, as it currently stands, it’s a core gameplay mechanic that could maybe use just a little more polish.
The first impression for Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia is that it’s a serviceable enough adaptation to the anime franchise and perfectly welcoming for those that have never watched an episode of the series or played a single Bakugan game before. More dynamic than Pokemon, though, understandably, without as extensive a stable of playable monsters to recruit and train, Champions of Vestroia is a competently made game that may thrill younger players. With plenty of gameplay yet to go and the mystery of the game’s inciting premise just beginning, hopefully the title will pick up and become more engaging and varied as it moves beyond its initial setting to escalate the proceedings considerably.
Produced by Spin Master, developed by WayForward and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia will be released for the Nintendo Switch on Nov. 3.
The publisher provided CBR with a copy of the game for review purposes.
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