For Online Saturday i tried the Nintendo Switch version of Battle Crush from NCsoft.
I haven't heard much about this game even tho it's doing well on Mobile Charts. i didn't know anything about it going in so i was hoping for a decent tutorial to help guide me. Battle Crush has a great one. starting the game for the first time, we're taken straight into the tutorial. each aspect of the basic controls were explained and shown before we get to do it. But what's also great is that once the basic stuff was finished, we're given the choice as to whether we want to do more advanced tutorials or start playing. for a game that's out across different platforms, this is great for players who know what to do.
But the tutorial does end a little quick. When i get to the home screen, i would've appreciated a quick message pointing me to the online matches. Those matches are also not labelled as to what the game mode actually is. i tried out all modes, but i guessed wrong what i thought one or two of them might've been. Then when you get to the character select screen, i also had to guess as to why some characters had purple logos on them. in that case, it's similar to what Pokémon Unite does in that you get a limited time with characters you don't have.
I didn't mind the characters i played as, but when i was up against other characters it never felt balanced. we all seem to go the same speed when moving but attack speeds, ranges, and powers seem all over the place so when i was defeated by one character it immediately felt unbalanced and not in a player experience way.
Another aspect of the gameplay that bothered me was the speed of gameplay. characters move slower than i expected, weapon firing was slower than expected, and in a level the concept of time was weird. it's hard to describe. because we see soo little of the game stage and we move so slow across it, it felt difficult to judge how long it would take to get across the stage, how long it would take to get into a save zone.
Battle Crush looks great on Switch and is very welcoming to new players. but the game itself isn't quite what i'm looking for. it reminds me of Fat Princess in how zoomed in both games are. but things move faster in Fat Princess, the levels were smaller, and they were designed in such a way to funnel opponents to each other. maybe the stages are either too big and open or too small in Battle Crush. But i do think it's well worth a try.
