Boy, what a long name.  I bet it’s hard to say all that during a gaming discussion!  Anyway, Under Night Etc. is a 2-D one-on-one fighting game made by the same folks who did the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue titles.  It’s available for the PlayStation 3.  But how does this one stack up against those other series?  Read on to find out.

The storyline in Under Night Etc. is very heavily anime inspired, and I won’t go into it too much here, as it took two whole pages in the in-game instruction booklet.  Something about people in the height of the information age fighting unseen shadow monsters, and fighters gaining special powers when they do or whatever.  The fighters in this game are also very stereotypical of what you’d find in a modern anime, but some are more interesting once you actually play as them.

Like other 2-D fighters, you use joypad and button combinations to pull off special moves to whittle down the energy of your opponent while avoiding their attacks.  The game has plenty of modes to keep single players and online fighters busy.  The Arcade Mode is the main story mode where you’ll play out the background of each character as they fight through a succession of opponents.  If you want a quick battle, you can do Vs. Mode with a nearby player or Vs. CPU mode against the computer.  And naturally every fighter now needs a Network mode for online battles.  You can also try to get a high score in Score Attack, defeat enemies quickly as possible in Time Attack, or last as long as you can in Survival.  Practice moves in Training Mode, and design your online ID and character colors in the Customize Mode.  You can also view replays and unlock artwork in the Gallery using points you earn as you play.  And finally you can set button controller layouts and match rules in Options.

While the game may not have a robust story and lore like BlazBlue games do, and it’s not quite as visually outstanding as the latest Guilty Gear game I just reviewed, Under Night Etc. is more accessible to novices.  You can even change the difficulty level to be easy enough for me to not have trouble with, and I stink at fighters!  So if you enjoy fighters and don’t like for them to be TOO hard, this may be the one for you.

Kid Factor:

Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Language, Mild Blood, Suggestive Themes, and Violence.  It’s a fighting game, so of course it’s violent.  I never really notice any blood in these cartoony anime fighting games, though.  Some of the female fighters wear slightly revealing clothes, but most of the suggestive themes and language is in the text only, and voices are all in Japanese so reading skill is needed.  I would say older kid gamers who are used to watching anime would be OK with this.

Tags: Game Reviews