Phantom Breaker was originally a 2D fighting game released for Xbox 360 in Japan back in 2011. It was supposed to release in the US, and was on upcoming release lists for years and years, but never came out. What we DID Get was a 2D pixel art beat-em-up spin off in 2013 called Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds. The fighting game did eventually release in the US, titled Phantom Breaker Omnia (which is also pretty awesome, by the way) but the Battle Grounds spin off is what most Western fans are probably more familiar with.
Here's a silly story. The PS4 release of Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Overdrive was one of the first three games I ever bought for PlayStation 4. I really do love this game that much. The other two games I bought for PS4 day one were Hatsune Miku Project Diva X and Senran Kagura Estival Versus. So, yes, I bought a PS4 pretty much exclusively for anime fanservice games. Heh!
Back to Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate. It's a remaster with all of the previous DLC included and it looks and sounds and plays just like the previous versions. The pixels are so sharp you might cut yourself now, though. I think it looks amazing. And the soundtrack is still seriously incredible, too.
The basics of the gameplay is that it is a 2D beat-em-up where you hack and slash your way through thousands of baddies. It's relatively simple light, medium, heavy attacks with special attacks. Each character can also go into a frenzied overdrive mode, use magic attacks that hit multiple enemies, or launch a screen clearing super attack that kills everything. Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds is unique in that there are only two lanes that you jump back and forth between rather than giving you free movement in the levels. It can sometimes be annoying when you can't tell which lane an enemy is on, but they actually do a pretty good job of jumping over to where you are so you can mow them down faster.
There are a ton of playable characters and they all play differently. They can all be upgraded and leveled up separately, so you have to play through the game many, many, many times in order to see what everyone has to offer. It takes about 50-ish minutes to play through the game each time, so for $25 you definitely get your money's worth here. Along with the story and arcade modes, there is also a battleground mode that is like a simple fighting game. New to this version is that you can use all of the enemies in the game in battleground mode, but they kinda aren't that fun to play with, to be honest.
The core game is mostly the same as previous releases, but one major change here is that the shrine stage at the end is no longer an obnoxious maze where you go in and out of portals a million times. Now it's just a straightforward single portal exit on each level that is much better.
Pretty much everything else is just as it was, for good and bad. Flying enemies are still extremely annoying and hard to target. You can still get surrounded by enemies and stun locked into oblivion. And the story is also just as nonsensical as ever despite having some cutscenes and voiceover narration. But, darn it, it just feels like home to me. I really do genuinely love this game despite its flaws.
One additional thing I have to point out is that, as of this writing which is a couple weeks after launch, online functionality doesn't work on Xbox at all. I don't know the status of other platforms, sorry. But on Xbox the leaderboards for arcade mode don't work. And if you try to host an online co-op or battleground mode session the game crashes. If you get lucky you might find a game hosted by a player on another platform since it does have cross play and it won't crash if someone else hosts, but it seems like no one is really playing online on any platform so finding a game is basically impossible. You can play co-op in local multiplayer and even assign bots to empty slots if you want, so we aren't totally missing out, but online sure would be nice. Especially since 500 Xbox gamerscore is tied to playing online.
Broken online aside, Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate really is the ultimate version of this fantastic beat-em-up. I've played through this game dozens and dozens of times across three platforms over the last decade and I still love it every bit as much now in 2025 on Series X as I did back in 2013 on XBox 360. It's so charming and the music is so amazing and the gameplay is so satisfying and fun and it's just so great. Considering the amount of time you can spend with it, the $25 price tag is also just about perfect. I love it. You'll love it. I highly recommend it.
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