Panzer Bandit

"Great fast-paced action"

I bought a game whose cover art caught my eye a few years ago. I played it until I finished it probably 10 or so times and then I quit playing it. Fast forward to 2001. I picked it up from my closet since I had nothing to do and played it again. Once again I was hooked. This game is Panzer Bandit.

Graphics: 7/10
Well animated characters but suffers from severe slowdown sometimes and the game is kind of old. I also like the anime intro. However, many of the enemies(probably 90%)are just palette swaps of each other with added things such as hats or armor. It can get very repetitive.

Sound 8/10
Cool music and sound effects and your usual run-of-the-mill Japanese voice acting. The usual battle grunts and stuff in this kind of game.

Gameplay 9/10
This is the best part of this game. There are two modes of play:the story mode and the versus battle mode. The story mode is your usual beat-em up arcade game but with added twist such as special moves and jumping in and out of the background. In story mode, you fight your way through several enemies and bosses to the last stage. You can select from four different characters and can play with a second character. The characters are a young boy with powers of harnessing ki and his flying robot sidekick, a cyborg who is armed to the teeth, a young girl with powerful battle armor and a woman armed knives and a fox following her around. You basically just blast through the stages taking out all the enemies with combos and special moves. There is also the versus mode where you can play a team battle game or a frantic free-for-all. A code even allows the bosses to be selected in versus mode. The bosses range from a Blanka type character to a mix of Sephiroth and Cloud(I'm not kidding).The game may not be Power Stone 2 but it's still fun.

Story 5/10
You must stop a bunch of terrorists in a giant mechanical whale. Crappy story but it doesn't really matter in this kind of game anyway.

Replay 8/10
You play it, you get sick of it. You play it, you get sick of it. You play it, you get sick of it. Repeat cycle.

Overall 8/10
Great game if you can still find it. Lots of fun and has a really really cool intro too.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/26/01, Updated 03/26/01