"Custom beat 'em up to the rhythm of your soul"

Sick of collecting 493 (or whatever it is now) Pokemon and walking the road to become a Pokemon Master? How does strapping on a G-Con, materialising a custom weapon - a Glade - from thin air, and hitting various anime-inspired towns and outskirts, battling countless corrupt monsters and spiky-haired wannabes to earn the title of Major Grapper sound? If fighting games are your cup of tea and you don't mind some overly anime trappings, Draglade is custom-built just for you.

Contrary to the whole Pokemon set-up evident throughout the storyline - an incredible foe enters the fray, you fight your way through several district exams, gaining experience and a multitude of skills along the way, before wiping their asses with your trusty Glade - Draglade is less of an RPG and more of a one-on-one beat 'em up with a couple of side-scrolling sections thrown in for good measure. You are dropped into one of 4 heroes' predicaments - they all need to win the Grapper Championship for one reason or another - and set about to be the ultimate Grapper. Along the way, you'll meet some of the biggest and boldest anime sprites to grace the DS, and most of them want a piece of you - and so it comes down to you constantly mashing the X and Y buttons to rain down a relentless flurry of strikes upon your poor victim.

Combat is dead easy. There is a small problem with non-automatic facing towards your opponents (done to prevent confusion when facing multiple aggressors), but aside from that, everything works a treat. The Y button chips away with quick hits, while X triggers the token hard, but slow sluggers.

You also have Bullets: there's a whole range of them to collect (much like collecting Pokemon) and they are divided into offence, recovery and support variants. You can only carry 6 of them with you at any given time, though, so you have to work out which ones will serve you best in the various scenarios you encounter - are attack/defence boosts vital to your survival? Or would you rather carry some elemental spells with you? There are recovery Bullets, status-healing ones, Bullets that release homing Phoenixes and Bullets that drop a timed-mine plant that shoots out spikes in all directions - needless to say, your hands will be thankfully full.

Then you have the Custom Beat Combos - the "star" attraction of Draglade (although I would say that the Bullet abilities actually are more important). By tapping out attacks to a given beat (once you enter the Custom Beat state), you can pile on the damage - an unblockable string after any one hit connects. You can purchase pre-made Beats, or you can compose your own signature ones to make their execution as easy as tapping out your favourite tune. It's both addictive and challenging at times, managing both Bullet skills and Custom Beats (they both draw upon the same rechargeable energy), and not only are battles awesome to play, they are fantastic to watch with lots of crazy anime-style special effects littering the screen, in the vein of contemporary DS fighters: Bleach and the JUMP! games.

But despite it's reasonably high-octane ride, Draglade isn't a very long game. There are a handful of side quests (killing a big boss-type character, or disposing of a set number of enemies across several generic field screens etc.) and the draw of creating your own Custom Beat Combos is initially very enticing, but you'll still finish the game in about three hours or so. Thankfully, though, that's only with one of four characters you chose at the start; you then have the other three to fight through with (and another five extra playable characters on top of that - albeit limited to local multiplayer for some reason?!). Story-wise they are unique (however, the stories aren't award-winning material), but it's still all about the intense battles. Each spiky-haired protagonist has their own trademark weapon, but the general controls remain the same, with only elemental differences, speed, power and range skewed accordingly.

The real longevity factor lies in the various multiplayer modes - both Wireless and Wi-Fi. There you can take any of your customised fighters and battle one-on-one for rhythmic supremacy. With tons of Bullets at your disposal and the unique Custom Beat Combos, which can trip up unsuspecting players if you play around with the rhythm, no one battle is the same. Action moves at a fast pace, too, but the Wi-Fi connection does suffer from some terrible lag problems more often than not (sometimes your opponent will just freeze once you hit them) which makes the online rankings a disappointing waste. Still, if you have some friends nearby with copies of Draglade, there's a lot of fun fighting to be had.

It's too bad that this game isn't marketed as much as big-name DS games, and that it doesn't have a well-known anime to back it up - Draglade, with its unique rhythmic combos and well-stocked Bullet powers, is one of the freshest and more enjoyable 2D fighters out there. Sure, the story is as lame as most kids' animes go, and the game isn't all that difficult with some rather predictable boss patterns and overpowered Bullets; the music is suitably cheery, too, but never once captivating. However, the fighting system is brilliant fun and there isn't anything like this on the DS, or any other console for that matter. I have never doubted Atlus's eye for good quality Japanese games that deserve a localisation - Draglade is further proof that I am right.

VERDICT - 7.5/10 Groovy combat system, both in rhythm and style... but a bit repetitive with the platforming levels

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/17/07, Updated 12/18/07

Game Release: Draglade (US, 12/04/07)