War of the Monsters is an arena fighter that is a love letter to giant monsters attack style movies from across pretty much every classical era, from Ray Harryhausen to Showa era Godzilla with a dash of giant robot anime. Aside from the incredibly obvious captain ersatz versions of King Kong, Gojira and Mazinger Z, there are less obvious ones such as Preytor to The Deadly Mantis and Agamo pretty much existing as a non-copyright infringing Daimajin. The references don't even stop at the characters themselves either, there's also a bunch of costumes and one of them turns Preytor into the giant ants from THEM! and one of Ultra V's makes them fem and slightly resemble EVA Unit-01.
Aside from all the references and the cool monster movie theme, the gameplay itself is moderately fun but misses the mark in a bunch of areas. The first is that the camera isn't exactly very helpful at times, it really depends on the stage but even when fighting only one monster and locking on to them the camera can be fairly jumpy and disorienting. There's also a ton of combo strings you can just block in the middle of, which makes several monsters feel like trash tier (poor Zorgulon, he was my fav). The balance is completely lopsided in favor of faster characters because of this, which makes playthroughs with Ultra V nice, but with Magmo a complete chore.
By far the most annoying part of this game though is the CPU. They're a complete pansy who runs away at the slightest bit of trouble to grab health power ups, making it even more troubling when they have omniscience to where they are and when they've respawned onto the map. One of the stages in the campaign has you fighting Preytor and Congar, and I remember taking ages to beat it as a kid, because Preytor constantly flies around shooting at you while grabbing every powerup as Congar pesters you in the meantime. Frustrating as all hell, especially when you're playing a low tier. They also have an amazing ability to find every impaling object and exploding gas truck in the vicinity to nail you with, which makes the airfield stage in the campaign a complete mess. I just really fucking hate the impaling weapons tbh, the button mashing means nothing when another monster is just gonna close in and combo me. It sucks that I hate the campaign as much as I do, because the final boss is actually pretty damn cool.
The entire game reeks of being unfinished, there's two unlockable monsters but they completely lack endings and at the very least Raptros was confirmed to have one originally. Someone also managed to hack Goliath Prime and Cerebulon into a playable state, implying there may have been plans for them to be a part of the roster. Sucks, because Goliath Prime would've been a cool OP sub-boss to play as and ragdoll the CPU with.
It stinks, because I still think the game is fun, but if it had at least a few extra months to maybe make the game more fluid and add in those endings and playable boss characters it could've been an all-timer for me. I personally still recommend giving the game a try regardless if you're interested in the theme, but I definitely advocate for downloading a game save or utilizing a gameshark/codebreaker to unlock everything, because this game uses a shop to unlock things and I remember keeping a save at the final boss and beating them god knows how many times to get enough points to unlock shit. Grindy ass garbage, fuckin' hate that shit to this day.
Maybe in five-ten years someone will mod this game into being better and fightcade will get PS2 support, I'll be the greatest Zorgulon player the world has ever known tbh. Yes, this is a preemptive callout.
Aside from all the references and the cool monster movie theme, the gameplay itself is moderately fun but misses the mark in a bunch of areas. The first is that the camera isn't exactly very helpful at times, it really depends on the stage but even when fighting only one monster and locking on to them the camera can be fairly jumpy and disorienting. There's also a ton of combo strings you can just block in the middle of, which makes several monsters feel like trash tier (poor Zorgulon, he was my fav). The balance is completely lopsided in favor of faster characters because of this, which makes playthroughs with Ultra V nice, but with Magmo a complete chore.
By far the most annoying part of this game though is the CPU. They're a complete pansy who runs away at the slightest bit of trouble to grab health power ups, making it even more troubling when they have omniscience to where they are and when they've respawned onto the map. One of the stages in the campaign has you fighting Preytor and Congar, and I remember taking ages to beat it as a kid, because Preytor constantly flies around shooting at you while grabbing every powerup as Congar pesters you in the meantime. Frustrating as all hell, especially when you're playing a low tier. They also have an amazing ability to find every impaling object and exploding gas truck in the vicinity to nail you with, which makes the airfield stage in the campaign a complete mess. I just really fucking hate the impaling weapons tbh, the button mashing means nothing when another monster is just gonna close in and combo me. It sucks that I hate the campaign as much as I do, because the final boss is actually pretty damn cool.
The entire game reeks of being unfinished, there's two unlockable monsters but they completely lack endings and at the very least Raptros was confirmed to have one originally. Someone also managed to hack Goliath Prime and Cerebulon into a playable state, implying there may have been plans for them to be a part of the roster. Sucks, because Goliath Prime would've been a cool OP sub-boss to play as and ragdoll the CPU with.
It stinks, because I still think the game is fun, but if it had at least a few extra months to maybe make the game more fluid and add in those endings and playable boss characters it could've been an all-timer for me. I personally still recommend giving the game a try regardless if you're interested in the theme, but I definitely advocate for downloading a game save or utilizing a gameshark/codebreaker to unlock everything, because this game uses a shop to unlock things and I remember keeping a save at the final boss and beating them god knows how many times to get enough points to unlock shit. Grindy ass garbage, fuckin' hate that shit to this day.
Maybe in five-ten years someone will mod this game into being better and fightcade will get PS2 support, I'll be the greatest Zorgulon player the world has ever known tbh. Yes, this is a preemptive callout.