Battle Monsters
was a melee fighter before anyone knew what a melee fighter was or how to make one work. Ideas
are tossed in at random with little regard to the actual fighting portion, and the
graphics are so overdone they become disorienting. You can find a little bit in here that
seems to be what the developers were going for, but it's overshadowed by limited gameplay.
The cause of that is Battle Monster's combat, which simply doesn't work. There are two buttons used for attacks on a controller with eight available. It's a waste, ruining any chance of an involving combo system or workable strategy. It's a button masher that doesn't mix with 2-D fighting game fans style of play.
Other buttons send players onto one of many platforms in each arena, which is in addition to a standard jump by pressing up. Some however don't have them, even though jumping is more involving than throwing a kick. Instead, each stage is unique, but it doesn't feel like there's any cohesion between them. One stage has a ring out section. The others don't.
This causes the game to feel sloppy, and with the graphics engine and character designs, it's hard to see it any other way. Backgrounds are pasted together with any color available, the nauseating scaling effect running everything together. Certain stages even camouflage certain fighters. A few of the digitized sprites still have blue lines around them from the process.
Some of the designs here
go way beyond horrible. Headless Harn has to fall into a list of worst fighting game
characters ever created. The balance is off too, with a few characters dominating the
fights if a few special moves are exploited. Others use the advantage of the platforms to
a degree so severe, it makes the game impossible to beat. If it offers anything, it's a piece that shows just how wrong new technology can get. This is a miserable fighting game, and on a console with so many good ones (import or otherwise), Battle Monsters is a sad excuse for a Saturn brawler. When the only positive is some quality music, you know you're in trouble.
