J-Phoenix Hands-On

J-Phoenix is the latest entry from Takara in the popular mech-fighting genre, which is currently dominated by Armored Core and Virtual-On. The mechs and characters were designed by renowned Gundam anime artist Kunio Ookawara, and they play a vital role in illustrating a plot filled with political intrigue as well as furious giant-robot action.

From what we can gather, the main character is a recent recruit who's one of an elite group of Panzer Frame pilots. He's fighting a war against a rival mech army in defense of its besieged country. As this recruit, you face several solo or squad-based combat missions and progress through the various skirmishes in a very linear story mode. The battles can range from arena-styled group battles to seek-and-destroy missions, in which you must navigate tight corridors, and you're limited to melee attacks.

The frames are controlled from a third-person, behind-the-back view, with onscreen indicators for selected weaponry, structural integrity, booster strength, and radar. The large targeting cursor can be scrolled up or down by using the L and R trigger buttons for aiming at aerial opponents or launching ground assaults while airborne. Strafing is also controlled in a similar fashion, but while the movement animations are adequate, the control scheme is a bit clunky: Sometimes you'll find that your frame is facing the ground, that you're staring at the sky, or that your back is to your opponent. Using your boosters to fly over an enemy while maintaining a target lock is far too difficult, which eliminates the limited flight from being a viable combat strategy.

The controls may be difficult to get used to at first, but they work well in the head-to-head combat mode, where you concentrate on only your single human opponent. It seems like you'll be able to unlock different arenas and characters as you progress through the story mode, as well as bring in your own customized frames.

J-Phoenix features detailed frames and some fairly expansive textured landscapes. While some of the arenas are a bit bland and some of the background colors quite garish, the game does move at a steady clip with no slowdown. The menus are slick, and the overall presentation is a quality effort. Tweaking your mech's appearance through color swaps and an easy-to-use logo design utility is intuitive and fun to experiment with. The frame designs themselves are impressive, reminiscent of those featured in Gundam, but they have a distinct style that is all their own. The starring characters in J-Phoenix are just as eye-catching, with just enough campy primary color Voltron appeal to get the attention of anime fans.

J-Phoenix features character dialogue along with narration and text, and it plays very much like an animated comic strip. A typical mission involves watching your frames and the enemy exchange blows and characters taunting each other or calling for help. It also involves a brief combat sequence and a subsequent ending dialogue sequence. You can check your e-mail to reveal more of the plot (as you can in Front Mission 3), visit the garage for an upgrade, and move on. While very linear, the game paces nicely and never seems to drag on.

Artistically reminiscent of the series in so many ways, the game might as well be bearing the Gundam license, but it will remain to be seen if fans of Japanese mech-based anime will give this original franchise a shot. It's unlikely that J-Phoenix will make its way to US shores.