Inspired by the PC-FX Fan Club Podcast starting, I thought I should play some PC-FX games. Never played any before. Then realizing that there's only 62 games according to Wikipedia, it made me think that me playing them all in release order wouldn't be such a big goal. It also would be almost entirely new games to me (the only game released on it I played on a different platform was Doukyuusei 2). I very likely won't do that, but I did think about it lol.
For my first PC-FX game I played Battle Heat!, a fighting game that was one of the console's launch titles. What's interesting about it is that it's an FMV fighting game, which led to some surprising gameplay. While I've played fighting games, I'm not particularly knowledgeable on the genre, so I'm not really sure if there are other fighting games like this.
The story is pretty basic: there's two factions fighting for power, the Republic of Kriph(the good side), and the Holy Dark Empire(the bad side). In tournament mode you can play as the four characters from the Republic of Kriph, but not any of the evil characters. I played through each tournament mode, but didn't use any of the evil characters since I never tried free battle.
The battle system consists of two fighters at two distinct distances from each other: far or near. Depending on the distance you will have different moves available to you. These moves are some combination of directions with either the strong attack, light attack, special attack, or jump buttons. Launching an attack will play that associated FMV along with its corresponding attack signal. There are three different types of attack signals with different required responses: a blue attack signal which just requires the block button to dodge, a yellow one which requires a direction with the block button, and the red which requires mashing the block button. If you can successfully do the right block, you either do a counter or negate the attack. The thing is that the opponent can then counter that counter, and this is where the fun of the game lies. You are essentially creating quick counter chains until somebody messes up and takes damage. It kind of reminded me of Killer Instinct, except without any actual movement. It's kind of funny these are the best parts of the combat because this in when the FMV is just rapidly shifting between multiple videos as you focus on all the signs except the video.
The main problem is I usually couldn't even figure out how to consistently execute character's moves even after reading the manual, but this is a common fighting game problem for me. Same with figuring out some counters, but I could do it more than half the time at least. The other problem is that there is one move that pretty consistently works: the jump kick! 90% of the time it works, except one character who actually counters it sometimes. Others rarely countered it. It does kind of take the fun out of the combat though... It feels less restrictive than you'd think a fighting game composed of set FMV clips would be. I feel like if this got attempted again with clearer cues on how to execute moves and how to counter specific moves, I think it could be great.
It's also pretty light on content, I finished all 4 tournament modes in 2 hours, and it was getting a little worn out in the playthroughs for the last 2 characters. Also for a game advertising its FMV, the endings don't even have animation, just a text scroll! Overall I had a better time than I expected if only for a short while.