Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds can be considered something of a cult hit. It would explain why it's been ported to so many systems over a 12-year time span, giving it more longevity than the original fighting game that inspired it. After such a long time, the new publishers of the series thought that it was fitting to give this title a complete makeover with Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate.

The title is set in Japan, and the story tells the tale of a being named Phantom who has ruled over a parallel world full of demons. Seeking more land to rule, he invades the human world when he is confronted by Mikoto and her friends Yuzuha, Itsuki, and Waka. In an attempt to get an advantage, he kidnaps Mikoto's sister, forcing the quartet to sacrifice its powers to travel to the monster dimension and save Mikoto's sibling.

If you're a beat-'em-up fan, you'll notice that this game does a few things differently. For starters, it seems to have adapted its fighting game roots to a new play style. Instead of one attack button, you now have four. Three of the buttons dictate the strength of your attack, while the fourth produces a special attack, usually in the form of a projectile. Up makes you jump instead of a different face button, and you can use directional movements with face buttons to execute different attacks. There is one beat-'em-up mainstay that remains: the special attack that clears out the screen with the press of a button. You'll need to build up enough special energy to unleash it, though.

Aside from its own fighting game heritage, Battle Grounds Ultimate also picks up a few things from the Sega Saturn classic, Guardian Heroes. You're restricted to two definitive planes to fight on, so there are no chances for you to miss because you're slightly out of alignment with your opponent. You also get to level up your characters by picking up gems in the field, so you can get more stat upgrades and more techniques. The only thing to watch out for is that leveling only occurs in between stages, so you can't suddenly become stronger in the middle of the fight. You can always redistribute your points without any penalties, encouraging you to experiment with loadouts.

The result of this combination is a game where the fighting becomes absolutely wild but in a good way. Your moves always come out in a flurry, so you'll sometimes be beating up on corpses since you've overdone the number of moves needed to kill someone. The plethora of enemies in your path is reminiscent of a side-scrolling Dynasty Warriors, since your moves will always connect to multiple enemies at a time. The enemy variety ensures that you can't simply button-mash; everyone requires a different strategy to defeat, and the game's length is perfect in that you don't feel like it drags on. The end appears just at the point when fatigue would set in. Overall, the pacing is good enough to fill up an afternoon with an enjoyable run.

Battle Grounds Ultimate has four modes, but only a few of the modes will sport significant changes. Story mode is where you'll initially spend your time, so you'll get a better sense of what's going on with in-game cut scenes. It also starts off in an interesting fashion, since you'll be completely powered up in the first stage. Subsequent stages have you working your way back up the power ladder since you've lost your full powers by the end of that first big fight. There are four characters to choose from and two unlockable difficulty levels to entice you to replay the campaign multiple times to see all of the cut scenes.

Arcade mode has you playing either in a time attack or score attack variants. It lacks the cut scenes from Story mode, so it's a good alternative to those who want to quickly jump into the action. One big change is that the game automatically lets you play with any of the unlocked characters and DLC characters from the original game, all of whom play quite differently from one another. The good news for the various modes is that character leveling progress carries over, giving you further incentive to play the game multiple times to get everyone to their max level.

Neither Story mode nor Arcade mode contain any multiplayer options. Instead, the game features a dedicated co-op mode for up to four players locally, and this is where we see some of the bigger changes in this iteration of the game. The first is the fact that you can use bots to fill in any slots where humans would've been playing. The bots play quite well, and the option is great for those who want to try co-op play but lack any friends willing to partake in the brawling action. The second change, and perhaps the one that will catch everyone's attention, is the fact that this mode gives you the ability to play as every character in the game: heroes, monsters, possessed Japanese bystanders, drones, and even an armored truck. It is absolutely silly, but the novelty of running around as every feasible character is too tempting to pass up, even if it provides even more incentive to replay the game.

The final offline mode is Battlegrounds, which plays out like any fighting mode from any beat-'em-up that has included a versus mode. The strict two lanes of movement make this more feasible than other versus modes that retain full 3D movement. The presence of every single character along with bot play makes this mode enjoyable for those looking for a very simplified anime fighting game where button-mashing is encouraged.

Both Co-Op and Battlegrounds have a completely separate online mode, and while the performance is good, the bigger news is that there are also some significant changes. Co-Op now has a maximum of six players who can play. The game isn't quite so balanced for all those players, but the mode remains fun if you can get the maximum number of players. The same can be said for Battlegrounds, as it now supports eight players, which makes the mode much more interesting since it places everyone in teams, and you can revive others to keep the fight going. On top of this is the fact that the game now supports cross-play, which is greatly appreciated since this will be releasing on just about every platform. One of the criticisms of the original title was that it was difficult to find anyone online due to the low population of players. The hope is that the pooling of players across all platforms gives everyone a decent shot at finding an online game with strangers.

For those wondering about the graphics after the move to Unreal Engine 5, rest assured that everything is mostly the same. Sprites still power the look of the characters, and the animations are great thanks to their smoothness. The backgrounds look very good thanks to the brighter colors mixed in with the overall anime style, and the frame rate holds steady no matter how many enemies are on-screen. The only changes made because of the engine are the higher resolutions used for the backgrounds and the slight amount of light bloom on all of the characters. It's minor but doesn't hurt the overall graphical quality.

The audio, on the other hand, has seen a few significant additions instead of full-on changes. The original soundtrack remains as upbeat as ever, but the remixed version also sounds very good. The original Japanese voices are present, and their quality remains the same, but there's now an English voice track to go alongside it. The effects remain the same, but they were pretty solid in the first place.

While the original PC version of the game worked fine on the Steam Deck, it wasn't without issues. The button prompts used the old button 1-4 designation, despite using an illustration of an Xbox 360 gamepad. Some of the videos wouldn't play unless you found the right version of GE-Proton. That's all fixed now, alongside the fact that the game gets the full 1280x800 resolution on the device. The frame rate holds well at 60fps, and cloud saves are supported for those who like to bounce between machines. The only drawback is that the game only gets around four-and-a-half hours of time on a full charge when using the LCD version of the device. That still puts it at the average range of most modern indie titles.

All of the things mentioned above solidify this as the best version of the game to date. There is one major flaw with the PC version, though: the inability to properly exit the game. You can back out all the way to the title screen, but hitting any button then returns you to the main menu, which has no way to exit to the desktop. You can use your preferred keyboard combination to force close the game, and you can use Steam's game menu in Big Picture mode to do the same thing, but the solution is inelegant at best. A built-in method for exiting the game gracefully would be much preferred.

If you can live with that issue, then Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate is a solid title. The original game remains a fun beat-'em-up since it tries to do something different from its contemporaries. The additional characters make the game lean heavily toward being goofy, but few will complain when it also means expanded online play for all. For genre fans who want something breezy, this is well worth checking out.

Score: 8.0/10