In 2007, the Bakugan anime series premiered on TV Tokyo, followed by a line of collectable toys of the same name. Seeking to succeed in the competitive market of collectable monsters, the Bakugan franchise rose in popularity due to the unique transformative abilities of the toys and the action-packed fun of the television series. A series of video games were also produced which varied in style from virtually imitating how Bakugan is played in real life to having the player control the monstrous forms of the Bakugan. However, Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia, developed by WayForward Games and published Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, is a harsh fall from grace, failing to elicit the same type of joy that many of the property’s core components and spin-offs are known to produce.
Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia is a Nintendo Switch exclusive that has received a large amount of coverage from Nintendo, and it is hard to say why. Where the Bakugan anime and toy line are fun and engaging, Bakugan: CoV is anything but. Its repetitive battling system, uninspired storyline, and lackluster visuals are a stark contrast from the rest of the series. In short, Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia is boring, and doesn’t manage to capture what makes the series so interesting.
Players of Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia are tasked with building a team of three Bakugan and challenging other Brawlers to giant monster fights. Building a team is easily the most interesting part of Bakugan: CoV. A player can have up to three active Bakugan on their team which they can switch between at any time during a brawl. Players can also purchase new moves for their Bakugan with money they earn from fighting other brawlers. While a Bakugan can only know four moves at a time, this allows players to strategically equip their Bakugan with unique abilities tailored for their team composition. However, getting enough money to properly kit out a Bakugan is quite a grind.
Battling with other Bakugan is the main feature of Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia, and it is also the worst element fans will have to grapple with. Previous Bakugan titles allowed players to take control of kaiju and fight other gigantic monsters, which would have been better than what Bakugan: CoV offers its players: at the beginning of the battle, both brawlers send out their first summoning titans onto the battlefield. Instead of controlling the monsters, the players then run around the battlefield collecting glowing disks that supply the monsters with energy. Once enough energy is collected, the player hits one of four buttons to activate a move, and the cycle repeats itself. The brawler whose team is wiped out loses the battle.
Even if Bakugan: CoV was a tabletop simulator of the actual real-world Bakugan game, it would be better than the game’s current battle system. The battles attempt to offer a strategic type matchup balancing act similar to Pokemon, where fire-types are weak to water-types and so on, but each battle ends up being a competition of who can collect the most glowing circles the fastest. It doesn’t feel like Bakugan in the slightest but instead feels like a Mario Party mini-game that has been turned into a full-fledged game – without any of the fleshing out of that mode that would be required to do so.
There isn’t much more to Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia outside of its repetitive and boring battle system. Every quest has players travelling around small areas to battle brawlers, and at the start of every battle is a groan-evoking button press. The story isn’t all that interesting, and neither is the world the player explores, which looks choppy and uninspired. The characters are designed with odd proportions that make them hard to look at, too, further taking away from an aesthetic that in theory should have been a strength of the game, but luckily the mundane dialogue that comes with those weird models can be skipped through by mashing the A or B button.
It’s hard to recommend buying Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia to anyone, even if they are a fan of the series. There are simply many better options in a similar vein already present on Nintendo Switch, a console that doesn’t lack for engaging anime adaptations or monster battling scenarios. Bakugan enthusiasts should spend their money on the series’ previous titles or on the actual physical collectables before even considering Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia.
Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia will be available on the Nintendo Switch on November 3, 2020. Screen Rant was provided a digital code for the purpose of this review.
