Bakugan for Nintendo DS Reviews & Ratings by IGN

Collectible battle animals/robots/demons/creatures/cards will never cease to stop being produced it seems, and each of them is almost always carried over to multiple media types. Pokemon is obviously the biggest example of this, but Bakugan has been picking up steam as of late.



In the actual real-world game, players place large, magnetic cards on a playing surface and then attempt to roll plastic balls onto them. These balls are the Bakugan and magnetically pop open into their beast form when rolled on top of a card. Then by way of adding up various G-Power cards and through other rules, a winner in each battle is determined and that player wins a card. Once a certain number of cards are won, that player is the overall winner of the game. There's more to it than that, but that's the basic idea.



The videogame take on the franchise, Bakugan: Battle Brawlers, puts players in control of a customized character that they attempt to take to the Ultimate Battle Tournament. Between matches (which include both tournaments and one-off battles at a park, akin to an arcade mode), you can buy new Bakugan, upgrade them, purchase G-Power cards and manage your decks for your next fight.



This setup works well enough, though there's a limited number of Bakugan for purchase, largely because they essentially repeat across the six different types of Bakugan (also known as Attributes). Depending upon what cards are played and what battlefield you're on, one type may provide better bonuses than another, but it seemed hard to justify having to buy what is pretty much the exact same creature six different times in order to really take advantage of this. Instead, I just pumped money into the ones I had in order to upgrade them and dealt with the situations as they came up rather than buying a whole new slew of creatures for a new tournament.



Play-wise, a few liberties were taken with the rules of the game in order to make it more exciting, but really all that happens is that you do all of this stuff to build up to a showdown between two Bakugan, and then one just runs into the other and quickly wins.



After throwing your Bakugan into the playing field, other players can try to knock it off-course while you try to steer your creature into pick-ups on the field to make your Bakugan stronger for the current match. After that, you can use any of the three Ability cards you've pre-selected to boost your Bakugan's G-Power, and then you play one of three mini-games to further raise your little guy's G-Power. These three mini-games include a lite DDR-esque timing/rhythm game, a challenge where you have to trace a circle as it goes around an infinity symbol-like path and another where you scratch at a square as quickly as you can to build up power.



After all of that, whichever Bakugan has more G-Power hits the other Bakugan once and the round is over. It seems to me like the game would have been more exciting if you threw your Bakugan, used an Ability card and then played a mini-game while your Bakugan were fighting, where your actions directly impacted their battle. Instead, the build-up to the battle is way longer than the actual fight and the skirmish is over in seconds. There aren't even multiple rounds where they trade blows - it's like early Mike Tyson is in the ring every time.



Now, while the way the mechanics play out aren't done in the way that I would have liked to have seen them, fans of the Bakugan franchise who want to take everything that comes with it on the road may find something to like. All of the elements are here - there's collecting, vicious monsters of varying types and lots of battles to be had. I don't think it'll completely take fans away from the card game, but it might be entertaining for a weekend or two.

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