A colourful and exciting brawler from Bullets and Marvelous, that doesn’t impress quite as much in the story and gameplay departments.

Developer Bullets Publisher Marvelous Franchise N/A Genre Brawler PSTV Yes Physical English No – JP only

World-building & Story

In Uppers, you play as two delinquents named Michiru and Ranma who find themselves on ‘Last Resort Island’ – a place where young men fight for dominance and the affection of beautiful women. It’s on this backdrop that they’ll fight rival delinquents, attract support queens and learn more about their pasts over the course of the 10 hour adventure.

The most noteworthy thing here is the world built – despite just being a collection of menus and small combat zones, Last Resort is a vibrant, exciting place that it’s really enjoyable to uncover. The locations are varied – from glitzy gold-plated casinos to seedy back alleys and city streets, every place you visit has something going on and manages to make a big impression. It feels like a mash-up of numerous larger-than-life from other Japanese games I’ve played – the Gold Saucer from Final Fantasy VII, Kamorocho from Yakuza etc.

Sadly the impressive setting is wasted on a fairly absent story that failed to engage me. Most of the (numerous) conversation scenes merely serve to set up short-term rivalries with other delinquents and the plots for the support queens are brief and fairly irrelevant. There are times when Uppers attempts to go for something a bit deeper (for example, there are things scattered throughout about Ranma’s father) but these aren’t handled very well – worlds apart from the surprisingly touching backstories of the characters in Takai’s other series Senran Kagura.

Overall then, the story is fairly shallow (which matches my impressions of the gameplay) and while it’s by no means bad, it’s certainly not essential to the experience.

Presentation & Sound

A surprisingly beautiful game in motion, Uppers is a real visual treat on Vita – filling the screen with colourful visual effects and busy environments. This does have an impact on the performance at times, but I certainly felt it was worth the trade off.

The first thing that really struck me about the game was the character design, which was universally brilliant across both genders thanks to the solid work of King of Fighters veteran Hiroaki. The men are all buff brawlers that run the spectrum from attractive pretty boys like Michiru to hulking great wrestlers like Max Guren Heart. The women receive a similar attention to detail (of course – this is a Takai game) and although they’re mostly used as pretty cheerleaders (aside from the superb Nicole), their models are still on point.

Things look even better in combat, where you’ll regularly see scores of enemies go flying in a sea of colourful explosions. Animations are great – whether it is Nicole doing half-moon kicks to launch a foe or the sharp kung fu stabs of Liu Wuchang, everything looks detailed and fluid in motion. It’s all accompanied by a variety of visual effects – colour will pop all over from girls in the crowds throwing confetti to a blue aura covering your fighter in rise up mode. I’ve honestly never seen combat that looks so good on Vita.

Environments are slightly less impressive – best are the aforementioned golden casino levels and neon-lit city streets, which pop with life and vibrancy. Others are less exciting but make sense within the setting, such as the interior of a skyscraper or and underground subway tunnel that at least have a few interesting elements. Elsewhere, things like an abandoned car park or the school are just a dull slog of samey corridors which merely act as a means to contain the battles.

What makes Uppers special in its presentation is twofold – as previously mentioned, the use of colour is just off the charts and gives the game a superbly enticing aesthetic, like someone has thrown three cans of paint over every scene. The other is how interactive it all feels when you’re playing – girls cheer you on in the background, signs flash with messages and skylines shimmer in the evening twilight. You likely won’t be able to take it all in due to the heavy focus on combat, but it’s certainly a sight to behold.

Music is the area of presentation that isn’t quite to the same level as other elements – there’s a few good tunes here (such as Nicole’s theme), but otherwise it’s merely serviceable background noise. Elsewhere, you’ll be treated to the sound of punches landing and the yells of the guys as they wail on each other – voice acting is expressive and solid at least, to round things off.

Soundtrack highlight – Nicole

Gameplay & Content

Taking as much inspiration from things like Final Fight and Streets of Rage as it does from Takai’s other major series Senran Kagura, Uppers is a serviceable brawler enhanced by some spectacular environmental actions – but this does little to ward off the ultimately repetitive combat.

You select missions from a map of Last Resort Island – included is a little mini hub (a mall) that you can run around and speak to support queens (complete with leery scenes where you can ‘admire’ them), train at the gym or buy new clothes. It’s nice to have a little base like this, but somewhat disappointing that there’s not more of an open world here given developer Bullets’ experience in this area with Kenka Bancho.

The levels themselves are always little arenas, with gated areas which unlock once you’ve beaten all nearby enemies. You’ll usually control a tag team of two fighters – by default this is Michiro and Ranma, but once you’ve cleared a mission once you’ll be able to challenge them again with your choice from a selection of delinquents including a pro wrestler, kung fu master and bizarre Vega from Street Fighter-esque brawler.

Combat is extremely straight forward – square and triangle are heavy attacks while circle is throws, these can be combined to pull of combos. You can dodge with x and block with L, a well timed block (when an enemy’s eyes flash) allowing you to counterattack, which adds a decent chunk of strategy. As you fight you’ll build up a meter which makes your attacks stronger and this is where Uppers starts showing its personality – you’ll eventually be able to send foes flying through the air like a rocket when you hit them, which is always hilarious and empowering.

A few further ideas are thrown in – the first being an ability called ‘rise up’ which you can power up to make your attacks even stronger and can pummel enemies repeatedly in a button mashing mini game. You can also tag out at any time including in the middle of a super attack, plus it’s also possible to slam enemies into the ground and continue to pummel them there.

Far more central is to everything is the interactive environments, though. A great deal of the things you come across in a level can be used to attack your foes – you can kick flaming barrels, guide them into fire hydrants, run around a pole kicking them Matrix-style, throw them down manholes and eventually even smack them into oncoming helicopters. It’s loads of fun exploring all the possibilities with this and extends beyond just pre-set elements – you can run along walls and destroy structures with well-placed hits too (it’s incredibly satisfying to smash a foe through a series of walls).

These interactive elements serve a secondary purpose beyond being flashy attacks – which is audience requests. Each area you’re in will be filled with crowds of girls who cheer you on when you beat up other delinquents and they’ll ask to see certain things – which might be as simple as hitting them to something more specialised like running along a wall then kicking them into a nearby car. Fulfilling these requests keeps things interesting but I would recommend using a guide for this – they’re very difficult to understand otherwise with no real visual cues.

Completing these requests will grand you love letters needed to progress, as well as randomly unlock pantie roulette – which is as it sounds, a bizarre mini game where you look up girl’s skirts and if they match, you unlock them in the shop. You can then buy these for the support queens who follow you around a level and give you health boosts when you’re low on health by letting you fall into their chest or crotch – the lewd elements are more humorous than embarrassing, although I certainly could have lived without them.

The big issue with Uppers is just how repetitive it is – even though there are different characters, the way you attack broadly stays the same throughout the 10 hour campaign. It’s very easy too – enemies don’t really attack and just stand around as punching bags like in a Warriors title, although the later survival levels did add a much needed bit of difficulty to things. I did encounter a few technical issues too, including a hard crash that happened regularly whenever I kicked a fire extinguisher.

All in all, there is a lot to love here and its flashy, over-the-top nature makes it a very charming title – I just wish a little more depth had been added.

DLC

Just a quick note on DLC – you can pay to unlock Daidouji from Senran Kagura as an extra playable character, who is a fairly decent addition but you’ll need a Japanese account for this.

Ease of Understanding

Understanding all the basic systems in Uppers is extremely straight forward – menus often have icons which help, the base controls are really straight forward and beyond this anything else there’s Google Translate.

The one thing this doesn’t apply to is audience requests, which are pretty impossible to figure out otherwise. I used Google Translate on this website which helped me out massively but it wasn’t an ideal solution as it meant I had to keep pausing to check what to do, but otherwise the game is plenty playable.

Conclusion

Updating the classic scrolling brawler gameplay for a new generation, the flashy action of Uppers makes it really interesting to watch and thanks to the fun integration of interactive games environments it’s enjoyable to play too. Things are let down by the repetitive base combat and a disappointingly vacant story, but if you can look past these issues this is another Vita import which is definitely worth checking out.

7.0/10