An enjoyable 3D fighter from Omega Force that eschews balance and tight mechanics for chaotic, fireball-chucking fun.
| Developer | Omega Force |
| Publisher | Koei |
| Franchise | N/A |
| Genre | Fighting |
| PSTV | Yes |
| PSN | NA only |
World-building & Story
A group of humans known as ‘Strega’ who have the power to create magic are being hunted by the evil Prime Minister Zauber, leader of the Empire of Ipsen. Playing as a young man named Gradd, Destrega follows his journey across the empire where he discovers the Resistance, a group of fighters planning on overthrowing Zauber and restoring peace to the land.
There’s a surprising amount of back-story in Destrega to set the scene and establish the world – whether it be the ancient Relics that Zauber is chasing or the war that lead to the rise of Ipsen and the Strega becoming outcasts. The problem is it’s all told in an opening text dump and beyond that the game focuses on the trials and tribulations of its cast of fighters who range from a young princess who is trying to suppress her power to avoid being killed to an elderly warrior who acted as the bodyguard to an assassinated Prime Minister. The world-building takes a back-seat beyond this which is a shame, as it has the potential to be quite a fascinating place.
The actual plot of the game doesn’t really make up for this lack of world-building – it features many tried and true story beats such as a young man seeing his village destroyed which leads to the awakening of his powers and a evil villain who needs to be defeated by the newly-empowered warrior. There’s plenty of twists and turns along the way (some of which are more interesting than others) although it seems more like an excuse to introduce the varied cast of characters than it does to tell a coherent tale.
Still, I have to give Omega Force credit for at least trying to weave a different type of narrative thread even if it doesn’t fully succeed – many PS1 fighting games provide much less than is on offer here.
Presentation & Sound
Impressive in a number of apsects, Destrega is a graphically advanced PS1 game that uses big open environments, detailed character modelling and solid performance to make an overall package that’s among the upper tier on PS1.
The developer has always made impressive character models, whether it be in their long-running Warriors titles or custom-built Vita software such as Toukiden. It’s no surprise then that here in one of their earliest titles, things look good – each cast member has realistic proportions, facial features and colourful designs that put them a notch above other games on PS1. Sure, there are odd graphical ‘glitches’ (Milena’s boobs bounce in hilarious fashion after winning, although maybe that’s a precursor to Dead or Alive) but there’s still been a lot of effort put in.
In terms of environments, rather than the confined arenas of fighting games like Tekken or Toshinden, Destrega goes for big open 3D areas that you can run around freely. There’s everything you’d expect here – castles, deserts, fields and they all contain plenty of geometry to hide behind, looking solid overall despite a few stretched textures. What impressed me most about the game is when the screen is lit up by some of the more powerful attack spells you can cast, which always look brilliant (and thankfully, don’t cause any noticeable slowdown).
Music is that addictive 90’s blend that cements it as my favourite eras of all time, with upbeat electric guitars and other mixes. Voice acting on the other hand is terrible, but that kind of hilarious terrible that sort of makes it into a cult classic – I laughed a lot.
Soundtrack highlight – Battle I
Gameplay & Content
Offering a unique perspective on fighting games, Destrega is the kind of silly fun that’s a joy to revisit all these years later. It’s not a balanced, deep title nor will it keep you entertained for hours on end, but for brief blasts of enjoyment it’s well worth your time.
So the distance fire-chucking design here shares more in common with Dragon Ball Z than the likes of Mortal Kombat. You are plonked in the middle of a 3D arena and can run up and down, left and right plus you can jump to get distance from your opponent (the camera will zoom out to extreme levels if you’re both at opposite ends of an area, which is a nice touch). You then fight by chucking various attacks from afar, although if you do get close to your opponent then attack buttons will switch to melee – which is unfortunately quite clunky and feels tacked on.
The main system at play here is rock-paper-scissors – each of the face buttons has a different attack (‘bidu’, ‘est’ and ‘foh’ respectively) which overpowers the other kind of attack, so if your opponent is channeling a more powerful ‘est’ attack you can counter it by quickly getting in a ‘foh’. That sounds more complicated than it is – it basically boils down to pressing square, triangle and circle, plus you can combine them together to make more powerful moves (pressing all three grants a super attack). All of this is governed by a meter which slowly refills over time, meaning you have to be tactical about what you use and when.
It’s a solid system – it’s fun to experiment with and the different combinations of moves (so you could cast ‘bidu’ x 3 or ‘bidu’ plus ‘est’ etc.) which change again between characters is nice. In general, the cast here are all varied – so Gradd chucks fireballs, Milena uses ice, Ceila throws gusts of wind and Tieme creates colourful slashes with his sword. There’s enough differences between them that it’s always enjoyable finding out the nuance of each (Gradd’s super travels in a straight line, while Milena’s falls from the sky) even if it’s all somewhat shallow.
In terms of things to do here, the story mode will take an hour or two to complete and is good for helping you to get to grips with the different characters. After this, you can challenge 1P Battles (basically an arcade mode) where you tackel each fighter in turn, or you can have a go at team battle or time attack. There’s also endurance (basically survival) – all the things you’d expect from a fighting game on PS1, making it a decent overall package.
It’s certainly not a genre-defining title, nor something that’s going to keep you engaged for a long amount of time, but Destrega is an enjoyable fighting game that offers a fun distraction among PS1 classics. It’s a bit of an overlooked rough gem, that’s definitely worth revisiting on Vita.
Conclusion
While it doesn’t necessarily follow genre conventions, having more in common with anime arena fighters than your usual 1v1 combat, but this unusual approach makes it a unique proposition and worth another look even in the present day.
7.0/10
kresnik258gaming 