The universe of POP culture is full of franchises with fandom talented, able to create unofficial products with passion and inventiveness. My Little Pony is just one of these phenomena that, thanks to the famous reboot of 2010, has generated a strong appeal and interest on a global scale. A group of enthusiasts has thus come together to form Mane6 and, after almost 10 years of work and a mistake on the part of Hasbro, they have realized the title analyzed in this review: Them’s Fightin Herds.
The journey of the champions
A peculiarity of the title is, unlike other exponents of the genre, the presence of one story mode. The narrative tells that, in a peaceful world of talking animals, the menacing ones predators they risk returning after being enclosed within a parallel dimension. The only way to save the day is to find some legendary keys, a task to be done that will set off on an adventure champions chosen by the many peoples of the world.
In the incipit just told it is already evident how the story created by Lauren Faust, nothing less than the author of the aforementioned My Little Pony reboot, does not take herself absolutely seriously. An approach further strengthened by the presence of characters with the joke always ready and by the characterization so simple to be stereotyped. The screenplay, however, manages to use its full potential, through entertaining and never really predictable dialogues. The player continually feels intrigued in exploring the game world as well as chatting with the different NPCs, all to see the next strange idea born from the developers. In this sense it is good to underline a localization written in several languages, including Spanish, while the dubbing is only in English, with even the presence of fairly well-known American voice actors.
Despite everything, however, it is evident that Them's Fighitin Herds is still a title still incomplete. Currently you can log in only to the first chapter of history, while the next ones should come through in the future free updates. A choice certainly interesting but which, for quite obvious reasons, currently makes the work in question rather poor in content. Even the artwork gallery it is currently inaccessible.
One step too far
The gameplay of the story is divided into three specific sections: exploration, platforming and combat. The first is shown by letting us explore with a view from above, reproducing that atmosphere from 16 bit both in graphics and in music. A nice choice that creates a stark contrast with the rest of the production, so much so that it almost seems like a loophole to save (time or money?) and not a stylistic choice. The game world is still colorful, well varied, full of characters to talk to, side missions, and even collectable to discover. The latter are only aesthetic elements that have no influence whatsoever, so there is no real incentive to find all the secrets except for completeness.
The worst part, however, comes in the second section of the gameplay, or the platform phases. During the adventure the different heroines will find special stones, with which it is possible to activate some kind of challenge 2D platforms. Unfortunately these sections are not very funny, due to a imprecise and unintuitive control system. In short, the gameplay structure is not designed for this and it is quite evident.
In these sections, however, we are faced with one of the strong points of the game, lo artistic style. The game presents itself in these parts, and also in those that we will describe shortly, as a real one interactive cartoon. The animations are fluid and beautiful to look at, enriched by a highly recognizable character design but also full of personality. In short, on the purely artistic side this Them's Fighitin Herds proves it absolutely successful. A further merit also goes to the soundtrack, varied and suitable for the context.
Animals that beat hard
The strong point of the experience is not only the visual side, but also the one from fighting. The title presents a totality of seven playable characters at launch, all extremely diversified in the moveset and in their peculiarities. The soul competitive of the project is quite evident, given the possibility of making combos and techniques of each character, and with a very precise setting of the commands where every single key is useful for something.
La practice mode offers a certain degree of learning to the player, and is divided into training and tutorials. To make the most of your hands in single player, we will be able to take advantage of the arcade mode, Available at 5 difficulties. The latter presents itself as the most classic of the genre, that is, a battle against all the characters until a final confrontation of some kind.
Il multiplayer online finally, it will give us the chance to really show how much we are worth!
La story mode also has some battles, moreover related to generic enemies and from time to time against the other champions. In this sense, a certain traditional JRPG backbone is created, only instead of battles full of numbers and statistics there are fighting games. There are even clashes with the boss, but in this sense we can say very little, given the presence of only one boss at the moment. The only fight present is however very varied and fun, as well as requiring a certain degree of reflexes since some attacks are difficult to see.
Unfortunately, the lack of content is also felt here, but the development team has already promised one Season pass with more content and characters. DLC payable which, however, are accompanied by free updates.
Full power switch
In this review we were able to try Them's Fightin Herds in the Nintendo Switch version. The guys of Mane6 have worked hard to develop the experience correctly both in home and portable mode, however losing some accessibility to guarantee the correct number of keys and controls. Our evidence then was not undermined by any kind of drop in frame rates or bugs, except once where the game closed for some kind of unspecified error. The loading times are still rather slow, but in the end it is not that you can ask for anything better given the technical capabilities of the platform.
Given the maturation of the title still uncertain, we reserve the right to assign a definitive evaluation to the game, pending testing the new content arriving that will gradually complete the experience. For now, we are half satisfied.
