Duration: 8:42

11,738 views

0

Hyper Reverthion is the Sega Saturn port of the Playstation game, "Reverthion", and is a decent shooting/fighting game developed by the great folks over at TechnoSoft. It is the prequel to the the game "Koutetsu Reiiki: Steeldom", which was made shortly afterwards and can best be summarized as a combination of Virtual-On and early Arena fighters with different creatures. While not as good as Virtual-On, it does have the distinction of being multi-platform and beat Virtual-On to the home console market, making it a good filler title.

In the game, you play as one of eight characters who control mechanized creatures in battle to determine who deserves the title of Reverthion (the intro is actually in English with Japanese subtitles and summarizes the plot). The gameplay is similar to Virtual-On with an emphasis on constant movement, weapon-based close and far range special attacks, and obstructions to add strategy to the battlefields. Also like VO, characters have various traits such as mobility, turning speed, attack, defense, knockback, range, homing capability, and unique weaponry to balance out the roster. However, Reverthion runs at a higher (though inconsistent) framerate and allows players to adjust the size of Arenas (like Virtua Fighter) as well as turn walls on or off. Each character requires various tactics to use effectively and can also roll to the side or use special dash attacks to dodge or ram opponents, which can be helpful as the game has ring-outs (though it is more secondary in achieving victory).

The main problems with Reverthion is that the A.I., though somewhat challenging, does not change much between difficulty settings and manuevering characters is considerably more clunky than VO as there is no auto-targeting and you have to hold down in the corners to turn, which conflicts with each characters special weapon inputs (special weapon execution problems can be mitigated in the options however); it really reminds you of the pitfalls of early 3D games which could've benefitted from Analog controls. Even in spite of this, the game is manageable with practice and you can take advantage of certain cracks in the A.I.

The visuals are not that good. The textures are flat, the effects tend to become glitchy (especially when the framerate slows down) and the stages are not very original in design, though the mech models are pretty good. I am not sure how it differs visually from the Playstation game, but the Saturn game doesn't qualify as pretty IMO. The soundtrack is considerably better than the visuals with that distinct TechnoSoft charm, and some tunes sound like they were ripped from Capcom CP System II games. Overall, it's a decent early Saturn title.