YMMV / Battle Arena Toshinden

• Broken Base: The fact that the Story Mode in Battle Arena Toshinden Remix flat out averts Not Even Bothering with the Accent. Is this game a fine example of how Not Even Bothering with the Accent can be a good thing? Or were their intentions to give all the characters their regional accent commendable even if it's a bit poorly done? It doesn't help on how the few characters who don't have an accent, namely Rungo, Gaia, and Cupido are generally seen as the only good performances in that game.
• Condemned by History: Upon release, Toshinden was hailed as a Killer App for the PlayStation. Its reputation would soon be eroded as in spite of the pretty graphics the gameplay was very shallow, specially once Bandai Namco's Tekken and Soul Edge arrived to give 3D fighters a higher benchmark for comparison.
• Contested Sequel: Those that even remotely know of 4 thanks to its No Export for You status generally don't look favorably upon it, between its controversial story ideas for the three returning cast members with most of the rest Put on a Bus or suffering from unexplained deaths, the new cast being a fraction of 3's size and not held as all that interesting, and the drastically slowed down and sluggish pace compared to the previous two games. Besides a failed Spiritual Successor on the Wii that was In Name Only besides a protagonist with the Shinjo name, 4 was effectively a Franchise Killer.
• Cult Classic: Despite having a bad rep now, the series still has its fans. Often citing that while the gameplay definitely got dated over time, the soundtrack didn't. And the diverse cast and their backstories are worth a look at.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Cuiling. When she had debuted in Battle Arena Toshinden 3, she had unexpectedly became a Breakout Character due to not only her cute Moe appearance, but also for her Genki Girl personality and the fact that some had considered her a Redeeming Replacement for her late master, the Ax-Crazy Serial Killer Fo Fai. Cuiling gained such a huge amount of fans to the point that she had ended up appearing as a playable character in the Japanese exclusive PlayStation game Toshinden Card Quest.
  • Judgement, the Palette Swap of David from the third game, has probably the most fans out of all the "new" characters in Toshinden 3. It also does helps that he's a Captain Ersatz of a well-known and legendary American horror icon.
  • Cupido, an exclusive character who is only seen and playable in Battle Arena Toshinden Remix (the Sega Saturn port of the first game) became a surprise hit with fans due to her attractive design, her theme music, and in the English version of Remix, her surprisingly good voice work. Plenty of PlayStation fans of the series were disappointed that she never appeared again in the following sequels.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • The fourth game, which was never released in North America, and sees series protagonist Eiji make an improbable Face–Heel Turn as the new head of the "Himitsu Kessha", although his true goal is to dismantle the organization from within.
  • The OVA. The fact that Sho was instantly killed by Uranus' arrows in the first half doesn't help. Though the "Sho" that died wasn't actually him to begin with.
• Game-Breaker: Vermillion in the second game. Then again, he has to be unlocked with an awkward code.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The fourth game includes a girl named Puella, who wields a bow. Come 2011, out comes an unrelated anime titled Puella Magi Madoka Magica, in which the eponymous character wields a bow as a Magical Girl.
  • Speaking of Puella, her stage theme could easily be a Battle Frontier facility theme in Pokémon (the Battle Subway seems suitable). Listen to the bell notes, and then listen to the original Battle Frontier theme from Emerald and its subsequent remixes for the Battle Factory, Arcade, Hall, and Castle in Platinum and HeartGold/SoulSilver.
• Jerkass Woobie: Kayin can be moody, cynical, mean-spirited and not exactly a team player. He's also one of the most tragic figures in the series, with a legitimately bad past and genuine regret for the not-so-nice things he's done.
• Moe:
  • Ellis. She's so moe, it's almost obscene.
  • Puella in 4.
• Narm:
  • Battle Arena Toshinden Remix's voice acting is laughably bad, especially Fo Fai's.
  • In the third game, each of the "bad guys" has Sho Shinjo as the last opponent. Leon is one such bad guy. His ending, in a nutshell, says that he finally gained his victory over whoever (probably Eiji), but he cannot be truly satisfied until he's defeated...Sho Shinjo.
• Nightmare Fuel: Most of the series is pretty tame, to the point that it can't even make murderous bad guys all that intimidating. Then you hit the Master's boss stage in 2, and inexplicably have a wiggling, squirming Eldritch Abomination in the background amidst a cavern wreathed with blue flames that looks like you're in Hell.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • The first game isn't very good by today's standards, but its technical achievement convinced the public to buy the game and the console, as in 1995, the fact that you're able to play 3D fighting games on home console was a feat of itself. Then Tekken released, which wasn't super strong at first, but Tekken 2 alongside Virtua Fighter 2 would shift the fighting game hemisphere and leave Battle Arena Toshinden 2 in their dust, dooming the series going forwards.
  • The Story Mode in Battle Arena Toshinden Remix is often mocked and derided for its Narm-filled voice acting and laughably fake accents nowadays. However, the Toshinden series itself was actually the first fighting game franchise to have and feature a fully-voiced Story Mode, years before Arc System Works, Capcom, and Bandai Namco got in on the act. And say what you will about how silly and fake the accents are in Remix, the game itself did try to avert Not Even Bothering with the Accent since other well-known fighting game franchises either play it fully straight or are a lot more selective in terms of who gets an accent in their English dubs.
• Porting Disaster:
  • On one hand, Battle Arena Toshinden Remix for the Sega Saturn managed to include Cupido, and has all of the gameplay intact. On the other hand, all of the sound quality besides the music took a massive compression hit, nearly all the transparencies were turned into rather ugly dithering, numerous effects were downgraded, the game's performance was noticeably more choppy, and almost every single detail of the battle arena backgrounds had been either downgraded or turned into 2D billboard objects. Remix near single-handedly sunk the consumer opinion of the Saturn's 3D capabilities versus the PlayStation version, and it took later, better ports of other games to prove otherwise, but in the west it was too little too late for most.
  • The game was ported to the Tiger R-Zone, a feeble console with a monochrome LCD display. See this video for details, starting from about 15 minutes.
• Stoic Woobie: Gaia. He lost his wife and son because of Uranus' machinations, and he's unable to see his daughter because that would make her a target as well. You can't not feel sorry for the guy... but does he feel sorry for himself? No sir.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: 2 took everything the first game had, expanded it with more impressive backgrounds and character models, and overhauled the flow of battle so much that you'd think the first game was a prototype. The same can go for URA despite being a separate game engine altogether, managing to run circles around the original Remix release on the Saturn hardware. 3 may have caged the arenas and wasn't as much a graphical showcase, but the roster more than doubled from there and the game became a hell of a lot faster for a more frantic experience.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Master. In the English version, she is referred to as he.
  • Lancelot, as he looks, acts, and sounds just like a girl.

---