Video Game / Kamen Rider Battride War

The first Video Game adaptation of the Kamen Rider series on Playstation 3, featuring the main Heisei-Era Riders from Kamen Rider Kuuga to Kamen Rider Wizard in a Dynasty Warriors style of game, compared to Climax Heroes' 1vs1 Fighting Game and All Kamen Rider Generations' 2D Beat 'em Up gameplays.

A sequel title was released on June 26, 2014. It stars Kamen Rider Gaim, features movie-exclusive "Ultimate" forms for the Neo-Heisei riders, and was also released on the WiiU. Another sequel, titled Kamen Rider: Battride War Genesis, was released in 2016 on the PS3, PS4, and PSVita; themed around the franchise's 45th anniversary, it stars Kamen Rider Ghost, Kamen Rider Drive and several Showa Riders (Ichigo, Nigo, V3, X, Amazon, Stronger, Skyrider, Super-1, Black, and RX). It also includes every Heisei Second Rider as playable characters, as well as a few other Riders.

Tropes associated with Battride War:

• Alien Geometries: Early in BW2, Kaito declares Cinema's plan nonsense and attempts to exit stage left...only to re-enter stage right, to his (not to mention Kouta and Micchy's) confusion.
• Artificial Stupidity: As in other Musou-type games, mooks seem to share only one brain among all of them, and end up just standing around you not doing much, or at least not doing anything fast enough to prevent you from getting combos in the hundreds by hitting them repeatedly and in packs of twelve.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Invoked with the playlist options, which allow you to customize what plays when certain events take place. Fighting a boss, changing form, entering a Super Mode and many more. Exaggerated with the second game's Maniac Playlist, which gives each character nine possible events plus three for each form change. This leads to 27 songs AT LEAST for each character.
• Badass Normal: In Genesis, Ichigou can pull off a series first and enter battle as Takeshi Hongo, having to transform into Kamen Rider during the stage. He's still a cyborg, but the lion's share of his abilities are restricted to his Rider form. This is, however, optional, and he can start as Ichigou if you so desire. There's a Trophy for beating the final boss as Hongo, and it's as difficult as it sounds.
• Big Bad:
  • Karasu, a Mad Scientist looking to create a Utopia that lacks evil... by manipulating everyone's memories and creating a world free of The Evils of Free Will. in Battride War. For the final showdown, he possesses a memory-materialized version of Kamen Rider Decade Violent Emotion.
  • Cinema in Battride War II.
  • Shadowmoon in Genesis. Except not really. It's the Creation King possessing his body.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The best way to get long combos (and therefore high scores) is to find certain abusable moves and spam them endlessly, such as Agito Storm Form's Halberd Spin, Gatack's Rider Cutting and Fourze Elec States' Rider 10-Billion Volt Break.
  • Characters with guns, like Kuuga and Kaixa, can simply spam the basic shot to mow down enemies at a distance while building hundreds of combo points.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • The Decade Violent Emotion figure, which gives you unlimited super gauge so you can stay in super/ultimate mode during the whole stage. It appears for sale in the shop after the main story is cleared... and costs a whopping 900,000 points, over twice as much as the next most expensive figures.
  • In Genesis, you can get the Red Shadowmoon figure which does the same thing and requires you to complete the last, hardest mission of Survival Mode, though you can still use it to get back at whatever few things you missed and have an easier time getting them.
• Call-Back: Using certain Riders to unlock others (via the "(Rider)'s Awakening" stage) will yield special dialog; for example, using Double in Fourze's Awakening will have Shotaro recognize Gentaro as "that pompadour kid", which is what Shotaro called him in Movie Wars Megamax
• Cool Bike: All characters can summon their bikes during stages to get around faster. Their primary purpose is to let you travel between fields quickly, and most of them do their job admirably, but some bikes (like Kiva's and Hibiki's) aren't amazingly useful for that due to slow acceleration and clunky controls, and all have basically no combat use whatsoever (since you can't fight on your bike and enemies will roll out of the way). The exceptions to the rule are the few Riders who don't actually have motorcycles: Diend just runs at super-speed, Accel becomes a bike, Eternal uses the T2 Accel Memory to run really fast, Beast flies using the Falco Mantle, and Drive uses his Cool Car instead (using the Bike button in his ultimate form, in which he physically merges with his car, has him traveling using the wheels on his feet).
• Crisis Crossover: Riders are once again thrown together into a world where they must fight an alliance of Mooks, kaijins and main villains from their series.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: In the first game, the accelerator for Bike Mode is mapped to Square; in the second, it's moved to R2, while Square...makes you do a wheelie.
• Demonic Possession: Karasu's MO when he decides to battle the Riders himself. He takes control of memory-materialized versions of Skull, Eternal and New Den-O As well as Decade Violent Emotion in the final stage. Canaria also does this to Super Apollo Geist in one stage.
  • In Genesis the Creation King is doing this to Shadowmoon's corpse.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • The Second Riders who are non-playable, including G3-X, Knight, Kaixa, Garren, Ibuki, Gattack, Zeronos, Ixa, and Diend. Made even more surprising when you consider that the advertising made a big deal out of how Bandai Namco got several Rider actors to reprise their roles...only for them to be NPCs (this list includes Garren, Gattack, and Diend). The Joker Undead, who is not only voiced by his original actor Ryoji Morimoto, but never changes into Kamen Rider Chalice.
  • Though Genesis is the debut of the Showa Riders, Riderman and ZX are limited to assist characters. Presumably this is because they didn't have shows of their own, meaning they couldn't fit with the game's storyline (which is based primarily on each show's first episode).
• Difficult, but Awesome: Fourze's Base States has a ton of moves, but many of them leave him open.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Genesis includes both Kuugas, the original Yusuke Godai and his Decade counterpart Yusuke Onodera. Godai has access to the upgraded Rising versions of his four main forms and uses Ultimate Form as his strongest, while Onodera can access Ultimate Form as a standard form change and has Rising Ultimate as his strongest.
• Downloadable Content: Each game in the series has gotten DLC; to Bandai Namco's credit, it's always been free.
  • The first game got Wizard Infinity Style and Beast Hyper as separate characters; though the game's staff teased at the Showa Riders or Kamen Rider Mage (Mayu) being added, this never materialized.
  • The sequel got Zangetsu Shin and Gaim in Kiwami Arms.
  • Genesis adds Chaser, Specter, and Ghost Toucon Boost Soul.
• Double-Meaning Title: For Genesis, though it's one that works off Japanese pronunciation. The kanji used for Genesis(創生) is pronounced as Sōsei. It shares the same pronunciation as 創世 which stands for creation. As in the Creation King (創世王,Sōseiō), the Big Bad of Kamen Rider BLACK.
• Dualvertisement: The promotional materials for Chaser's DLC appearance in Genesis hype up the fact that he can change into Super Mashin Chaser, which debuted months later in Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Chaser.
• Elite Mooks: A few exist, such as Large Waste Yummies and Albiroaches. The second game also introduces three Leader-type enemies: Attackers (who increase the attack of all enemies on the field), Defenders (who do the same for Defense), and Keepers (whom the player must defeat to progress). Genesis adds Kurokages using Suika Arms and Tulip Hoppers.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Maniac Playlist in Battride War II, a custom soundtrack option which gives every playable character at least 27 customizable song slots, plus three more for each form change (OOO takes the gold medal with 45 thanks to all his Combos).
• Exposition Fairy: A Navi-like golden fairy by the name of Canaria joins Wizard and helps him find the other Riders and go into their memories to remind them that they're supposed to be heroes. She's not all she appears to be, however.
• Fake Memories: The Riders are all implanted with ones at the start of the story. Unlocking the main Riders for play results in them shaking the fake memories off. The Big Bad's goal is to do this to the whole world.
• Fake Shemp:
  • Masaki Suda reprises his role as Philip via stock audio in both games; this is the reason you don't hear him during the Trigger Aerobuster attack. In Genesis, Suda's dialog is replaced by a new actor.
  • Tomoyuki Dan (Shinkuro Isaka/Weather Dopant) died some time after the release of Battride War, so his role in the second game is also conveyed by stock audio.
  • The second game is an odd case, since during battles they use recycled audio from the first, but have new actors play the characters for the story cutscenes. For example, whomever plays Kamen Rider OOO sounds close to Shu Watanabe, but just different enough that anyone who watched OOO will notice.
  • Genesis adds Kamen Rider Fourze to this list, which is especially strange because this required removing Souta Fukushi's audio from the previous games. However, it's possible this was done to avoid the disconnect between two actors (as mentioned above).
• Fighting Down Memory Lane: An almost literal case, as all of the stages and enemies are constructed from the Riders' memories.
• Final Boss:
  • Karas himself in Decade Violent Emotion form, helped by Eternal, Skull and New Den-O.
  • In Battride War 2, Cinema summons copies of all the Riders in their ultimate forms, except with Bujin Gaim instead of Gaim Kachidoki Arms. Cinema is directly connected to Bujin Gaim, so the other Riders make this a Flunky Boss.
• Finishing Move: In all games, a boss character enters a stun state when their HP are depleted, leaving them open for one of these. The first game required the player to use their character's Triangle + Circle attack, which was often not their primary finishing move (especially with Super Modes, where their main finisher is used upon activation). This was fixed in the sequel, where any special can be used to defeat a stunned boss.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Some of the bosses flee from you and fully regain their health, sometimes repeatedly. The worst is Midaredouji. Also applies in the second game, but they don't regain their health over time. The second phase of the boss in the Fourze level does this.
• Identity Amnesia: As a result of the Fake Memories above. Each Rider has an "Awakening" stage where they must be smacked out of this state by the player character.
• Joke Character: The first print run of Genesis includes a download code for a special character: Takeshi Hongo disguised as a Shocker Soldier. His attacks are slower and weaker than his Rider form (and even his standard human form) and his specials include a "weaponized" version of the Shocker salute.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • If you use Decade to awaken Kuuga, Tsukasa will have special dialog where he recognizes that Godai isn't the same Kuuga he traveled with, but says that they both had the same desire to protect peoples' smiles.
  • In the second game, Gaim asks Double "If you're a two-in-one guy, why do I only ever hear one voice coming out of you?", nodding to the fact that Renn Kiriyama reprised his role as Shotaro while Philip is "played" by recycled audio of Masaki Suda.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Most of the Riders seem to have forgotten who they were, and have to be reminded of their roles as heroes by Wizard. The opening stage, "Rider War...?", sees Wizard appearing in the infamous BBC Quarry and getting attacked by the ten Heisei Riders, lead by Decade.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Much like Dragon Ball Xenoverse, the main plot of Genesis is that someone is using time travel to alter history by powering up the bad guys (in this case, making the Kamen Riders' first opponents more powerful to ensure that the Riders were defeated when they were still weak and inexperienced). It's up to Den-O and Ghost to prevent the alterations to history.
• Meaningful Name: The faeries' names are also derived from their original human names (in Japanese name order): Canaria = Kanai Rie, Karas = Karashima Susumu.
• Mooks: As a Dynasty Warriors clone, these naturally come in spades. The list includes Formica Pedes, Raydragoons and Gelnewts, Riotroopers, Darkroaches, Bakeneko, Salis Worms, Leo Soldiers, Rat Fangire, Shocker and Dai-Shocker Combatmen, Masquerade Dopants (regular and Foundation X versions), Waste Yummies, Dustards, and Ghouls. II adds Kamen Rider Mages and Elementary Inves, while Genesis adds Kurokage Troopers, Low-Class Roidmudes, and Primal Body Ganma.
• Multiform Balance: Naturally, since this is a Kamen Rider video game. Most of the form-changing Riders have a Jack of All Stats, Fragile Speedster, Mighty Glacier, and Glass Cannon form, with a few variations (Den-O Rod Form is labeled a "technical" type).
• Mythology Gag:
  • The levels in the game, at least for a good half of it, are based off events that occurred in the show, nearly all of them set during the end game of their respective show save for Hibiki (His stage was set really early compared to the others), Double (their stage was set during middle portion of the series), and Wizard (his show was airing at the time, and thus there was no endgame yet).
  • You can ram enemy helicopters with your motorcycle for a one-hit kill.
  • Faiz Blaster Form's Super-Enhanced Crimson Smash creates a huge shockwave at the point of impact, just like in the Faiz movie Paradise Lost.
• Original Generation: Karasu and Canaria in the first game. The former is the Big Bad, who possesses several characters to do battle with the Riders, while the latter is the Exposition Fairy Who actually has her own beef with the Riders and possesses Super Apollo Geist at one point to try and get rid of them.
• Overheating: Ixa in Genesis uses this mechanic. Burst Form is good all around and has ranged attacks thanks to his Ixacalibur, but gradually builds up heat and will be rendered completely defenseless for a while if he overheats; the best way to avoid this is to change to Save Mode to "cool off".
• Palette Swap: Kamen Rider Wizard's Infinity Dragon Style, which only appears in the stage re-creating Wizard in Magic Land, is a palette swap of Infinity Dragon Gold; this is actually an inversion of real life, where Infinity Dragon came first and Gold appeared in The Fateful Sengoku Movie Battle.
• Personal Space Invader: The Waste Yummies can grab you. And that's it. They just grab you from behind and prevent you from moving for a few seconds.
• Point of No Return: When you battle another Rider you can't escape the area you're fighting in, either a door or an invisible wall stops you.
  • Humorously, one of Kabuto's lines is "If you value your life, you'd best turn around and leave". But you can't. Irony.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • Kiva and OOO's alternate forms only have a single special attack each; OOO partially makes up for this by having some of his Combos' powers pop up in his regular melee combos (for example, Gatakiriba's combo ends with him blasting the surrounding area with electricity). Tajador gets a little better in the sequel, having its ground attacks completely changed (its aerial attacks are the same).
  • Gaim Jinba Lemon Arms also has only one special attack in Battride Wars II, despite the fact that it's his last unlockable form, which would make one expect it to be the best. Genesis rectifies this by improving its moveset.
• Promoted to Playable: Most of the Heisei Second Riders who were only assists in the first two games become this in Genesis; the list includes G3-X, Knight, Kaixa, Garren, Ibuki, Gatack, Zeronos, Ixa (Nago), and Diend. Eternal, previously a boss in II, also becomes playable, as does Decade!Kuuga.
• Recurring Boss: The main villains or evil Riders from most shows are fought multiple times throughout the game. Four of them can show up in a stage, or you can sometimes spend an entire stage chasing the same one who keeps teleporting and getting all its health back.
• Serial Escalation:
  • While the first game let you use the Riders' Super Modes, the second adds in "Ultimate State", which allows some Riders to assume movie-exclusive modes like CycloneJoker Gold Xtreme, Super Tatoba Combo, or Meteor Nadeshiko Fusion States.
  • The games' custom soundtrack feature. In the original, you had your choice of Single Play, which plays a single song, or Dramatic Play, which gives a list of six events (such as boss battles or Super Mode activation) and lets you assign up to three songs to each. The sequel does away with Single in favor of the aptly-titled Maniac Playlist, which starts with nine events for each character (including new options like the menu and results screen), and then throws in a slot for each of their alternate forms^note So for example, OOO has a grand total of 15 song slots. Not including DLC characters, this means you can have a playlist of almost 250 songs.
• Super Armor: Every character's Rider Glide attack (Square + X) has this, as do a few specific attacks like Gatack's Rider Cutting and Beast's Buffa Mantle tackle.
• Super Mode:
  • As most characters' Limit Break by pressing R2 when their gauge is full. They first use a powerful attack, most often their Super Mode's Finishing Move, and can then fight for some time with their new form's increased power and new moves until the gauge is completely empty.
  • Battride War II adds Ultimate forms by using a second super gauge during their Super Mode. This is how Riders activate their Movie-exclusive forms, but even those who don't have one can still use this feature to extend their Super Mode's duration and enter some sort of Bullet Time state. Genesis does away with the separate gauges, instead using a single gauge split into two; when it's half-full you can use your Super Mode and when it's completely full you can use your Ultimate Mode. On top of this, a few Riders can choose between two different Super Modes, which usually grant different Ultimate Forms. Wizard has All Dragon (Ultimate: Special Rush) and Infinity Style (Ultimate: Infinity Dragon Gold), Fourze has Cosmic (Ultimate: Meteor Fusion) and Rocket (Ultimate: Meteor Nadeshiko Fusion), and Gaim has Kachidoki and Suika Arms (both have Kiwami as their Ultimate).
  • Battride Genesis also gives a form of this to some of the bad guys, granting them a barrier and more powerful moves.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Even though the playable Kuuga is confirmed to be Godai, Onodera makes semi-appearances in some Decade-related stages, including those which re-create Kamen Rider Decade: All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker. Averted in Genesis, where Onodera is a separate character.
• Stance System: In Genesis, Rider #1 can swap between "Melee Mode", which uses moves like the Rider Kick, Punch, and Chop, and "Throw Mode", which uses the Rider Reversal, Tailspin Shoot, and Head Crusher grappling attacks. Likewise, Skyrider has "Sailing Jump Mode", where he hovers above the ground and primarily uses aerial attacks.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Once you start playing in the higher difficulties, especially in survival mode, you can notice that most bosses have attacks with ridiculous super armor and/or invincibility frames. Especially noticable with Kamen Rider Sorcerer in Battride War II, where even when you put him in "finish" state, will still completely ignore most of your special attacks while he's preparing his own.
• Theme Naming: The small faeries that follow the heroes are named after kinds of birds while the domain they live in is the "Bird's Cage."
• Technicolor Death: While Defeat Equals Explosion is a given here^note oddly including human mooks like Kamen Rider Mages and Kurokage Troopers some mooks will explode differently depending on the series; Yummies turn into coins, Fangires shatter, Worms explode into green flames, Orphenochs explode into blue flames, Dustards dissolve into cosmic energy and Makamou poof into shreds of paper. Sadly, Shocker Combatmen do not fade into a pile of soap suds.
• Treacherous Quest Giver: Canaria becomes this once she recovers some of her memories. Her resentment towards the Riders stems from the fact that her son remembered them and not her, despite having amnesia as a result of the memory experiments. She attempts to kill them while in the form of Super Apollo Geist.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Tokugawa Yoshimune, the protagonist of the Jidaigeki Abarenbo Shogun, who Crossed Over with Kamen Rider OOO in The Shogun and the 21 Core Medals; they even got Ken Matsudaira to reprise his role.
  • Also Decade Fury Form, as a separate character from Decade, in Battride Wars II.
  • Takeshi Hongo disguised as a Shocker mook in Battride Genesis, which counts as a free DLC character packed with first run copies of the game.
  • Who expected Lord Baron to be playable?
• Word Purée Title: Battride? It's a combination of battle and ride (battoru and raido in Japanese, thus creating battoraido)

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