Metacritic Games

Battle Arena Toshinden (Playstation)

You are invited...to you own DEMISE. Battle the world's toughest fighters in this "Invitation Only" underworld tourney. Only ONE warrrior will survive. Will it be your destiny? The ONLY true 3-dimensional, 360-degree tournament-style fighter. Avoid and annihilate your opponent before he - or she - does you! Four different views AT WILL. From in-your-face close to the sky-high gaze of the powers-that-be. Unbelievable sweepkicks, rapid-fire hits, sky-high jumps, #@%! slaps, killer combos and tons of weapons and special moves. Pulverize 8 deadly challengers...and whoever or whatever comes next! Are you up to it? [Sony]

Sony Computer Entertainment
Fighting, Action
Players: 2
T (Teen)
Developer: Takara
Released September 1, 1995

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

69 / 100

Critic Reviews

75 TotalGames.net
The lack of combos is a real problem, making it tough to string together decent attack patterns and this is a real boo-boo for a beat ''em-up. Shame really, because if more effort had gone into polishing up the gameplay by simply making sure there was more to it, Battle Arena Toshinden would have been a blinding piece of software.
70 All Game Guide
With unbelievable sweep kicks, rapid-fire hits, sky-high jumps, killer slaps and combos, and a whole host of weapons and special moves, Battle Arena Toshinden sets a new stage in gaming for the PlayStation revolution.
70 IGN
Tamsoft added one little move to the characters' repertoires, and that one little move changed the fighter forever. Behold: the sidestep!
60 Thunderbolt
The game controls quite sluggishly. It often seems that there is a delay between what you are pressing on the controller and what is occurring on-screen. I was a relative novice to 3D fighting games back in those days, but now I know that such poor responsiveness can kill a fighting game.