Reality Fighters

Reality Fighters gets its best joke on the screen immediately: your own table, floor, or street becomes the ring, and a fighter wearing your face starts throwing silly attacks. On PS Vita, that augmented-reality hook is still a genuinely playful way to start a one-on-one brawler.

Once the novelty settles, this is a lightweight fighter built around costume pieces, weapons, and fighting styles rather than hard-edged competition. Its 5.7 score feels fair: there is enough customization and mode variety to amuse you, but the outlandish tone and AR gimmick do more heavy lifting than the combat itself.

Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first hour is easy to enjoy because Reality Fighters lets you make a ridiculous combatant and drop them into your immediate surroundings. Taking a photo for a character face is the sort of goofy Vita-era feature that can turn a quick match into something you want to show a friend. The game wisely replaces grim violence with comic attacks and bizarre-looking fighters, so its silliness feels intentional rather than like a conventional brawler wearing a novelty hat.

Underneath that hook sits familiar one-on-one fighting: you face AI opponents or take your created fighter online in Online Versus. The substantial customization—more than 400 clothing items, 15 fighting styles, and over 50 weapons—has practical weight, since the combination affects which combos and moves you can use, including attacks aimed at armor and body parts. That gives experimentation a reason beyond dressing up, especially if you enjoy tinkering with a build before taking it into another fight.

Still, this is a better fit for casual sessions than for someone chasing a deeply serious fighting-game challenge. Button controls are available, but you can also use the Vita’s front and rear touch controls; having both options is welcome, though the touch-focused approach reinforces the game’s broad, pick-up-and-play character. Survivor, Time Attack, and Quick Fight help break up the standard matches, while online bouts give your customized fighter somewhere more interesting to prove itself.

Graphics

The defining image is not a fixed arena but your own environment viewed through augmented reality, with the fighters placed over it. Your photo-based face and the huge wardrobe of costumes make the characters the visual focus, and the deliberately outlandish look matches the comic tone much better than a realistic fighter ever could.

Story

Story mode sends you around the world to fight Mr. Miyagi’s disciples and earn the title of true reality fighter. It is a simple excuse to string together battles, but that is appropriate for a game whose real personality comes from the fighter you create.

Do not come in expecting a dramatic martial-arts tale. The premise is knowingly light, and the journey works mainly as a guided route through the game’s opponents rather than a reason to become invested in the cast.

That leaves the customization to carry much of the personal connection. Putting your own face on a fighter can make even a thinly framed climb through Story mode feel more memorable, particularly when the clothing, weapon, and fighting-style combination turns that face into something absurd.

Overall Experience

Reality Fighters is at its strongest when you treat it as a playful Vita curiosity: make a strange fighter, place a bout on whatever surface is nearby, and enjoy the oddity of seeing your creation compete there. The ability to share fighters through the Vita’s social features suits that spirit well.

The payoff depends on what you want from a fighter. If customization, comedy, and augmented reality sound more tempting than disciplined competitive depth, there is a real charm to its mix of costumes, styles, weapons, and quick modes. If the combat is all you care about, the novelty is likely to wear down before the wardrobe does.

At 5.7/10, it lands as an entertaining but uneven experiment rather than an essential brawler. Give it a chance if you want an unusual PS Vita game that makes your surroundings part of the joke; for further game history and release context, see Reality Fighters’ reference page.