Fan games are a tricky thing, with many of the IP holders often shutting down projects. While some companies like SEGA will sometimes hire fan creators, others like Nintendo will send Cease and Desist orders. What happens to these objected-to games can go one of two ways, with the project either being shut down or rebranded as its own IP. The latter was the case with Fighting is Magic, a fan game of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic that was sent a C&D by Hasbro. Rebranded to Them’s Fightin’ Herds, the game has found new life as its own IP and has found a fandom beyond the brony culture with ther FGC welcoming the game with open arms.
The game is a four-button fighter similar to many SNK fighters and is a great example of easy-to-learn but tricky-to-master. The game has you use light, medium and heavy attacks with the fourth attack being your magic attack. But you will need to learn each character specifically in order to understand them as they are all incredibly different from each other, each with their own style, attack pattern and most of all gimmick. Before you get too worried that you will be overwhelmed though, rest assured that the characters are easy to figure out thanks to them all sharing a basic fighting structure with anti-airs, sweeps, simple combos and more, using the same button inputs. It is when you decide to go deeper, that you notice how the roster is pretty diverse in terms of gameplay possibilities.
There is a story mode to the game that is extremely unique for a fighting game. It is done in the style of an old-school sprite-based JRPG, where you are a champion travelling through the land of Foenum, and trying to bring peace. The game actually contains a full 2D RPG overworld to traverse, complete with NPCs and dungeon-lite caverns. There are solving simple puzzles to solve, and fights will let you level up your character. What is interesting is how the game switches perspective occasionally to a traditional fighting game perspective when teaching you how to use your moves in combat, though this is not the best for exploration.
You don’t fight the other roster characters over and over again, but rather shadow creates that make the game somewhat reminiscent of a beat ’em up, even if the fights are down in a 1v 1 style. Facing one of the main characters is a massive moment in the story mode, and the game treats it as such. Until then, it is more concerned with teaching you how to play the game, with the fights designed as a sort of tutorial where you learn in active combat. This is an excellent way of advancing the story, adding more content and making sure players understand the game mechanics. That said, there is a separate tutorial and it is extremely well done and is good for those not interested in the story mode, not to mention the training mode.
When it comes to online play, Them’s Fightin’ Herds is amazing. The game uses GGPO rollback netcode, and contains some have had some of the best online fights from any fighting game thanks to this feature. The lobby system is one of the more interesting touches, but also where the game falls a little short. The lobbies reuse the character sprites from the story mode and are set up like the overworld map of a JRPG. there are even secrets to find such as treasure chests that spawn containing salt that can be fought over by players contesting for it. It continues the genre-blending nature of the story mode in many ways, which is welcome.
The other mode is Salt Mines, which sees you dive into caves in order to mine as much salt as possible before time runs out. Before this sounds too easy though, you will be dealing with battles against the AI-controlled enemies from the game’s story mode. The interesting thing, however, is that when times run out, the player most salt will become the bear enemy from the story mode and the playstyle turns into PVP as you are tasked with hunting down the remaining players. It’s something very different and the fact that Mane6 is trying its best to do something new is appreciated.
The big thing with Them’s Fightin’ Herds is that the game is extremely polished, with visuals straight out of a cartoon. This is a well-designed fighting game that is easy to learn but difficult to master and will interest even the most hardcore veterans of the genre as it is one of the most engaging and enjoyable fighting games to play. Them’s Fightin’ Herd is fully recommended to play as it is an incredibly fun game created by extremely passionate developers, who rather than let their hard work on a fan game be lost, turned it into a new IP they can own and are able to bring it to everyone now.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided