Thank you Bandai Namco for sending us this game to review!

Tenkai Knights is a popular anime series about four school age boys who are given the power of Tenkai Energy  to transform into Lego style robots to save the Earth from the evil Vilius and his army.   To unlock their most powerful attacks, the boys must work together.   This is easier said than done since they don't start off as friends.  

Tenkai Knights: Brave Battle follows the storyline of the movie Tenkai Knights - Rise of the Knights.  The enemy is collecting dragon cubes to build a powerful dragon that will threaten the planet Earth.  It's up to the Tenkai Knights to stop this from happening.  To embark on this journey you can play as any of the four Knights in the mission mode. 

You can play the missions in single-player or team up with up to four players wirelessly online.  I never found anyone online to play against.  Without the ability of download play, my kids were not able to assist me since we only own one game cartridge.    

The missions themselves are pretty repetitive with having to defeat a certain number of enemies in 2D brawler style game levels.  As you complete the levels, the number of enemies required to defeat increases.  Some missions will require you to defeat enemies and then partake in a mech style battle against a boss.  It's these kind of levels that would have been nice having a partner in.  

While the mechs are powerful, they are more difficult to control and being ganged up on is not very fun.  Unlike the mechs, the Tenkai robots are customizable and allow you to take parts from the other Knights to make your character as strong or agile as you like.  As you defeat enemies, you can collect power-ups to craft stronger weapons and armor for your Tenkai Knight.

If you have a build you're proud of, you can test it out in a rumble or versus battle.  The versus battles are one on one and it's an all out battle in rumble mode.  Like many fighting games, there are lots of attacks and combo moves to learn.  Sadly the controls to pull off these moves off are still and unresponsive at times.  My six year old son sometimes had trouble with the simple task of turning around.

The ESRB gives this game an  E 10+ rating for mild violence and mild language.  The worst I heard was "let's kick some butt!".  The violence is pretty mild since you're just battling other mechanical creatures.   

 While Tenkai Knights: Brave Battle is a passable brawler game,  it could have been much better with download play.  Being stuck with playing by myself, I found it a bit boring and not evenly balanced.  The levels are either too easy or incredibly hard.  Fans of the series may appreciate this title, but for everyone else,  there are much better options available including Nintendo's Super Smash Brothers.