I was fully prepared to more-or-less ignore Atlus’ Kenka Bancho. It wasn’t that I expected it to be bad, I just wasn’t all that interested. The previews didn’t hook me, and wacky Japanese games went from amusing to boring roughly three Katamari Damacies ago. So when the review copy landed on my desk (metaphorically – I don’t actually have a desk and it was a digital copy), I dove in with roughly no expectations. I figured that it would be a vaguely archaic role-playing game with equally archaic fighting game mechanics.

Boy was I wrong.

My feelings of Kenka Bancho went from jaded disinterest to complete enchantment in roughly an hour. Exactly how much do I love this game? Let’s put it this way – I have plenty of work that I should be doing, yet I ended up putting roughly twelve hours into the game over the past two days.

Kenka Bancho is an interesting sort of role-playing game. Oh, and even though the point of the game is the fighting, there is still a lot of RPG here. The character customization aspect is huge. The typical trappings are present – you gather experience from fights and tweak your stats after each new level gained. Once you gather a few levels, the real meat begins. You see, your character has a number of move types – things like punches, pins, and back attacks. These are categories, and as you beat banchos (enemy bosses) and level up, you’ll gather new moves in each category. You can only select one move from each category, and that move is what will be executed when you get to that step in combat. The customization possibilities here are ridiculous. You literally decide what each step of a combo will be. This isn’t as easy as just selecting the most powerful move for each (trust me – I tried that). No, you will have to tweak things a fair amount to find the exact fighting style that you’re comfortable with.

There are a number of other customization options (like your clothing and hair), but I should probably stop and explain the fighting. This is where the role-playing part ends; there is nothing turn-based about Kenka Bancho’s combat. Though, before you can even begin, you have to have a stand-off. You lock eyes with your opponent and insult their honor. Of course, you could screw up your diss or stumble over your words. To actually insult them, you have to string together each part of the phrase by hitting the right button. Press the wrong button or wait too long and you’ll sound like a fool (and your opponent will get a nasty hit in on you).

Once the actual combat begins, you have two basic attacks available – the quick attack and the heavy one. By landing subsequent light attacks, you’ll step through your basic combo. If you land a heavy attack at the right point in the sequence, you’ll stun your opponent. Pressing the circle and triangle buttons at the same time will set off your “local specialty,” a super move that will consume most of your spirit gauge. Though these attacks are nice, you do need to watch this gauge carefully. Low spirit will lead you to tire easily. You can also block or dodge attacks, and the left trigger lets you grapple an opponent (which is almost too powerful of a move). Although the uncomfortable PSP analog nub makes it a little awkward, I really enjoyed the fighting. It started off easy, but quickly became enjoyably difficult. The enemy banchos employ more and more complex strategies, and it can be a real thrill to defeat a few of them. Trust me – you don’t want to lose.

Why not? Because losing in Kenka Bancho results in a loss of time. You wake up in your hotel room after having passed out, which means that you have less time left to take out the remaining banchos. You see, Kenka Bancho is set on a strict schedule. Remember how I mentioned that I’ve put twelve hours into the game? That’s about one and a half playthroughs. Your character is in Kyouto (which, as the game points out, is a town remarkably similar to Kyoto) on a school trip, and you have exactly seven days to become the top dog. The city is divided into several zones, and traveling between them (by subway, bus, or taxi) takes time. Each bancho moves around on a schedule, and you need to beat up their minions to figure out that schedule. If the one guy you need will only be at City Hall on the morning of the fourth day, well, you’d better be there too. If that wasn’t hectic enough, your classmates will want you to follow their schedule too. You’ll need to strike the best balance between your school life and becoming the top bancho in Japan.

It sounds like too much to possibly do in the time the game gives you (which was roughly seven hours), and frankly, it is too much to do. This is a game meant to be played several times, and each playthough is going to be vastly different. Which banchos you fight is mostly dependent on luck and beating up the right guys. You could play through the game twice and only fight a few of the same guys. One time, you might build up the social relationships. Another time, you might become the cold asshole who blows everyone off. In order to fight the final boss, you only need to beat half of the banchos, so you have some freedom to explore both halves of the equation. Each one that you defeat becomes your minion, and you can call any of them to come and be your bodyguard. Since they have their own fighting styles and finishing moves, there may be certain ones that you will seek out each time.

It is testament to the quality of the localization that both sides of the game are equally interesting. During my first playthrough, I pretty much abandoned the social aspects of the game to focus on beating every bancho (I didn’t succeed, probably only getting around seventy percent of them). The second time, I’m trying to spend more time taking to everyone and “playing nice,” and it’s actually kind of interesting. The characters in this game are a little stereotypical (the girl with a crush, the over-zealously studious classmate), but the writing is good enough to make them sufficiently interesting. Many of the banchos are hilarious, and you can’t help but get into their whole testosterone-fueled fighting culture.

Kenka Bancho is one of those happy and admittedly rare cases in which my expectations were overwhelmingly exceeded. Even rarer, it’s a role-playing game that I immediately started replaying as soon as the credits rolled. The developers hit all the right notes: the writing is good, the characters are interesting, there is a ton of depth to the customization, and the combat is a whole lot of fun. This is one of the few RPGs truly fit for a portable experience. It’s a short game split into convenient chunks that can be replayed for an entirely different experience. Have any long flights coming up? You stand a decent chance of playing Kenka Bancho from start to finish before arriving at your destination, and you could do it again on the way back. That’s something all too rare, and I wish more developers would do such a good job of designing role-playing games for portable systems.

Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble will be released for the PSP in both physical stores and on the PSN on November 10th. For more information, see the official website.