The four reviewers of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" gave the game a positive review, chiefly praising the character design, graphics, and special moves. "Maximum" made note of the graphical and gameplay innovations such as gouraud shading, rotational backgrounds, dramatic camera angles, and the sidestep. However, they remarked that the poor quality directional pad on the original PlayStation controller "just isn't built for taking diagonals and quarter circle rolls", making it irritatingly difficult to pull off special moves. Though they assessed the game as good overall, they advised gamers to instead hold out for the PlayStation port of "Tekken", which they felt to be far superior in every respect. IGN gave the game a score of 7 out of 10 in 1996, by which time it was seen as slow and "not as impressive" as the more recent "Tekken 2", though they praised "Toshinden" for important innovations to the fighting game genre, such as taking "the fighter into true 3-D" and "one little move" that "changed the fighter forever" with the introduction of sidestep movement. "Dragon" gave the game 3 out of 5 stars. In an early 1995 interview, when asked which PlayStation game he was most impressed with so far, Ken Kutaragi answered "Battle Arena Toshinden".