Post by Tenshu on Sept 26, 2009 12:09:00 GMT -4
Ah yes, Guardian Heroes, the predecessor to PSO. No matter if you're an elitist or a casual player of PSO, the gameplay is almost exactly like Guardian Heroes, the difference is that Guardian Heroes is a lot more dynamic, jars your creativeness, and overall a great game with lots of replay value.
My own little review of this gem:
- So the story goes that a supreme being created the universe as an eternal battlefield to find worthy fighters to become its personal soldiers and humans just existed in fear of these Sky Spirits and Earth Spirits (think of it as sort of a battle between Heaven and Hell). The Sky Spirits granted them with the power of magic and helped the Sky Spirits in their battle against the Earth Spirits, defeating them and banishing them into the darkness. Later on, the Sky Spirits grow fearful and jealous of the humans' new powers and cast them into the very same darkness. Afterwards mankind decided to choose a more physical lifestyle, The Time of the Sword. One of the wizards banished, Kanon, is able to escape and wants revenge on the Sky Spirits, and I've spoiled enough of the story so that's all you'll really need to know. The story's pretty deep and well written for a beat-em'-up brawler type of game and depending on how you progress, you can change the story a bit which brings a lot of replay value.
- The Characters: At first, there are 4 playable characters you can choose from, with one unlockable after you beat the game.
There's Han, a powerful but slow swordsman who can't use very powerful magic but can pretty decent combos and his special attacks are a treat.
Randy, a speedy lil' mage who is quite weak and fragile, but powerful in magic and even with his limited physical power, he is quite fast and can rack up an amazing amount of hits without being damaged and follow up with magical attacks, kinda like the later FOmar of PSO.
Ginjirou is a ninja-like character in the game, a bit weaker than Han but faster and is all about combo'ing, his downside is his attacks sometimes move him all over the place which can confuse the player.
Nicole is the healer, and to trade, she's also the weakest of the bunch. She does have a neat trick with her Barrier spell that damages enemies until they are driven away from her, and if you corner an enemy and use this.. lol.
In Story Mode you're also given a companion by default as well, which is pretty cool but at the same time I myself don't really like it. During the beginning of the game, a sword you pick up awakens the Undead Hero, who follows your commands, and he'll follow you for the rest of the game. You can give him commands to attack freely, defend you, standby, attack who you attack, or go Berserk.
The characters are pretty cool in that the game allows you to solo pretty well with all four, but the fun is really in the teamwork. There's a Vs. mode in the game where you can select up to six characters to battle and you're not limited to the main 4, later 5 characters in the main story mode. As you progress through Story Mode you'll unlock more fighters for Vs. mode, even villagers and tiny monsters can be playable lol.
- The Sound: This was a Sega Saturn game, of course it had great sfx and music lol. The music is excellent, at some points it can get repetitive but the music's already great so you won't even care lol. Each character has their Japanese voice acting ingame when they attack or use a special move.
- Graphics: This is a 2D game with some 3D elements mixed in, so the character sprites are animated fluidly unless they are towards the background where they'd get a tad pixelated. The stages are very beautiful and the 3D effects add to the enjoyment of the game.
- Gameplay: The big fish. Well being a brawler, the game gives you a Guard, Light Attack and a Fierce Attack which you can chain together to perform your character's flurry. There are also command moves that use the two attack buttons to perform unique and powerful moves that can be stringed together to rack up combo hits. Each enemy you defeat will grant you exp, and the more combo hits you rack up, the more exp you'll gain eventually leveling you up. The characters do not have pre-determined stat growths though, when you level up your stats aren't increased until the end of the stage where you can distribute the points towards the stats of your choosing, so you can slowly make Randy more powerful physically or grant him more vitality, or give Hans more agility so he's faster, or simply focus on your character's strong points. A creative addition to the game is while it's a brawler, you cannot move up and down manually, you are basically playing like you're in an arcade fighting game, however you do have buttons that when pressed, shift you from plane to plane: A foreground plane, a middle plane, and a background plane. This helps you dodge attacks, a mob of enemies, or magic attacks.
My own opinion, aside from the whole Undead Warrior following you around thing, Guardian Heroes is one of the best Sega Saturn games ever developed and could have possibly affected the development of PSO's fighting style the most. (I know people bring up Diablo, but I feel the old Sega brawlers including GH have a lot more similarities) and to give it a grade, GH gets a:
10/10
My own little review of this gem:
- So the story goes that a supreme being created the universe as an eternal battlefield to find worthy fighters to become its personal soldiers and humans just existed in fear of these Sky Spirits and Earth Spirits (think of it as sort of a battle between Heaven and Hell). The Sky Spirits granted them with the power of magic and helped the Sky Spirits in their battle against the Earth Spirits, defeating them and banishing them into the darkness. Later on, the Sky Spirits grow fearful and jealous of the humans' new powers and cast them into the very same darkness. Afterwards mankind decided to choose a more physical lifestyle, The Time of the Sword. One of the wizards banished, Kanon, is able to escape and wants revenge on the Sky Spirits, and I've spoiled enough of the story so that's all you'll really need to know. The story's pretty deep and well written for a beat-em'-up brawler type of game and depending on how you progress, you can change the story a bit which brings a lot of replay value.
- The Characters: At first, there are 4 playable characters you can choose from, with one unlockable after you beat the game.
There's Han, a powerful but slow swordsman who can't use very powerful magic but can pretty decent combos and his special attacks are a treat.
Randy, a speedy lil' mage who is quite weak and fragile, but powerful in magic and even with his limited physical power, he is quite fast and can rack up an amazing amount of hits without being damaged and follow up with magical attacks, kinda like the later FOmar of PSO.
Ginjirou is a ninja-like character in the game, a bit weaker than Han but faster and is all about combo'ing, his downside is his attacks sometimes move him all over the place which can confuse the player.
Nicole is the healer, and to trade, she's also the weakest of the bunch. She does have a neat trick with her Barrier spell that damages enemies until they are driven away from her, and if you corner an enemy and use this.. lol.
In Story Mode you're also given a companion by default as well, which is pretty cool but at the same time I myself don't really like it. During the beginning of the game, a sword you pick up awakens the Undead Hero, who follows your commands, and he'll follow you for the rest of the game. You can give him commands to attack freely, defend you, standby, attack who you attack, or go Berserk.
The characters are pretty cool in that the game allows you to solo pretty well with all four, but the fun is really in the teamwork. There's a Vs. mode in the game where you can select up to six characters to battle and you're not limited to the main 4, later 5 characters in the main story mode. As you progress through Story Mode you'll unlock more fighters for Vs. mode, even villagers and tiny monsters can be playable lol.
- The Sound: This was a Sega Saturn game, of course it had great sfx and music lol. The music is excellent, at some points it can get repetitive but the music's already great so you won't even care lol. Each character has their Japanese voice acting ingame when they attack or use a special move.
- Graphics: This is a 2D game with some 3D elements mixed in, so the character sprites are animated fluidly unless they are towards the background where they'd get a tad pixelated. The stages are very beautiful and the 3D effects add to the enjoyment of the game.
- Gameplay: The big fish. Well being a brawler, the game gives you a Guard, Light Attack and a Fierce Attack which you can chain together to perform your character's flurry. There are also command moves that use the two attack buttons to perform unique and powerful moves that can be stringed together to rack up combo hits. Each enemy you defeat will grant you exp, and the more combo hits you rack up, the more exp you'll gain eventually leveling you up. The characters do not have pre-determined stat growths though, when you level up your stats aren't increased until the end of the stage where you can distribute the points towards the stats of your choosing, so you can slowly make Randy more powerful physically or grant him more vitality, or give Hans more agility so he's faster, or simply focus on your character's strong points. A creative addition to the game is while it's a brawler, you cannot move up and down manually, you are basically playing like you're in an arcade fighting game, however you do have buttons that when pressed, shift you from plane to plane: A foreground plane, a middle plane, and a background plane. This helps you dodge attacks, a mob of enemies, or magic attacks.
My own opinion, aside from the whole Undead Warrior following you around thing, Guardian Heroes is one of the best Sega Saturn games ever developed and could have possibly affected the development of PSO's fighting style the most. (I know people bring up Diablo, but I feel the old Sega brawlers including GH have a lot more similarities) and to give it a grade, GH gets a:
10/10
