guardianheroes

Guardian Heroes � Reviewed (Sega Saturn)

This is THE game. My favourite, the nuts, the cream of the crop. Whatever you want to call it. Why is it so good though? What is it about this game?

It is the fine mixture of simplicity, beautifully made bright cartoon style graphics a wicked storyline, options and extras. A prefect combination for a dream of a game.

If you get the opportunity, buy it. I promise, you will not be disappointed.

Published by Sega and developed by Treasure (although in fairness, who cares about who make the game, as long as it plays well and isn�t acclaim). Has anybody else noticed Acclaim suck.

The Game:
Guardian Heroes is one of those games. You can pick it up and play it straight away and after 10 hours playing it on the bounce, you still want to play it. It remains fresh and nice to play.

Basically, you have this troupe of �people� who have come together by chance to stop an evil wizard creating a wizard�s kingdom and fighting the Sky Spirits. The story goes like this:

The sky spirits rule the skies
The earth spirits rule the underground
Us Humans rule the bit that goes in-between

The sky spirits and the earth spirits were having a war. To help them win, the sky spirits gave us magic and convinced us to join them against the earth spirits. We did it, we won and together we banished the earth spirits into darkness. The sky spirits didn�t like our new powers, so they banished us into the same darkness. Since then, the surviving humans had forgotten about magic and had entered �the time of the sword�. That was until Kanon had escaped from the darkness, killed off the royal family and taken control of a new royal family put in its place. With this new power, he would begin to build his armies and mount an assault (with the earth spirits), against the sky spirits. However, our troupe are not happy with this Wizard Kingdom idea and would like peace to remain across the lands. So we need to stop Kanon and his evil empire, right? It�s a good job we have a golden undead hero that rises from the grave to help us then eh? Still with me?

So basically, the story revolves around that.

However, at the end of each level are different options you can take. Each option takes you to a different level. Meaning that you will have to play it again and again to get through the whole game. As an estimation, I would guess it would take around 10 times of clearing the game to actually see every level. Which is great, because you are seeing different things every time. It changes everything, from the creatures you will fight along the way, to the enemy that you fight as the end boss. The possibilities are (not quite endless) many.

You can be a big guy with a sword, a ninja, a magical healing-based girl or a magical shepherd with a pet rabbit. It is two player on the main game if you so wish. The game is basically hack and slash, with a bit of magic thrown in here and there. The amount of characters that they fit onto one screen at any one time on this game is fantastic for the Saturn, sometimes you are almost buried beneath bodies.

The beauty of the game though is the multi player. Basically, when you are going through the main game (on normal or hard only), the creatures that you come up against are being unlocked in multi player mode. It is six player compatible (multi tap is essential). The best thing about this is the range of characters, you could be a crappy little old man that can only cough, or you could be a sky spirit that can fly and do huge lasers at the touch of a button.

For the best in multi player experience do this:
Put character on random
Put level on random
Put team on random

This way, you don�t know who you will be, what level you will be on or I you will be on someone else�s team. It kind of evens it out, not one person can win every time. That is the beauty of it. And believe me, there is not sweeter taste of victory than when you as Civilian 4 (or fat guy as I prefer to call him) lands that last killer punch (the only move he can do) against the near-invincible sky spirits as your friend suddenly stops boasting about how he is going to whip your ass and drops to the ground to worship your fighting skills.

All in all, there are around 50 unlockable characters, all with their own moves, strengths, weaknesses, etc. It even stores them in a league table, so you can see who wins the most out of you and your mates and also which characters win the most games.

Instead of wasting time reading this review, get out there and buy it. If I could recommend one thing in the world, this would be it.

Gameplay 10/10
Beautiful, you WILL play it again and again. Feels like it belongs in your hand.
Sound 9/10
It�s a good solid cheesy soundtrack. Think Streets of Rage but ramp it up a little.
Characters 10/10
Wide range, superbly designed. Can range from a peasant to a 30 foot monster, and they do cover every nook and cranny in between.
Graphics 10/10
Made the right choice. Whilst other developers were going 3D games (which now look dated), kept it in 2D but really used the potential of the Saturn with shed loads of characters on screen at once
Extras 10/10
Very large amount of unlockables for multiplayer mode make it worth playing all the way through again and again. Also a character can be unlocked for single player.
Learning curve 10/10
Pick it up, put it down. Easily done. If you can�t figure out the moves for 50 characters in multi-player, it has a little encyclopaedia of moves to look through.

Overall rating: 10/10

If you have mates, it is perfect. If you don�t, it will give you plenty of time to complete the game, open up all the multi-player characters and get some mates to try them out on.

If God played Saturn, this would be his choice.

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