American Cover
Japanese CoverGenre: Beat'em up with RPG elements
Publisher: Sega
Designer: Tetsuhiko Kikuchi
Release Year: 1996
Systems: Saturn
Man, this game is one of the best games I have ever played! Lets head directly into the story so I can start talking about this wonderful game!
Time to shed some "LIGHT!" on this story
Long before the beginning of the game, a supreme being created the universe, an eternal battlefield, to find ultimate warriors to hire as its personal soldiers. During the early periods of this, humans merely existed, cowering in fear as a vicious battle was waged between the Sky Spirits and Earth Spirits. Eventually, the Sky Spirits decided to bestow incredible powers unto the humans, effectively making powerful wizards out of many of them. With their new-found powers, the human wizards joined the effort against the Earth Spirits, banishing them into the darkness. However, soon after this was accomplished, the Sky Spirits grew fearful and jealous of the human wizards, and banished them all into the very same darkness along with the Earth Spirits. After this, mankind instead opted for a more physical approach to life, and the Time of the Sword began.
Several decades before the game begins, one of the human wizards, Kanon, managed to escape his imprisonment with the Earth Spirits, and came back to the surface so that he might eventually get his revenge on the Sky Spirits. There, he brought his case up with the existing khans; since they did not trust him, he destroyed them and replaced their kingdom with a wizard kingdom, with puppet khans to do his will. Things were not entirely rosy for Kanon, however; the former king prophesied, prior to his death, that should his reign and the Time of the Sword be brought to such an abrupt end, then eventually the sword would again resurface and in turn bring an end to Kanon's reign. As a precaution, Kanon banished most every existing sword in his new kingdom, but he overlooked one particular sword, belonging to a fierce, anonymous warrior who fought especially valiantly to the death during Kanon's takeover. Also, the former princess, Serena, survived the ordeal, and joined the band of knights to try and bring about Kanon's end from the inside.
At the game's start, four warriors - Han, Randy (with his pet rabbit, Nando), Nicole and Ginjirou - find the sword of the valiant warrior. Just as they decide to begin relaxing for the remainder of the night, Serena bursts in, hastily warning them that the knights have learned of their possession of such a powerful sword, and are coming to take it back, no matter the costs. The four flee their home as it bursts up in flames during the invasion, then escape the town via their separate ways, rendezvousing at the graveyard nearby.
Upon reaching there, they discover the leader of the Black Knights, Valgar, awaiting them, and accompanied by a very powerful robotic warrior. The five do battle with it, but fail to do a large amount of damage to it. Finally, as Han resolves to use the new sword against the robot, the sword is struck by lightning, electrocuting Han and causing him to lose his grip on it. The sword, now seemingly with a life of its own, floats over to a large mound nearby, where a zombified warrior in golden armor arises from the dead - the same warrior who valiantly fought to the death so many years ago - and claims the sword as his own. Enraged, he easily obliterates Valgar's robot, and begins to attack Serena. Nicole, uncertain of what to do, politely asks the warrior to stop attacking them - to the five's surprise, he does so. Quickly realizing that the warrior is willing to act on any command that they give him, they resolve that, with this new ally, the time to begin an attack on Kanon's new kingdom is at hand.
So many good tracks!
I am not even sure where to begin with this games spectacular soundtrack. From an awesome jazzy track to slow more peaceful tracks to wonderful guitar tracks, this game has it all! Some specific ones of note are the arena, forest, village, Valgar's theme and I think the music that is played when you first get to the Earth Spirits realm(which is where that awesome jazz track plays.)
I just had to mention the music before I got into the gameplay. I remember these tracks like I just played this game yesterday!
You'll never escape ICE STUPA!
Lets start with the battle system. The amount of options you have to dispatch your foes is pretty vast. Of course you have your basic multi hit combo that is standard in beat'em ups. This game also features command moves like pushing down down twice and then attack(I think that is correct) would make Randy do a multi hit uppercut with his staff. Each character has plenty of command moves for different effects!
The amount of options you have for normal attacks is already enough to make this game better then some beat'em ups, but wait, there is more! Not only do you has a vast array of normal attacks, you also have magic! These magic moves also have commands that you can use or if you can use pick one with the rotating spell menu and set it to the magic button. Now magic in this game was pure awesome! Everyone can use magic(even Hans, your melee fighter of the group), but of course your magic users, who in this case are Nicole and Randy, have more spells and higher levels of these spells. But don't think that Hans magic is useless, I can't tell you how many times his homing fireballs have been useful! Though if we are talking spells, Randy and Nicole are the ones we should focus on right now.
Randy's spells are just downright great. to list a few, he could summon an ice field that would freeze and do tick damage on the enemy, Summon a huge(well, it gets real big at higher levels) tornado around his body trapping and damaging all enemies around him and I have to mention his Dragonball style HUGE beam attack.
Lets also take a look at Nicole's spells. She was your healer of the party, making healing fields much like Randy's ice field. That doesn't mean she doesn't have attacks though! Her "Smileys" have a random chance to either rain down as many small smileys or one or more bigger smileys. She also has what could be one of the most annoying(in the arena mode, more on that later) but awesome defensive spells in the game. Her barrier keeps all enemies outside of it and anyone who touches it will take damage and bounce off. Whats makes this attack cool is that if said enemy is in a corner, they have no where to bounce which adds up to big damage!
If awesome attack options and magic still isn't enough for you, you also have your Undead Hero! The way he works is that he is a npc character that you tell commands to. like follow, wait, attack and defend. But the most fun command to make him use is his berserk mode! The Undead Hero would let out a totally sweet roar, and start using his fiery sword wave attack. After he did this for a short while, he would roar again and would literally BLOW UP THE WHOLE SCREEN! Imagine the sequence in Dragonball Z where Goku is on Namek while it is exploding screaming "OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and the whole screen goes white.......yeah it's kinda like that.
Another quick note about the battle system. This game also has a plane shift system. a top, bottom and middle plane.
Now that you know how awesome the battle system is, lets take a quick look at the rpg elements of the game. After you beat a level, you get points for your stats. The stats are Strength, Intelligence, Vitality, Mentality(faster mp regen), Agility and Luck(modifies damage the player give and receive, in addition to improving Nicole's selection of spells.). You get to make your character anyway you want to! Battle mages, high attack ninjas, or a speedy melee fighter, you can do it all!
The last thing I will talk about in story mode is one of the biggest things about Guardian Heroes! Multiple paths through the game and Multiple endings! That is what makes this game so great! Not only do you fight in different areas, you also fight different enemies on the paths through the game. Also the characters you beat, you get to use in arena mode!
Speaking of arena mode, this is the second part that makes Guardian Heroes that makes it so great! It is a multiplayer arena brawl. You can play as our 4 main heroes, Serena and Undead Hero, but that is not all! What fun would an arena brawl be with only 6 characters? Well, we don't have to worry about that in this game. Every boss, enemy, ally AND Civilian is playable. That is ALOT of characters. There are about 6-7 stages each with a different track from the game.
The most fun thing about arena mode is the customization you can do. You can set you levels and stats for each charatcer to you play. The max level is 255 I think, and you can over level your stats past the max! This mode is just crazy fun full of many good memories!
Ok, I have yapped alot about this game, but I can't help it, it is pretty much one of my favorite games I played when i was younger. Lets head into the game play video portion of this post!
Wow, I forgot to mention my favorite thing about this game! The story mode has co-op!
For people who didn't read all that stuff.....I don't blame ya if you didn't!
Gameplay, Soundtrack, Character Design, Character personality and all of the above is the reason this game needs another sequel AND a Remake!(Or atleast port on XBL Arcade!)
HAPPY 10th DREAMCAST!
I think The subtitle says it all, the next few post are gonna be of Dreamcast games that need sequels! Tune in next time as I make a small tribute post to the Dreamcast!
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