Saint Seiya: Soldier’s Soul – Review
“Saint Seiya”, just like pretty much every huge anime franchise, has seen a ton of videogames based on it. Starting with “Saint Seiya: The Sanctuary” ten years ago on the now archaic PS2, the franchise has seen three more games based on it, with the latest, “Soldier’s Soul”, being released only a few months ago on the PS3, PS4 and, rather surprisingly, PC. While this may seem shocking, it’s really not – as I said, most big franchises of fighting anime have gotten plenty of games, including “Hokuto no Ken” (no, I’ll never stop talking about it on this blog, so sue me), “Bleach”, “Naruto”, “DragonBall” and so on and so forth. And admittedly, most licensed games haven’t been very good. Essentially, if you’ve played one of them, you’ve pretty much played all of them – they’re all 3D fighters with lots of flashy special attacks that play exactly the same way. “Ultimate Ninja Storm” is exactly like “Heat the Soul” which is exactly like “Dragonball Xenoverse”, minus a few differences.
Sadly, “Saint Seiya: Soldier’s Soul” falls into that same category of flashy 3D fighters, but I’m happy to say that it’s done well enough to definitely warrant the interest of both casual and hardcore “Saint Seiya” fans! First of all, it’s very important to note that this is the first “Saint Seiya” game that allows you to play through the entire story, starting from the tournament arc and finishing up with the Hades arc. And what’s even better is that the story in between the fights is narrated by fully 3D cinematics, which means that even if you know literally nothing about “Saint Seiya” or its story you can learn everything you need to know just from this game. I love it when games do that! By the way, “Hokuto no Ken: Ken’s Rage” does the same thing, just so you know. I told you I’d never stop talking about “Hokuto”! I should’ve titled the blog hokutonoken2014… But I digress!
About 40 characters are playable in both the story mode and in versus mode, which is really cool – I personally didn’t feel like anyone was missing from the roster, so that’s definitely a very good sign. Aside from story mode, you can play in a variety of tournaments and extra battles, against the AI or against your friends. One of my favorite features was the offline tournament mode for up to 8 players, which is something that’s pretty rare in these types of games! But at the end of the day, if you’re not a fan of 3D anime fighters, there’s not much in “Saint Seiya: Soldier’s Soul” that’s going to change your mind. The standard gameplay is the same – do some combos to fill up a meter at the bottom of the screen, then unleash special attacks while trying to avoid an opponent trying to do the same. It’s not exactly “Street Fighter” level of depth, nor is it trying to be. I don’t think you should hold it against it, though – not every fighting game needs to be a perfectly balanced tournament fighter. Sometimes, all we need is a faithful adaptation of a beloved storyline and some awesome sequences!