Import Review - Soul Eater: Battle Resonance

Don't know if I've said this here, but I'm a big fan of Soul Eater. It's a pretty crazy anime with Meisters and their Weapons (which can take a human form) fighting demons and witches and whatever... No, really, it's actually pretty cool, with a great set of characters and a unique ambience. So much that its popularity is rising and a PS2 game just came out. In Japan, of course. You know how this works, Naruto Shippuden: Narutimate Accel for example came out in Japan in 2007 and is only going to be released in the US next month... (no Euro release date that I know of...)

Maka/Soul vs Death the Kid/Patti/Liz

So, given the current state of the PS2, this one will probably never see the light of day over here, so why not just play the damn Japanese version? That's exactly what I'm doing right now. And I'm enjoying it very much! Unfortunately this is far from being the best anime-based game ever, but it's not a total mess either. What we have here is a traditional beat em up, with 3D graphics and 2D gameplay. You take control of the show's main characters, divided into the Meister/Weapons (Maka/Soul, Black Star/Tsubaki, etc...) and non-Meister (Stein, Blair, Mifune...) categories, but they all pretty much play like the same. There's the weak, medium and strong attacks, the ability to defend and counter and then there's the Soul Gauge.

Stein vs Sid/Nygus

This is basically the usual "special attack bar" seen in most fighters, letting you waste some of its power to do a special attack or waste it all for the über-ultra-pwnzor attack that usually means instant win! This attacks are, of course, taken straight from the anime, and they're really well done. It's always a pleasure to see Soul transform into the uber-schyte :)

BTW, this is just for fans of the series. You might have noticed that I put Stein in the non-meister category up there. That's because he doesn't fight with Spirit, although for some strange reason he uses him for his Soul Resonance attack... :/


Maka/Soul vs Black Star/Tsubaki (taken from the PSP version)

The bad part of the game is that, for purists and the most hardcore, the fighting dystem is not that deep, and then there's also some lack fo main modes. Besides the usual arcade, free battle and versus, there's the main mode, adventure, which plays somewhat like the main mode in Soul Calibur. You basically recreate all the battles from the anime and there's also some special missions with certain conditions (like fighting Sid with only 1/3 of your life bar...fucking impossible!). Of course all the dialog is in Japanese, and it's hard to guess the victory conditions of some battles, but there's already a guide on gamefaqs that as it all covered, so no big problems there.

Overall this is a pretty import-friendly game, and great fan for fans of the anime. If you're one, get it! :D