![saint seiya soldiers soul saint seiya soldiers soul](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/xb0AAOSwic5bQJW4/s-l300.jpg)
Just in reading those paragraphs, I’m sure you think this sounds pretty confusing, and you’re not wrong. These moves are all amazing and play out almost identically to the way they were performed in the anime. Once this meter is full, players can unleash a ‘Seventh Sense Awakening’ which allows for infinite Cosmo attacks until the meter empties, but it also unlocks a ‘Big Bang Attack’-a special cinematic move that deals a ton of damage. Over the course of the fight, players also charge their ‘Seventh Sense Meter’ which slowly fills, filling faster upon dealing and taking damage. L2 and triangle will launch your opponent into the air, and if you follow-up with L2 and X, you can dash towards them for mid-air combo attacks.īut combat isn’t just fancy punching each character has two special moves, iconic to their characters in the anime. L2 and X, for instance, allow you to dash towards your enemy, quickly closing the distance and allowing you to begin a combo. If you attack while holding L2, you can unleash a variety of Burst Attacks. By holding down L2 you can begin charging your ‘Cosmo’. Each fighter is given basic normal/strong punches, which can be strung together into basic combos, as well as ‘Burst Attacks’. Saint Seiya plays a bit like a Budokai: Tenkaichi game as it follows basic fighter mechanics, but gives you a 3D arena to fight in. The fighting is a bit chaotic and can take some getting used to. As you progress through the story, you’ll unlock the Gold Saints that you do battle against, along with alternate costumes, arenas, and background music. It gives you an opportunity to get a feel for each character and find your favorite. Most characters have the same basic moves and they all play fairly similar. While at first this can seem frustrating as you’re forced to learn a new character on-the-fly, I actually quite enjoyed this. The story doesn’t allow you to choose a specific character and each chapter alternates through the main Bronze Saints (Seiya and his friends). However, it’s actually really charming in the way it recreates some of the lesser production values and camp of the anime. While I enjoy the game paying homage to its origins, some of the game’s subtitles move way too fast, and you’ll often miss whole lines of dialogue. Keeping in theme with the anime, all the dialogue is in Japanese with a few of the original voice actors reprising their roles. The story does rely a bit on your knowledge of Saint Seiya, however much in the theme of the anime, each story battle beings with an extensive amount of recap and explanation from the narrator, followed by explanation and recap from the two characters about to engage in the fight. While I was only able to complete the first chapter upon the writing of this review, none of the chapters are linked in any way, and you can play them in any order you want. Saint Seiya offers four stories in its campaign mode. Saint Seiya: Soldiers’ Soul doesn’t attempt to tell the same story as the anime, rather telling its own original stories in a fast-paced and pretty fun fighter. Luckily, outside of the characters, you don’t really need to know all that much. I wanted to make sure I knew enough about the anime to review a tie-in game. I mention all this because I felt it very necessary to do my homework when I was assigned Saint Seiya: Soldiers’ Soul to review. While it still does that thing all anime does to save money on animation by simulating animation with little to no movement in the characters, it’s fun enough to keep you engaged. Oddly enough, only the first couple episodes have relatively poor visuals, and the production value picks up as it goes on. It has that very tropey, 80s anime feel to it (the kind of thing that Futurama episode Rebirth captured so well), which makes it kind of hilarious. As far as its story goes, it’s actually kind of cool and pretty compelling.
![saint seiya soldiers soul saint seiya soldiers soul](https://s1.gaming-cdn.com/images/products/786/orig/game-steam-saint-seiya-soldiers-soul-cover.jpg)
It’s certainly not a great anime, but it’s no worse than any other anime we grew up with. Only revisiting it as an adult do I appreciate its real worth. Having fancied myself somewhat of an anime connoisseur (only as an adult did I realize I was the biggest anime snob, thinking I was a lot smarter than I was), I wrote it off for its lacklustre visuals and mediocre plot. I was in high school when it had its brief run as Knights of the Zodiac on YTV’s late-night anime program Bionix. I never really got into Saint Seiya when I had the chance.