Not bad for an early Stylish Combat game.
A few years before Devil May Cry, there was this hidden gem on the PS1 which did many of the same things that people found so revolutionary about DMC, with its Style rankings, "Power Up" mode that uses a bar of power that's restored by fighting enemies, and the type of moves you could do in combat. Even the campy humor is here, which is a treat to watch. The catchy theme song doesn't hurt either. While several cutscenes are voiced in English, during the gameplay cutscenes, the villains all have that sort of Banjo-Kazooie/Okami style garbled voices
The visuals have a good sense of color design, and its easy to determine what and where everything is, despite the limited polygonal models of the era. The combination of Spaghetti Western and old Japanese aesthetics makes it feel like a Kurosawa movie on drugs. There are some hiccups, mostly in 2D assets that disappear at the right angle. You could be walking up an outdoor stairway, and the 2D banister can just vanish and appear again as the camera swings around. And, of course, it has lots of that PS1 wobbly environments that always bothered me.
The most unfortunate thing about the game is the controls, which are kinda stiff. Doing Zan's special moves requires double tapping the d-pad or control stick before pressing X, and it often doesn't register well. What makes it worse is the lock-on feature. It's like Zelda's Z-targeting, except three times slower to actually lock-on to the enemy. Not only that, if the enemy jumps over you, it breaks the lock. It's definitely the toughest thing to get used to.
Not to say that the controls aren't well mapped, because I think they are. They are explained in a decent, optional, tutorial stage, and you can always replay the chapter you just finished whenever you want to try for a better 'sexiness' ranking. Yeah, you read that right.
Overall, its a really interesting game if you like Stylish combat games like DMC, Bayonetta, or Ninja Gaiden. Interesting in the sense that this kind of game came out a few years before the one that put the sub-genre on the map. Its campy and fun enough that I say it's enjoyable, but only if you can get used to the controls.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
