Mystic Heroes

"Sleeper hit of the year? One of the top 5 best Gamecube games thus far? Heck Yeah!"

Software droughts, Nintendo console owners know the meaning of that phrase all to well. So when I saw Battle Houshin (yes, it says BATTLE HOUSHIN not Battle Fengshen on the cover of the game!) as a newly released import game, I picked it up on a whim, not quite sure what to expect. And what I found was one of the best games I've ever played! It's not the sequel to some great franchised-game series, nor is it a licensed game, it stands completely one its own 2 feet!

The basic concept of Battle Houshin is to get from point A to point B in a level, while beating the living crap out of hordes of enemies and mighty bosses. The idea of moving from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen while beating the crap out of everyone in your way is certainly not something new, games like Final Fight One did that a long time ago. However, those games SUCKED!! It basically just meant mashing buttons until the enemies were dead and putting more quarters into a machine when you were dead. However, Battle Houshin finally gets it right. If you're looking to stereo-type this game, you might compare it to Dynasty Warriors 3, only with less realistic characters (they're more super-deformed style).

First off, this isn't a side-scroller like Final Fight One, you can move around freely in large 3D worlds. Furthermore, it doesn't feel like a 1-man-versus the world sort of thing, you actually feel as though you're part of an epic battle which is being waged all around. You'll have several special friends (who are important to the storyline, and can't die, but they're great fighters), and plenty more generic-allies (they all look the same). If you're generic friends get their butts beaten down, a few of them might retreat and then come back a few minutes later with reinforcements. And unlike in a lot of games where you friends are basically just there for show, your friends will actually help you occasionally! It's probably best to stick with your friends in a group, because if you wander off by yourself you'll be more susceptible to enemy attacks.

In addition to mashing the A-button to hit enemies with your weapon, you also have several magic-attacks. You can target several enemies from a distance and launch projectiles at them. Or you can use your magic to light your weapon on fire, making it deal more damage or status effects to the enemies it hits. Or you can cause more close-range explosions, or you can jump up into the air and launch an attack which usually devastates the surrounding area. The game also keeps track how many combos (consecutive hits) you have, and you'll earn more experience for getting higher combos. Once you get enough experience, you can level-up some of your magic moves, making your magic moves more powerful and allowing you to equip more powerful weapons. You'll find these weapons as you go through the various missions, and you can combine together two different weapons. Weapons usually have different magic types, such as fire, which burns your enemies, ice, which freezes your enemies, lightning, which slows your enemies, or wind which confuses your enemies. You can also block, jump, and roll, which adds A LOT of strategy to the battles. So it's more than just-another-button-masher, which is a real relief from Final-Fight style games.

But the game's most impressive aspect has got to be its graphics. The game uses plenty of CGI-animated FMV sequences to advance the story (the CGI quality would make Squaresoft proud!). In fact, looking at my shelf of Gamecube games, I just realized that this is one of the FEW Gamecube games which ACTUALLY HAS A GOOD STORYLINE! It's certainly better than Square's own Bouncer! The characters are well animated, detailed, sharp textures, and nice and smooth, instead of being blocky and blurry. As you fight your way past hundreds of enemies, from undead Samurais to might Shoguns warriors, to wolves, to demons, to sorcerers, to ghosts, to bears, to golems, the frame rate doesn't even hiccup. The game moves smoothly even when I've got over 50 guys all being burnt to a crisp by my fire magic on the screen at once, which is quite an achievement. Heck, you can even chop down trees if you feel so inclined (nice touch KOEI!).

The levels are very well designed. You might be climbing mountains as boulders are tossed down at you, or canons fired at you. As you fight your way through the desert, across a bridge (which takes you over the enemy army's spike pit), past the castle walls, through the village, and into the palace courtyard, you get the feeling that you really are an army seiging a city, and not just some guy beating up a bunch of other guys for no real reason. You'd think bludgeoning hundreds of people would get boring or old after the first few thousand people, BUT IT DOESN'T!

But the icing on the cake: BOSSES! Boss levels are REALLY IMPRESSIVE. On the Shenlong boss level, you have to fight an ENORMOUS Dragon up in the clouds, the dragon itself is probably made up of over a million polygons, judging by how well animated it is. The way KOEI blended the Dragon's size with it surroundings and it's awesome-sounding roar really conveyed a sense of awe, that you REALLY were fighting some giant dragon, and not just another boss in a video game. Another great boss is a giant bird which sits in the palace courtyard when you come to invade. I mean it is HUGE, bigger than most of the buildings around you. Then you watch in horror as it rears its head and launches blasts of fire at you and your allies. Awesome, just awesome.

There are 20+ levels for you to explore, which will take you from about 7 to 10 hours to complete. However, that's not counting all the times you mess up your mission have to do it again, so the actual number might be more around 14 - 20 hours. Oh, and you'll probably want to beat it using all 4 of the playable characters, plus the secret characters, which could take you quite some time. Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention survival mode?

The music is fairly well done, but nothing to special. The sound effects are pretty great as well. I love the voice acting, I just wish when they bring it to the U.S. that they'd leave the original Japanese voices and just subtitle the cut-scenes. BUT THAT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! They'll probably get replaced with some dim-wit voice actors, well, maybe half-wit voice actors, if we're lucky.

Probably one of the game's few glaring omissions is the absence of a 2-player mode. I can't image how great this game would be if we could have 2, or even 4 people all playing at once, helping each other beat some giant boss or defeat thousands of enemies. Or at least some V.S. mode would have been a nice addition. Ah well, I suppose you have to save SOMETHING for the sequel, right? Also, this game doesn't have nearly as many characters as Dynasty Warriors 3, but the ones they have do well enough.

I hear this game will be coming to the U.S. this summer as a game titled ''Mystic Heroes'' (who the heck thinks up these stupid names?). If you're not going to import the game, then at least do yourself a favor and pick it up when it comes over shores. YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED! VICIOUSLY BEATING UNDEAD SAMURAI WAS NEVER SO FUN!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/15/02, Updated 07/19/02