Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon R

"Surprisingly, instead of a complete disaster, Sailor Moon R is just bad."

Another cheap game based on Sailor Moon?, hell YES. This time Bandai has decided to make a tribute to crappy beat em-ups with another of their gems based on famous animes, get ready.

The differences between the Sailors are basically non existent, each one has its special power (you know, that one we find in every beat em-up and that hurts all the enemies on the screen), then they also has a completely useless “shot” according to their powers (water for Sailor Mercury, fire for Sailor Mars, etc), and a movement that hurts you when you hit an enemy (again like in any other beat em-up). I have to admit though that the Sailor movements are not that bad, they are “almost” varied, which is saying a lot from a Bandai game, believe me.

The gameplay is as monotonous and repetitive as expected, move forwards killing tons of unbelievably stupid guys dressed in the most ridiculous and insulting ways possible with your five incredibly cute and slim girls dressed with ridiculously short micro-mini-skirts (and this is not chauvinism, it is just that they feel more comfortable that way ok?). See that Sailor Moon R is far from being sexist, girls will like it because the heroines are five teenager girls and boys will like because the way those five teenagers dress, there is something for everyone here, all rejoice!, feminist associations included!

The graphics are ok, there aren’t enough colors sometimes but overall they are ok, and the same for the music. The voices are as silly as possible, but this is a good thing because it is entertaining to make fun of what they are saying.

One of the few things that makes this game a little bit better than the average Bandai game based on a famous anime (better than the average Bandai game means only “horrid” instead of “the most putrid thing in existence”, keep that in mind), as I was saying, the only thing that makes this one slightly better is its difficulty, because this is a pretty hard game, so that may motivate some (that is hardcore Sailor Moon and mini-skirt fans) to try to beat it instead of trashing it after the first five minutes.

Sailor Moon R is another cheap Bandai game designed only to make as much money as possible trying to fool fans of the series, yet, it is true that it is not the worst beat em-up for the Snes like I was expecting, well, I guess we should be happy for that, right?

”My lack of vocabulary and grammatical errors (if there’s any) are because I’m not from an English speaking country, sorry about that.”

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/22/03