"Poor poor Mazinger"

Mazin Saga, one of the most difficult games I'm sure I've ever played.

Story
Eh, it's a beat'em up, but even with that there's still a wee bit of story to be found here. Let's see....the setting is a post apocalyptic war torn Earth. The armies of Doctor Hell are attempting to completely destroy what little is left of humanity. And it's all up to the Mazinger Z to pick up what pieces are left and slap Doctor Hell around...or try really really hard to.

Gameplay
Right, gameplay, about 50% of the game is spent in almost usual beat'em up fashion. You, the lone hero, fight against waves of assorted enemies. Each enemy has a distinct look and there are no "repaints," so when a new enemy appears it is completely new. In all honostly the beat'em up section of the game works just fine. You have a reasonable amount of skills to deal death to your enemies; but none of them are related to the actual Mazinger Z's weapons. What a person has to understand is that the actual Mazinger Z, the name sake of the main character, the anime/ manga super robot, has a great deal of weapons at its disposal. You, the baby Mazinger, has a sword...that's it. There's the usual super move that drains health. A run and several attacks derive from that specifically when mixed with the jump. And there are also assorted combos that will be used against varying enemies for varying reasons I really never found out. But for all intents and purposes, this part of the game functions just fine (it's especially cool when the boss, a giant, will either chase, try to step on, or try to grab you at certain parts of the stage; all are nice ways to break up the action.) Though as I said, that is only half of the game, the other is the nightmare.

When you finally encounter the boss at the end of the stage, which is seperated out in to two areas, the third and final being the boss encounter itself, you switch out of the beat'em up style and into a fighting games control scheme. At first this is a great idea, but then those first few seconds of glory are wrenched quite happily from you by the boss, who has projectiles, at times longer reach and almost every move he has is faster than your fastest. W00ts I say, w00ts. Now after some time, you do learn the tricks of the trade and the first three bosses are possible.

Then you reach the fourth boss, and the difficulty is ramped, he blocks most everything and the computer starts to use the nastiest trick I've ever seen. If you jump up and crouch, blocking, just before him, he'll also block. What's so scary about that? He doesn't drop his block so long as you hold yours. Then okay, I'll drop my block and attack right? Yes, that's exactly what you do, but he hits you first, always, almost always and entirely the universe is against your tiny tiny being in that moment. This skill is only strengthened when you reach your evil self the fifth boss.

However, even when and if you beat him you're forced to fight every boss over again, in a row....one right after the other. The only real saving grace is your health is restored after each fight. By the way the game rewards you with a one up if you perfect a boss, but other than that you are given a free life only once that I found, otherwise it's 5 lives 5 continues. Back to the boss rush mode that's forced up your butt and swirled twice. You just might make it through all those fights again, only to face, of course, your evil twin again. Then....you fight the true last boss. Yup, six bosses in a row, all using the disgruntled fighting game-esque engine provided.

So finally, what is wrong with this fighting engine for the bosses? The bosses' incredible blocking for one. You have no skill for breaking a bosses' block. They all have projectiles, which even when blocked by you do damage, slight, but just enough to ruin that perfect you narrowly had. Their range is almost always better. They, of course, do more damage, which isn't unexpected, but your few moves that are almost equally as strong are slow and difficult to connect with.

Visuals
The game actually looks fairly good. The sprites during the beat'em up phases are nicely animated and your character will react to attacks in different spasms of pain. Those dreaded boss fights do look nice also, seeing as they are a completely different look from the beatem'up section. Though there is nothing overly flashy or "Woah, that was awesome!" (K, except the ending credits, but that's just cause I was happy to see them.)

Music/ Sound
Yeah, I just turned off the music and listened to my own trying-to-be-positive-while-being-trashed-by-this-boss-music or ttbpwbtbtbm for short.

Replay
....I can't even believe I played the whole thing through once...if I had a death wish I'd try a harder difficulty; there are three: easy, normal, hard (played on normal.)

Conclusion
I honostly only picked this game up because of the Mazinger name. If you're a Mazinger fan and want to say you own a game loosely related, knock yourself out; it certainly won't break the bank to buy it.

Extra
The actual design for the Mazinger Z in this game looks more so like the Mazinkaizer, which is odd because this game was made much sooner than 2003, which was about the time that the Mazinkaizer ova came out.

You don't ever fight Doctor Hell, but you can bet that he didn't think you'd make it past the bosses

Go Nagai's name is actually on this game, he's listed immediately when the credits begin to roll, so it isn't just a coincidence; a big lawsuit ensuing coincidence.

It earned a score of 3 only because of the Mazinger relation and that the beat'em up sections are playable.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/10/06