| Advance Guardian Heroes review |
|
Advance Guardian Heroes is a game of layers. Not depths – there’s little depth to speak of - but certainly layers. The Saturn original was a bucketful of Manga fun, filled with all the touches gamers love. There was fan service for the initiates, a great learning curve, a blink-in-astonishment originality to the visuals and presentation; all the jaw-drops-mouth-slowly-creeps-into-a-smile moments that Treasure used to be synonymous with. A company that is a little less assured these days, no doubt about it. Even though they’re a company still arguably able to marry the kitsch, the cult and the cool, the breaking of Treasure’s tacit ‘no sequels’ rule with Gradius V and now Advance Guardian Heroes has shown a marked shift in their focus and ambitions. AGH is certainly ambitious, trying to coax the public into playing this Advance[d] version of one of Treasure’s classics, slathering-on layers of old and new, hoping something sticks.
The storyline for AGH is as ludicrous and over-the-top as the original, merging Western Medieval hackery-slashery, portentous “Defy ye the Gods, little man?!” exposition with the cosmically out of place primary colours of a nursery. Topping this confection off are the cute-as-buttons characters favoured in Japanese anime. In the original, the whole game design looked like a school production of the Arthurian legends, which helped to make it a one-off. The sequel tries extremely hard to emulate this look and feel, using some intelligent trickery to open-up the arena of play, yet retain Guardian Heroes’ charm.
Choosing a character from a set of three near-identical candidates, you are plunged into the eternal battle between the forces of the Heavens and Kanon, seeking again (under the control of dark demigod Zur) to control the Kingdom through force and mystical manipulation. In this timeline, the Heroes of the original are long dead with the dark powers on the cusp of victory, and only you – a warrior drawn from the Soul Sword itself – left to stand between them and their dark victory. Using fists and feet, and your ability to cast magic spells as mystical backup, you must battle valorously through the many stages. Fists and feet? Indeed: AGH does not gift your avatar a weapon, and you must battle hand-to-hand. This has an immediate impact on the game as, although the combat style follows the original’s blueprint, tactically it suffers from a lack of variety.
Your foes in all this mythical derring-do are a motley bunch of trolls, soldiers, squid monsters, leviathan battle droids and robotic spheroids. On paper this makes the game sound identical to the original, but in reality you face a great deal less variety of opposition, leaving you with a waning interest in their attack patterns. Humour is not really a factor, either, with the type of comical mismatches in GH (such as the giant Undead Hero versus a bunch of tiny woodland creatures) notable by their abscence.
As you would expect during combat, a punch achieves a similar result to a sword slash in GH: the enemy is flung across the screen, only to rebound against the far ‘wall’ at whip-cracking speed. A well-placed follow-up kick or punch will produce a juggle wherein multiple hits can be dealt in a single attack. Juggle a whole squad of assailants powerfully and efficiently and you’ll see their energy gauges plummet. Miss a combo opportunity, though, and prepare to be surrounded by a mass of foes in double quick time, with you the one on the receiving end of a vicious beating.
There are also two moves attained using button combos, that elevate your speed and power for a short amount of time. These moves drain a green bar that flashes when active - so far, so generic. What makes AGH stand out is the Guard/Repel button. Holding R prevents injury to your character, draining your magic meter in the process. A quick tap when being struck, however – by magic, muscle or missile – if timed correctly will see you counter the move. If the assault is a projectile or magical attack it will be sent back to the origin, dealing out damage. If it comes from a physical blow, the enemy will be open to counter attack, much like the Parry in Street Fighter III. This move is very satisfying, and essential for much of the game – battered on all sides by bolts of lightning, fists and clubs, missiles and marauders, the only way to survive is to spot the visual cues that indicate a strike is about to land, and then react accordingly. In certain sections, attacks will come from ‘within’ the screen, using a third dimension in the style and to the technical standard of Afterburner and Space Harrier. These effects work surprisingly well, although spotting a single rogue missile screaming towards your head when being bludgeoned to death by a screen full of ogres is often a dicey proposition.
This is where the seams of the game unravel. Where GH had multiple planes of depth in which to fight, AGH has a more traditional playing field a la Final Fight. All the tactical depth is lost in a single stroke, leaving a melee fighter behind. Couple this with the reduction in moves, the lack of weapons, the dull and mechanical collection of crystals (which you can use to level-up your character in-between levels) and the more limited set of enemy sprites and you are left with a faint echo of the original’s glory. Even the backgrounds are almost universally dull affairs, with one level spent traversing a jaw-clenchingly pedestrian concrete highway for what seems like an eternity. As many of your ‘boss’ battles are against the enslaved souls of the original GH characters (the battle against Genjirou ends the most attractive level in the game, and is the high point), this only succeeds in exposing how puddle-deep the design of both backgrounds and new characters are in AGH. Some of the old Heroes are unlockable through extended play and exploration, but the game does not encourage a revisit. Although the 6 levels are quite large, their mediocrity and population by wave upon wave of repeated enemy sprites leaves little left to enjoy, even using one of GH’s original cast. Two-player mode makes the game far more enjoyable than when playing on your lonesome, but the game’s failure to ignite interest means that even two of you will gain only so much pleasure from AGH’s poor environments and antagonists.
As a further stumbling block, Easy mode is far too easy (granting you unlimited magic power) and Normal mode far too tough. Treasure really ought to have found a happy compromise, which may have added to the title’s replay value. Although criticised in some quarters for its slowdown, particularly when the screen begins to fill with opponents, this doesn't hamper the game as much as you would expect. Generally speaking, though, more wit, invention and a greater set of both playable (from the beginning) and CPU-controlled opponents would have been necessary to elevate Advance Guardian Heroes to the heights of its predecessor. Although bland for the most part, some little sparks still remain, and pleasure can be drawn from the combat, particularly through use of the ‘parry’ system. Still, there is nothing here to match GH’s battle of the Undead Hero, and the original tale of the Soul Sword. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
System: Nintendo GameBoy Advance
Genre: Fighter
Developer: Treasure
Publisher: Treasure
Players: 1-2
Version: Japan
Reviewed: Nov 2004
Writer: Stuart Peake
|
Pros:
- Some nice sprite scaling effects
- Plenty of unlockable features
- Lengthy for a beat em up
|
Cons:
- Poor level design
- boring music and SFX
- weaker than the original in every way possible
|
|
|
|
|
|
