Had a quick go of this last night. The ensemble artwork of the case and manual (and CD if your copy comes with it) is reminiscent of Guardian Heroes which sets the mood as you start the game up. The first thing you'll get is an upbeat animated FMV intro which shows off some of the characters and flashes of events in a very Guardian Heroes style manner before taking you to the main menu. There are around 4 options which are all in Japanese so I've no idea what they are for yet, selecting the top option brings up a list of 5 options which are once again currently a mystery to me beyond the top option again which is Story mode.
The first thing you need to do is choose your character, there are 4 character slots and initially only the scanty and incredible bouncy Princess Solange is available. Characters look like they're rendered in a similar manner to that used in KOFXII and XIII. The next screen allows you to modify your armour, items, weapons etc though again you won't have any at first (later changes seem to affect your abilities but not appearance). Portraits and text pop up over in game events just like in Guardian Heroes as the story starts. From what I can gather there is a commotion in the kingdom which prompts the King to send a guard and Solange to a temple containing a mystical sword. Solange takes the sword and there is an explosion. She awakes and then the gameplay begins. There are three planes that the player can jump between, like in Guardian Heroes, and movement is pretty straight forward. Holding L and jumping up or down shifts plane whilst X, B and A execute various attacks. Y powers up your attacks temporarily, you can't hammer one button, having to mix up attacks to create combo's. Visually, despite the 3D backgrounds (3D effect is very subtle) it all looks very much like Guardian Heroes with similar but toned down stylings.
You quickly unlock more characters as you progress but tend to stick with Solange at first as play levels up your character. Each time you level up you can improve the stats for various attributes such as Mind, Speed, Health etc encouraging repeated play.
The weaker parts for me so far are the speed of the game, it feels like its got constant slowdown but I've started using my stat points on my Speed attribute to hopefully make this less of an issue. Also, so far there's little to the levels. Whereas in Guardian Heroes you progressed through levels in a scrolling beat em up style manner, in this so far it's all single screen battles where you defeat the enemies within a time limit. Hopefully, there's more to it than just simple brawling.
Overall though, first impressions of its Guardian Heroes style visuals, battling and controls are good. Why? Well, because it's like Guardian Heroes!
The first thing you need to do is choose your character, there are 4 character slots and initially only the scanty and incredible bouncy Princess Solange is available. Characters look like they're rendered in a similar manner to that used in KOFXII and XIII. The next screen allows you to modify your armour, items, weapons etc though again you won't have any at first (later changes seem to affect your abilities but not appearance). Portraits and text pop up over in game events just like in Guardian Heroes as the story starts. From what I can gather there is a commotion in the kingdom which prompts the King to send a guard and Solange to a temple containing a mystical sword. Solange takes the sword and there is an explosion. She awakes and then the gameplay begins. There are three planes that the player can jump between, like in Guardian Heroes, and movement is pretty straight forward. Holding L and jumping up or down shifts plane whilst X, B and A execute various attacks. Y powers up your attacks temporarily, you can't hammer one button, having to mix up attacks to create combo's. Visually, despite the 3D backgrounds (3D effect is very subtle) it all looks very much like Guardian Heroes with similar but toned down stylings.
You quickly unlock more characters as you progress but tend to stick with Solange at first as play levels up your character. Each time you level up you can improve the stats for various attributes such as Mind, Speed, Health etc encouraging repeated play.
The weaker parts for me so far are the speed of the game, it feels like its got constant slowdown but I've started using my stat points on my Speed attribute to hopefully make this less of an issue. Also, so far there's little to the levels. Whereas in Guardian Heroes you progressed through levels in a scrolling beat em up style manner, in this so far it's all single screen battles where you defeat the enemies within a time limit. Hopefully, there's more to it than just simple brawling.
Overall though, first impressions of its Guardian Heroes style visuals, battling and controls are good. Why? Well, because it's like Guardian Heroes!
Does anyone know if the campaign changes at all if you change characters?
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