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Today's Bonus:
I am a MASSIVE Saint Seiya fan. I've been following it since I first watched it at age 9, in 1994, in Brazil. I have collected a few action figures (the old 8" or so ones), bought as much of the series on DVD as I could as I live in the US that is incredibly hard, I had to do with overseas shopping and lastly, imported the game all the way from the UK, on release date.
Ok, with that out of the way, on to the game!
The style of this game seems a lot like mindless button mashing but combat itself requires a bit more than that. Fighting against ANY saint or mini-boss (Cassios) requires you to carefully plan your attack, as normal attacks will likely be blocked and even any special moves will be mostly blocked, as some damage may be caused. One sad aspect of it is the necessity to always build up your cosmos, which is a requirement to launch any of the special moves, this is one area I feel the game fell short.
Continuing on special moves, I just can't stress enough how amazing they look. The faithful recreation from the animes is incredible and once you develop the saints, oh man, those moves are outstanding to watch. My first moment of awe was seeing Ikki's flying phoenix carry people away while smashing into pillars, taking the entire scenery down.
Dimps did an excellent job capturing the essence of the show in this game, they offer the gold saints, bronze, and a few extras (with annoying DLC which will be discussed later), but I feel they allowed themselves (or Bandai made them) to be a bit lazy with possibilities in the game. For instance, there is no 1player vs 1ai battle, the closest you get is either doing Mission mode (which can be very lengthy as it covers on average 7 stages, 3 gold saint temples+their paths) or Tag mode, which pits you and a copycat AI character of your choice against a gold saint + minions spawning everywhere. Tag also goes through a couple of houses but there's no pathway fighting.
Leveling up characters takes a long time (not a problem) but the way to do it can be repetitive. There are several possibilities for varied adversaries on both Tag and Mission, but there's a lack of variety in the gameplay. Plus the AI will try to mirror your moves, using their equivalent would-be button presses to whatever you do. They also die around halfway through the fights so you may need to revive them (or let them down and finish the fight by yourself when you're at least at a level 5).
That said, the gameplay is rather tight and responsive, while still staying in the Devil May Cry/Dante's Inferno/Bayonetta/God of War restriction of areas you can access (as in, one pathway, sometimes small areas). The sound is very nice, the special effects look and sound lovely! More about the sounds, ALL of the voicework is in original Japanese. That's not a problem until you have characters talking while you play, so unless you play without paying attention and read the captions, you'll miss it. Unless you understand Japanese.
One disappointment I have is with regards to the music. Saint Seiya has some of the best in my opinion THE best music score of any show. The game, however, takes advantage of the theme song and another transition fight piece, and not much else. All of those special, touchy moments in the anime, with the excellent music to go along, are filled with somewhat copycat styles trying to capture the mood. I wish they'd have tacked the songs from the show but who knows if there's a copyright issue with the performing artists.
Now, on to the DLC. Let me start by saying that Namco Bandai pulled a Capcom here. All of the DLC is in the disc but you still must pay separately for a
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