I recently picked up Heavenly Guardian, a colorful hand drawn Anime styled character run and shoot game on PS2 developed by Star-Fish and published by UFO Interactive Games, the cool company that put out other specialty and retro throwback titles such as Raiden III for PS2 and Devilish and Labyrinth for the DS.  And for budget prices!

This game in particular I am especially interested in putting this review up for, as I was looking up the game to decide to buy it, I noticed there is almost no reviews of the game up at any of the usual big review websites.

Story:

Heavenly Guardian is set in ancient Japan and the story goes that your character Saiyuki is a Snow Goddess, able to control the weather elements such as snow and water.  The villagers, however, don't understand her because she is different so she is forced to live away by herself.  Saiyuki secretly goes to the village on occasion to see a boy she loves.  On one visit, she overhears that the boy she loves is cursed and forced to stay in bed.  So Saiyuki goes out on an adventure to find various ingredients needed to make the cure.  As this is a game, of course, monsters and demons don't want Saiyuki to get all the ingredients, so they stand in her way.  Sayuki will use her icicle shot and the help of her snow bunny Toto to travel throughout Japan to hopefully find all the ingredients for the cure.

GamePlay:

Video found on YouTube

Heavenly Guardian is a character run and shoot game - meaning you control a character that you must move to progress thru stages, rather than a ship thru a constantly scrolling background.  The game reminds me more of various older games that I've played on SNES and N64, specifically the Mystical Ninja/Goemon games - rather than something I'd expect to see on PS2.  Lots of constant action, tons of enemies to shoot, various shot and health powerups to pick up - the shot powerups which will increase if you pick up three of the same kind in a row.  Yet the graphics are smooth - it looks like I am looking at a hand drawn picture, something I'd expect to see on a computer as a JPG.  Your character is able to move in any direction using the analog stick (no 8-way movement limits) and shoot likewise in any direction.  As your character shoots icicles, sometimes the shot will freeze the enemy temporarily in a block of ice.  They will be unable to move for a few seconds or so, and then you can keep shooting the enemy.

With shooting, you can hold down the shot button to continue firing.  Your shots only go a limited distance though, so you do need to be somewhat close to the enemies to hit them - no long range shots froma  distance here.  The selection of shot powerups is pretty standard.  The default shot is a single.  A blue crystal gives you Rapid Fire - which I think usually works best, especially at the parts of stages where enemies respawn and come at you in groups.  A yellow crystal gives you Three-Way.  A green crystal gives you Homing - however you still need to fire in the general direction of the enemy for the shots to follow, also the shots move slow, so I don't like this one as much. A red crystal gives you Bomb - a less frequent rate of shot, but explodes and does more damage.  One thing about the shots is that they go just as fast as your character can run at top speed - so if you are running in one direction, your shots basically go out as you do, not outwardly faster than you are moving.  In certain areas of the game, you will do a lot of running too, as certain emenies will attack in large groups, many of them move only towards you like a homing device.

In the options of the game, you can select how many lives you want.  With each life, your character has 3 hit points before losing a life - but there are various health powerups to refill lost hit points.  If your character loses all three hit points, they start over at the last save spot in the stage, but with the same shot powerup they had in the last life - which is helpful.  Not so helpful if your character died at a boss, as you'll have to start that over again.  Also, not so helpful if you have progressed towards the end of a stage and have a crappy shot (like the Homing), as although you can freely go back thru the stage, all the powerups taken and enemies killed, will no longer be there - except for enemies that come out of respawn stations.

When you kill enemies, they may drop various items to give points, hit points, or snowballs.  The snowballs you need to collect to make the game easier as you use them to do your special attacks.  With 5 snowballs, you can do your Blizzard attack, which shoots a blast of wind in the area you are facing (8-way attack) and freezes whatever common enemies are on screen.  If you hit a boss with a Blizzard, they turn blue and your shots do double damage temporarily while they are blue - lasts for a few seconds.  With 25 snowballs, you get Toto's Wild Dance, which freezes Toto and makes him circle around your Saiyuki like a shield, and attacks every enemy he touches.  In my opinion, Toto's Wild Dance doesn't last long enough for a cost of 25 snowballs and unless I have a lot to spare, they are better used for Blizzards - as 1 Toto's Wild Dance takes up 5 Blizzards.

Aside from being like a "power shot", the Blizzards also are needed for something else.  10 Snow Boys are hidden at various places in each stage, and when you uncover all of them, various secrets and bonus gameplay modes of the game are said to be unlocked.  [So far, I have not progressed far enough to unlock anything though - although I'll update when I do!]  Certain parts of stages, you might notice the background snowballs come out of - shoot a Blizzard at those areas to uncover the Snow Boys.

One exciting feature is that the game is 2 player co-op.  If playing with two player, the other person plays as Saiyuki's sister, Koyuki.  I've only played the game in 1 player mode myself so far, but as co-op, I'm sure it must be helpful at the boss stages. 

My Impressions:

As mentioned, the first thing I notice when I put in Heavenly Guardian - and also when starting my first game - is just how lush and colorful everything is.  The scenery really looks to flow like a living painting.  So much of the game looks like paint and crayola markers, but put on my screen.  After getting over the initial "Wow!" factor, I was maybe disOriented (bad joke) for less than a minute and then I was able to pick up and basically play the game right away.  Besides reading to see what the button configuration is in the manual, if you've played as many shooters as I have, you basically know how to play the game from the start.  Like most shooter games, the key to progressing is discovering the enemy patterns.

The enemies and other characters look like very fabulous fan artwork - which gives the game a nice Anime fanboy feel.  Various quirks and random things to see in stages, could be Anime culture or Japanese culture refences, as some parts of the game, I was thinking "huh, what's that for?"  To me however, it really adds to the whole setting of the game - a rich Anime world.

For what it is, a specialty title, it does it very well.  The game does not force itself to appeal to a mainstream market, which I always tend to respect and appreciate.  That said, if you are a person that does not like either Anime/Japanese culture or shooter/quirky games, this game won't make you like it any more as its very much more of that.  If you do enjoy and look out for the uncommon/under the radar Anime/Japanese culture or shooter/quirky games, I certainly think you will dig Heavenly Guardian.  I have to say if you tried to come up with an Anime fanboy's idea for a simple game, this would probably be it.

Heavenly Guardian is basically simple to pick up and play - with some scattered secret stuff to find.  The scenery is nice to look at, with various things in there that as far as I can tell so far don't seem to have a gameplay purpose other than looking cool - or as mentioned, could be Anime culture or Japanese culture references I don't get - or maybe they are there for a secret part of the game.  Whatever they are, the game is fun to watch as it is to play. 

With the MSRP of Heavenly Guardian at $14.99 at most retailers, picking up the game was a non-decision for me.  For the price, the game is very much worth it in my opinion - if this style of game appeals to you as much as it does to me.

Other Notes:

The game is also to be released soon on the Wii.  Japan doesn't have the PS2 version like we do in USA.

Links:

Official US Heavenly Guardian PS2 homepage

Official Japan Heavenly Guardian Wii homepage