Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul (PlayStation 4) Review

By Albert Lichi 06.10.2015

Review for Saint Seiya: Soldiers

Dimps Corporation has an extensive catalogue of fighting games, as well as many licensed titles based on anime, its most recent one being Dragon Ball: Xenoverse. Over the years, the Japanese developer has been involved with all manner of titles, from the great to the...not so great, but now, with the handling of the Saint Seiya property for this latest product, it has sadly sunk to new lows. Fans of the manga and anime, prepare for this eulogy of Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul for PlayStation 4.

Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul looks and feels very cheap right from the off. While it is no shock that this very plain and bland looking game does manage 60 frames per second, it seems the PS3 and PS4 versions both share the same low resolution textures. It uses cel-shading rendering, so it is not like the textures are even that complex, even by Dreamcast standards. The few textures that are here are meant to look like inked lines to emulate the appearance of the manga and anime. While fighting, the characters look and animate at a serviceable level, but during cut-scenes they awkwardly stand around, barely moving, or they move like a robot with lifeless, soulless eyes that never blink - kind of like plastic anime face masks.

Screenshot for Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul on PlayStation 4

The fighting arenas don't fare well, either, looking like PS2 level simplicity, and painted with a lifeless colour palette with flat textures. Even the character rigging is incredibly laughable, with some of the most distracting clipping and painful, or unnatural, looking poses. At the very least, the developer did manage to capture the "look" of Saint Seiya, and the roster does look faithful to their origins, even if the attempt is Spartan at best.

The visuals are lacking, to say the least, but the real horror reveals itself when playing this. Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul is a terrible fighter, possibly ranking as one of the worst of this ilk made in a long time, and is easily the worst one on the PlayStation 4. There are some utterly broken members of the line-up that completely tip the scales in terms of balance. It is as if none of this was play-tested at all, since it is incredibly easy to stun-lock an opponent into victory. Control also feels very stiff and clunky; none of the saints have any fluidity or grace at all. Each match becomes a war of attrition, and since the move sets are so mind-bogglingly basic, it is not likely that this will ever see a booth at any tournaments.

Screenshot for Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul on PlayStation 4

There isn't even a standard arcade mode, just variations of story mode where only certain characters are playable, which is really limiting. It feels as if this might have originally meant to have been a beat 'em up early on, but was arbitrarily jammed into another genre without any rebalancing or tweaking at all. Super move animations just take too long and completely break the flow of the action, which will truly test the patience of anyone who has played a fighting game before. Even the continue screen is totally botched, in that it requires a really long narration that can't be skipped, and the user has to mash a button for 10 seconds before they can continue and try again. Almost every aspect was designed to frustrate people who might otherwise enjoy a fighter.

If there is anything positive that can be said, it's that it does have a lot of content and unlockables. Of course, that would require actually playing it, and nobody deserves that torture. With four different story arcs that cover most of the Saint Seiya legacy, and dozens of characters and skins to unlock, anyone who subjects themselves to this pain will be sure to suffer for a long time. Some flog themselves to become saints, now people can just play Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul to achieve the same end result.

Screenshot for Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul on PlayStation 4

It is unlikely that Saint Seiya fans will be happy with this, due to the lazy presentation. Much of the story is played out with long narration over panning shots of the non-descript arenas, or the characters loiter, barely moving. This was a chance for Saint Seiya fans to see their favourites have epic duels and have the dialogue recited in a new and exciting way, but Dimps completely misses the mark. Even scans of the original comic would have been preferable to this.

The very basics of fighting mechanics are ignored, such as attacking priorities not making any sense, or the frustratingly long animations that can be interrupted. Soldiers' Soul only makes an effort in one department and that is a large roster from the anime and manga series, which ultimately feels hollow and empty due to the horrendous core game mechanics.

Screenshot for Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul on PlayStation 4

Cubed3 Rating

2/10
Rated 2 out of 10

Very Bad

Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul should be ignored and is not a fighting game worth playing, full stop. Much older 3D fighters from the '90s, such as Power Stone, had more complexity and refined mechanics than this. There really is no excuse for Dimps to have made this so poor, given the experience the team has on other similar releases. It is offensively bad, with so many annoying design choices, and continuing to play this is some form of torture. It is very difficult to find anything nice to say about such a poorly made product, and nobody should be subjected to it, especially fans of Saint Seiya - avoid, without a doubt.

Developer

Dimps

Publisher

Bandai Namco

Genre

Fighting

Players

2

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  2/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now   

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