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I’m going to say this up front: If you are not a fan of Mizuki Shigeru’s work, then Mizuki Shigeru’s Yokai Butouden is *not* a must-buy purchase. There are too many little things wrong with it for me to recommend it to the die-hard fighting fan - or even fans of monster fighters. Mo< That being said, I’m going to answer two questions: (1) Who is Mizuki Shigeru, anyway, and (2) why it’s a must-buy for fans of his stuff.
First-off, if you are a long-time Japanese anime or manga fan, you *have* seen his work at one point or another. He is the creator of (most notably) Gegege no Kitaro and Akuma-kun; he is probably Japan’s #1 expert on Japanese spirits, demons, ghosts, and monsters. Like Tezuka, Matsumoto, and a handful of others, he’s a manga icon. To date, while there have been many console games across the platforms featuring Kitaro (the most recent being an action-adventure on the PSX) and only slightly fewer featuring Akuma-kun, there have been none which center on his take on Japanese horror legends, and Yokai Butoden is it.
This is part of reason (2). With the exception of Sanakake Baba (the old woman in the kimono) and Konaki Jiji, none of the monsters that appear regularly in Kitaro or Akuma-kun show up as player or hidden characters. (Some do in the cut scenes used to advance the story mode plotline, though.) This I suspect has more to do with Bandai holding the license more than anything else. The six others that *are*, however, are the battlers of the Japanese monster pantheon, and thus *should* be there. Ever wonder how a Kappa would do against an Oni? Or whether a Kamaitachi (best described as a sickle ferret) with its blinding speed can be stopped by the freezing cold of a Yuki Onna (even though Yukinko’s a bit on the young side ;-))?
And just why is Death trying, through his agent the succubus Kamira, to destroy all Japanese demons, anyway? Enough advertising: how does this sucker play? Now we get into some of those little things I mentioned before.
This game is pure 2D fighter with 3D graphics. Thus things you would expect, like being able to dodge, aren’t there. Control takes a little getting used to, especially getting the timing on some of the pre-programmed combos listed in the instruction manual (Hint: practice getting out the first half of the combo to begin with). Like most SNK fighters, the fighters talk throughout, which makes for some interesting trash talk during matches. Even with control, the game seems a tad slow to those of us who’ve gotten used to motion-captured movement-based fighters. A turbo switch would’ve been nice.
The music is the best thing about the game. At parts it will make your hair stand on end. And you cannot fault the seiyuus (Japanese voice actors, some who’ve been doing these parts for years). Graphically it is also stunning in the detail. What I would’ve liked to have seen added to it: 4-6 more characters, maybe Nezumi Otoko as a hidden character; better responsiveness in the controller scheme, short movies as opposed to text endings (even endings a la Psychic Force with Shigeru’s artwork would have been preferable to what we got, although I’ll admit some of those text endings are *seriously* Twilight-Zonesque). And one more thing: being able to save the bosses to a memory card! That code’s hard to pull off, guys!
So taking the above into account, am I sorry I bought the game? Hell, no. Once again though, I walk away from an manga/anime based title wishing that the programmers had done more than they did.
Beats all hell out of Killing Zone, though.