PS4, PC fighter
The Saint Seiya series has been going strong for nearly 30 years in Japan. Those elsewhere might know it as Knights of the Zodiac. Brett Makedonski and myself don’t know it from Adam, though the maintained ’80s anime art style conjures up plenty of connections in my head. It’s basically space-gods Ronin Warriors, right?
Brett and I did a first hands-on with Soliders’ Soul, the one-on-one fighter, in Tokyo ahead of its September 25 Japanese release date.
I think my favorite thing about Saint Seiya is that I can say its title to the tune of Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” Also it looks pretty pretty. Not quite as clean as some of Namco’s other anime games, like the current One Piece and Naruto titles, which look gorgeous. But still good. Has that Killer is Dead extreme sheen and mild grunge to it.
BRETT: I guess my favorite part about it is how I beat you at it. By the skin of my teeth in the final round, but a W’s a W. I’m not quite sure how I did it. It probably has something to do with the fact that neither of us had a real clue how to play. A pre-fight intro screen was gracious enough to share all the controls, and it was convoluted enough to make me say “Hahaha, fuck this” out loud.
I don’t consider myself well-versed in fighters, and that goes doubly so for 3D fighters. In my layman’s opinion, I thought it felt slow, but not in a bad way — more of a moving chess match kind of way. The pace is likely the reason I was able to string together a few nine hit combos, which were satisfying even though I have no idea if they were impressive or not. Probably not, to be honest. It felt good when my golden boy blocked your dumb Kratos chains, too.
STEVEN: Yeah, I was using a pink lady with green hair who, actually might’ve been a very pretty and slim man, according to pre-fight dialogue. Regardless, she had these Ivy Soul Calibur whip things going and I spent the first match just ranging Brett because it was easy to do and exploit, but that proved pretty boring so I tried to figure out other things to do. Figuring out the block button was essential, but I’m still confused about the supposed throw combination and also the specials.
I do enjoy that 3D fighter running style — “like chickens,” you noted — which is very anime-like (and definitely faster than something like Tekken). That general style of fighter (I lump Gundam Versus and Dissidia types in there, too) is interesting me, but not something I ever got into. I last spent notable time in a fighter with vanilla Street Fighter IV (I later tried to get into Persona 4: Arena, but not even Persona love could hold me). I’ll mess with more Samurai Gunn, Towerfall, Duck Game, Smash Bros. these days.
Had a bunch of stages, though, Saint Seiya. And a pretty good roster. I feel like a lot of fighters skimp on that recently, probably for DLC (Mortal Kombat X comes to mind).
BRETT: Who knows if that roster is a blessing or a curse. For all we know, it’s unbalanced as all get-up and there are glaring exploits. Probably not though, right? The meta’s something that people can figure out when it releases very soon. We had fun, got a few chuckles, and ran around like chickens. Chalk that preview experience up as a success, I say.
