Guardian Heroes

Guardian Heroes is a game that I remember fondly from the Sega Saturn and am happy to recieve if on the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live. It is considered to be one of the greatest games on the Sega Saturn by not only critics but also by fans.

Guardian Heroes is a side scrolling action/adventure hack and slash game that also incorperates elements of an RPG as well. The game allows you to earn experiance points  to customize six attributes: Strength (determines physical damage per hit and distance enemies fly when the player hits them), Vitality (increases HP), Intelligence (governs size and strength of spells), Mentality (determines how many MP the player has and how fast MP are recovered), Agility (increases the speed at which characters can do physical and magical attacks) and Luck (modifies damage the player gives and receives, in addition to improving Nicole's selection of spells).

In Guardian Heroes your band of unfortunate misfits include:

Samuel Han (Han)

Physically powerful, Han can inflict a lot of damage even against guarding opponents (as his tackle bypasses blocking), but his movements are slow, and he cannot use much magic. He also has a flaming attack, similar to Ginjirou's lightning attack. He jumps high in the air, ignites, and comes down in flames on his enemies. As he is slow-moving at first, raising his Agility stat will make up for his initial lack of mobility. Han starts the game wielding the sword of the Undead Hero, until it is reclaimed by its true owner. In one of the story arcs, he may acquire a similar sword which grants him the stat bonuses he originally had when wielding the Undead Sword.

Randy M. Green (Randy)

Randy has many spectacular attacks and a large variety of elemental magic, including fireballs, lightning bolts, pools of ice and a devastating laser-like heat ray. However, like a typical sorcerer character, he suffers from low vitality. Randy's familiar, Nando, assists Randy during the story mode of the game, and is available as a playable character in Versus mode. In melee, Randy attacks with multi-hit attacks, his Dancing Wind attack being one of the most effective melee attacks around.

Ginjirou Ibushi (Ginjirou)

Ginjirou has an emphasis on mobility. He has a large variety of moving attacks, but this can also work against him. He also has a number of lightning/thunder attacks. Though his attack power is weaker than Han's, the sheer number of hits he is capable of dealing to enemies makes him a formidable character, and his lightning attacks allow him to deliver more hits to any single target than any other character in the game, meaning he can rack up combo points very easily and gain levels just as quickly.

Nicole Neil (Nicole)

Nicole has weak attacks and random magic. She has a smiley face emblem on her amulet and most of her magic attacks incorporate a smiley face. She is the only hero who can use healing magic, but as a drawback her attacks are the weakest of the four heroes. Experienced gamers quickly learned about her Barrier ability, which damages enemies until they are forced away from her; if an enemy could not be forced away from Nicole (e.g. the Barrier pushes the enemy against the wall), then it would suffer grievous wounds until the barrier wore off. If the enemy were to block the barrier attack and was standing against the wall, which would effectively trap them in place, the barrier would deal massive amounts of damage, often leaving only a bit of health afterwards.

Serena Corsair (Serena)

A well-balanced character, Serena (possibly meant to be Selena) the Knight has a wide variety of moves and a good selection of magic spells, the majority of which revolve around cold and ice. The most powerful of these are her Angel Breath, which creates an umbrella-like field of ice particles around herself when used, protecting her from physical attacks and freezing anything close to her, and the Valkyrie Javelin, which is similar to Randy's Super Magic Fire Blaster, but it freezes attackers instead of burning them. Serena joins the player as an NPC in story mode, but is later unlockable as a player-controlled character. Kanon later reveals that Serena is actually the surviving heir of the murdered Khans, making her a legitimate contender for the throne. She is the only hidden character that can be played in story mode.

Undead Hero

A powerful warrior who died when the Khans were killed. His body returns to life when his sword is accidentally brought to his grave. He reclaims his weapon and goes on a rampage, until the heroes realize that they can control him. In the game, the Undead Hero is a NPC who can be given simple directions by the players: Follow, Wait, Attack, Defend, and Berserk.

 Long before the beginning of the game, a supreme being created the universe to find ultimate warriors to hire as its personal soldiers. In the past, humans merely existed, cowering in fear as a vicious battle was waged between the Earth and Sky Spirits. The Sky Spirits decided to bestow incredible powers unto the humans, effectively making powerful wizards for their own gain. With their new-found powers, the human wizards joined the effort against the Earth Spirits, banishing them into the darkness. Soon after this was accomplished, the Sky Spirits grew fearful and jealous of the humans, and banished them all into the very same darkness with the Earth Spirits. Mankind instead opted for a more physical approach to life, and the Time of the Sword began.

Several decades before the game begins, one of the human wizards, Kanon, managed to escape his imprisonment with the Earth Spirits, and came back to the surface so that he might eventually get his revenge on the Sky Spirits. There, he brought his case up with the existing khans; since they did not trust him, he destroyed them and replaced their kingdom with a wizard kingdom, with puppet khans to do his will. Things were not entirely rosy for Kanon, however; the former king prophesied, prior to his death, that should his reign and the Time of the Sword be brought to such an abrupt end, then eventually the sword would again resurface and in turn bring an end to Kanon's reign. As a precaution, Kanon banished most every existing sword in his new kingdom, but he overlooked one particular sword, belonging to a fierce, anonymous warrior who fought especially valiantly to the death during Kanon's takeover. Also, the former princess, Serena, survived the ordeal, and joined the band of knights to try to bring about Kanon's end from the inside.

At the game's start, four warriors - Han, Randy (with his pet rabbit, Nando), Nicole and Ginjirou - find the sword of the valiant warrior. Just as they decide to begin relaxing for the remainder of the night, Serena bursts in, hastily warning them that the knights have learned of their possession of such a powerful sword, and are coming to take it back, no matter the costs. The four flee their home as it bursts up in flames during the invasion, then escape the town via their separate ways, rendezvousing at the graveyard nearby.

Upon reaching the graveyard, they discover the leader of the Black Knights, Valgar, awaiting them, and accompanied by a very powerful robotic warrior. The five do battle with it, but fail to do a large amount of damage to it. Finally, as Han resolves to use the new sword against the robot, the sword is struck by lightning, electrocuting Han and causing him to lose his grip on it. The sword, now seemingly with a life of its own, floats over to a large mound nearby, where a zombified warrior in golden armor arises from the dead - the same warrior who valiantly fought to the death so many years ago - and claims the sword as his own. Enraged, he easily obliterates Valgar's robot, and begins to attack Serena. Nicole, uncertain of what to do, politely asks the warrior to stop attacking them - to the five's surprise, he does so. Quickly realizing that the warrior is willing to act on any command that they give him, they resolve that, with this new ally, the time to begin an attack on Kanon's new kingdom is at hand.

The story mode alows you to play solo or also play with friends via Xbox Live.

Guardian Heroes is also known for having a branching off story mode that allows you to select what path you will follow which not only increases the replayability with increased story elements but also multiple endings.

Guardian Heroes also does include a versus mode that allows you to play with not only the basic 4 playable characters but also with any other character you defeat in the story mode. Everyone from the Sky Spirits down to the Civilan Wimp are playable.  And with leaderboards to keep up with who is the higheset ranking with each character, theres no reason to not try them all.

Personally, having both the Sega Saturn version and now the remasters Xbox Arcade edition, I thought I would give it a good test run for comparison.  From the minute I started at the main menu all the music was familiar and a pleasure to my ears. I must say that from the get go, Guardian Heroes is a beast, even on the Normal difficulty settings. I will be the first to tell you that the original debug code that allows you to use Serena from the begining and start with 200 experience points does not work. Needless to say, its gonna take me a minute to get through it or to call out for some back up because this game is rough.

Guardian Heroes on the Xbox 360 is getting reviews of 8.5 and 9 out of 10 depending on who is reviewing it. This game gets two thumbs up from me because thats all my momma and the good Lord gave me.

Guardian Heroes can be found on Xbox Live for 800 Microsoft points.

-"Nurd" Pat!