Review #176: Saint Seiya Omega - Ultimate Cosmos

 Lemme tell you the definition of insanity.... expecting this game's AI to change.

 Saint Seiya Omega is the highly polarizing anime-only sequel to Saint Seiya, and like any popular Shonen focused on fights between powerful characters, it got itself its very own videogame.  This is an arena-based 1-on-1 fighting game, featuring 24(Technically 18) characters from the show, and an all-new storyline.

 The game is pretty light on modes: Story, Arcade, VS and Training. Story Mode is divided in 7 different chapters, each one following the storyline of one of the six main heroes and one featuring Seiya. I... I don't understand Japanese, so I had no idea of what was going on, besides the fact that they are trying to collect 7 gems in order to get the Triton Scale(An 'armor'), and each scenario is fully voiced... and you can't fast-forward the dialogue, or skip it, so... you are in for the long haul. Something pretty neat is that they actually created an all new storyline for the game, and it features a Triton Scale armor for each of the six main characters. Sadly, the new armor is the same for all characters(The girl gets an skirt, but it's otherwise the same armor), but it looks cool and it's a neat gimmick. Arcade is your typical Arcade ladder, and the other two modes are pretty self explanatory.

 Gameplay is pretty barebones, there's an strong and a weak attack, while circle performs special moves that consume a bit of the Cosmos Gauge. Holding the L button and pressing Square or Triangle produces a Super move, but spending the three levels of the gauge allows you to enter a 'super mode' by pressing L+Circle that grants you super armor, and pressing L+Circle again lets you use an Ultimate attack. R is used to throw your opponent, and if you plan of playing this by your lonesome, you are going to be using that button a whole lot....

 Here's the deal, I had no one to play this game with, and the AI is terrible, so I have no proper way of gauging how good the combat is, lemme elaborate... The AI's sole purpose in 'life' is to block. Doesn't matter which difficulty you choose, they will block, and block, and block. Oh, I'm not saying the AI is hard to battle, not at all! Y'see, there's no way to break guards, there's no guard meter and you can only do chip damage with Super moves... or Throw them. So you have two choices when dealing with the CPU, either try to attack them and win by time out, because they will only block, or Throw them over and over and over again, doesn't matter which difficulty you are in, the Throw is always your best tool. ALWAYS. There's no way to win with this game, either get bored by time outs, or get bored by repeating the strategy all the time. The harder difficulties makes them more aggressive, which lets you score more hits, but it's still not enough. And even if I had other players to play with, the only way to unlock the characters is through Arcade and Story Modes, so you HAVE to play against the CPU. I spent 80% of my time with the game pressing the R button. I had absolutely no fun with this game at all.

 The graphics are pretty neat, the game is very colorful, the environments are pretty and the character models... are alright. For some reason, the heights are a bit off, y'see, the Wolf guy(Harute?) has a crouched-like position by default, but even while standing, he looks tiny when compared to his friends, it's very jarring. Gembu, the Libra Saint, also looks huge, while he should be closer to Seiya's height. And I've a bone to pick with the animations, there's only like three different throws in the entire game, spread out through all 24 characters, and three females out of four share the same walking animation, with their hand resting on their hips... but then again, while the fourth one(Shaina) walks a tiny bit different, she also rests her hand on her hip. Is that how women walk in Japan or something? I mean, really. At least the soundtrack is really good, and the voice acting is excellent as well.

 I'm gonna be honest here, the score I'm gonna rate it ain't how good the game was, but how much I enjoyed it. Who knows, maybe with other people to play with, this game wouldn't be such a bust. But as it stands, even if you are a die-hard fan of the show, this game is a terrible pick to play by yourself.
 1.0 out of 10