Soul Eater Battle Resonance (PS2, PSP)

Atsushi Okubo’s Soul Eater manga and anime franchise is very popular. Not on the same level as the current big WSJ trinity (One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach), but one of the many franchises that shared the distant second or third spot. One of the possible reasons cited for this is that the story’s unique blend of comedy, fan-service, action, and goofy art style takes some getting used to and requires patience before it starts to pick up. The same can be said of Soul Eater Battle Resonance, which was released for the PS2 and its little brother, the PSP.

A little backgrounder first: Soul Eater is set at the Death Weapon Meister Academy, a school and training facility for humans with the ability to transform into weapons and humans who are training to wield said weapons, called meisters or technicians. The franchise focuses on a group of students, faculty members, and the head of the academy itself, the actual Grim Reaper, Death.

Soul Eater Battle Resonance does a good job of adapting the content and aesthetics of the early parts of the manga. The characters and their weapons look exactly like their manga counterparts, the attacks on the game are based on their attacks in the story, and the stages are straight out of the locations in the story. There’s nothing to complain about with the visuals. Graphics are sharp and mimic cel shading, the animation is fluid, and the use of framebuffer effects lead to bright, beautiful, and devastating-looking special attacks. The PS2, for its part, runs at a smooth buttery 60 frames per second (the PSP version runs at 30 fps, like many PSP games. It still looks fluid, though, thanks to the small screen.)

Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo (PSP)

I’m going to admit right off the bat that I’m not familiar with the Saint Seiya franchise. I read a little bit of the Lost Canvas manga and I’m familiar with the premise, but I’m not well-versed on the specifics. I had a copy of Saint Seiya: The Hades for the PS2, so that will be my only point of comparison when assessing the PSP fighting game Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo. I apologize in advance if I miss out or am mistaken on something that an anime episode or manga chapter should have clarified.

Anyway, I only have the Japanese release of Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo so I had to do a little bit of exploring and trial and error before I was able to navigate the game. There are minimal English words (the “VS” and “CPU” words will be extremely helpful here) so this won’t be a pick up and play title unless you can read Japanese. Fortunately, this is a fighting game so you won’t need to bother with the story. Once you learn how to navigate the menu, you’ll be able to play your money’s worth out of the game.

Visually, Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo is one of the many games on the PSP that managed to look gorgeous even if compared with current gen console games, owing to the fact that it uses cel-shading, which age well compared to standard textured polygons. The characters look sharp and the backgrounds are crisp and colorful. You will be forgiven if you mistook the game as 2D sprite-based. Sound is also decent and crisp, although the sound of grunts and thuds can be repetitive at times.