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.)
As mentioned above, Soul Eater Battle Resonance will start out slow but once you get the feel for the controls and how combat works, it can be really addictive; combat is your basic 2D one on one fighting, where characters can do a light attack on one button, a heavy attack on another, charge “soul” with another, and do a special attack with one more. The shoulder buttons work as blocks and throws.
What sets it apart is the unique “soul resonance” (I don’t think it’s really called that, I’m just basing it off the soul resonance concept in the story) mechanic, where a character can build “soul” by charging or through successful attacks. When you fill up the soul bar, you can either use it for a heavy hitting super attack or press both shoulder buttons together to achieve soul resonance, which will give you another bar to fill. On your third bar, you can press both shoulder buttons to unleash a devastating super move that can shave off almost half of your opponent’s HP, which makes it an instant-win move in a lot of cases (by the time you fill up the third bar, you probably already have the opponent in less than half his health.)
The controls could take some getting used to because they’re not as responsive depending on your character, and can even be considered floaty. The delay in the response isn’t enough to break the game, but fans of super responsive fighting games like Tekken and Street Fighter could get turned off at first, but stick to it. It’s very fun once you learn how to adapt to the slower response.
Content-wise, there’s not a lot. It’s Japanese-only, so you won’t get much out of the story (besides, it’s a fighting game, not an RPG.) The menu is in English so you won’t get lost at all. The roster of playable characters is pretty thin by modern standards, only having 13 total characters (half of which need to be unlocked.) Thankfully, the character designs and their playstyles are markedly different from each other, so playing and mastering all 13 should give you a decent amount of playtime.
When it comes to playmodes, Soul Eater Battle Resonance includes all the types of modes that you would expect from a modern fighting game, such as Versus, Adventure, Arcade, Free Battle, and Team Battle. As mentioned above, the menu items include English text so it’s easy to navigate even if you don’t understand a lick of Japanese. Story-wise, there shouldn’t be any need to understand things. If you’re interested in the game, chances are you’re already a fan of the anime and the manga and already know the backstory.
All in all, Soul Eater Battle Resonance is a good addition to your anime fighting game library. It’s not perfect by any means – the controls could use some improvement and the content is pretty thin by modern standards – but fans of the Soul Eater franchise will find this a very enjoyable videogame adaptation of their beloved series, while non-fans will be able to eke some sort of enjoyment after taking the time to acclimate themselves to the iffy controls.
