Well, OK, it does involve fighting, but it's instead more of a beat-em-up or "character action" game.
Founded in 2000 by the legendary Takashi Nishiyama (creator of Moon Patrol, Kung-Fu Master, Street Fighter, & Fatal Fury), Dimps Corporation is an Osaka-based game studio that, true to its founder, quickly became known for its prowess in making fighting games; that said, Dimps does also develop in other genres, too. In particular, Dimps would become especially reliable for making fighting games based on various anime & manga, like Digimon, Shaman King, InuYasha, One Piece, Dragon Ball, etc., so it's only natural that Dimps would eventually be handed the job of making a Saint Seiya fighting game. That would come about in 2005 with Saint Seiya: The Sanctuary for the PlayStation 2, a 2.5D fighter (with sidestepping) based on the Sanctuary Chapter, specifically the battles with the Gold Saints, and in 2007 a sequel would be released on the PS2 titled Saint Seiya: The Hades, which obviously was a similar fighter based on the Hades Chapter, specifically the first portion taking place in Sanctuary; seeing as the series is super popular in Europe these two games did see English release in PAL regions. This duo of games was essentially the basis for two full 3D arena fighters later developed by Dimps, 2013's Saint Seiya: Brave Soldiers & 2015's Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul, which both came out for the PS3 (as well as PS4 & PC for the latter) & opened up the roster to the entirety of the manga/anime's plot; also, since digital-only releases were now more of a thing, these two games did in fact see release in North America. However, in between these two pairs of fighting games (& taking aside the Saint Seiya Omega PSP fighting game & Saint Seiya Online, neither of which came from Dimps), there's one more Dimps-developed Seiya game to bring up... and it's the aforementioned "character action" game.
Released in Japan on November 23, 2011, Saint Seiya Senki/Record of Saint Seiya War was the first Saint Seiya video game released for an HD-compatible console, specifically the PlayStation 3. Unlike its prior two efforts, Dimps did NOT make a fighter & instead developed a stage-based 3D action game, with the game split up between stages where players took on large swaths of foes at once, a la the Musou Series, & stages where players took on a single powerful boss. That being said, though, this game was still only adapting the Sanctuary Chapter, specifically the battles with the Gold Saints; iconography & all, you know? Just as with the prior two games on the PS2, though, Saint Seiya's popularity in certain other regions did result in the game getting an English translation & release in Europe (& even South America, this time!) in 2012, now under the title Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle. In fact, Europe even received two different special edition releases of Sanctuary Battle, one that came with a Myth Coth figure & one that came with a life-size plastic replica of the Gold Sagittarius Cloth's headpiece(!), complete with a stand to display it. Compared to the two arena fighters that came before it, Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle was generally received a little bit more warmly than its precursors, though the reception was still mixed overall. However, I remember playing the game back in the day & enjoying it, and since this year is (mostly) about celebrating Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary in manga I think it's time I give Sanctuary Battle another go & see how it holds up, especially as in the ~13 years since its original release it remains a true outlier amongst Saint Seiya video game adaptations.
Saori Kido is the adopted granddaughter of Graude Foundation owner Mitsumasa Kido, but in reality she's actually the human reincarnation of the Greek goddess Athena. Shortly after she was born in Sanctuary, the Greek home base of Athena, the Grand Pope tried to kill baby Athena, only to be stopped by Sagittarius Aiolos, who managed to escape Sanctuary with the baby in tow but suffered a mortal blow by his fellow Gold Saint, Capricorn Shura. Mitsumasa happened to come across Aiolos during his final moments, having been given baby Athena & the Sagittarius Gold Cloth for safekeeping by a dying Aiolos. Now a teenager, Saori has decided to head over to Sanctuary to finally put a stop to the Grand Pope's rule & regain Sanctuary for herself. Unfortunately, after arriving Saori is shot with an arrow that will slowly make its way into her heart in 12 hours, and only the Grand Pope can remove it. Luckily, Saori didn't come alone, as her grandfather also made sure to train young children into becoming true Saints of Athena, & five of them have accompanied Saori to Sanctuary: Pegasus Seiya, Dragon Shiryu, Cygnus Hyoga, Andromeda Shun, & (in waiting) Phoenix Ikki. The only way to get to the Grand Pope & save Athena is for these five to make their way through the 12 Palaces of the Gold Saints, the strongest of all of the Saints.
As mentioned, Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle is what some would call a "character action" game, a style of game where combat tends to be more flashy & bombastic, in place of being more purely functional than anything else. In terms of controls, it's actually pretty easy to get used to. Movement is handled by the left analog stick, the face buttons handle attacking & jumping. There's your expected "Regular" & "Strong" Attacks, which can be chained together in different ways to create preset combos (& Strong Attacks can be charged first by holding the button), but beyond that there are also "Special Moves", which naturally are (mostly) character specific, and use up a portion of your current Cosmo Gauge, which recharges both naturally as well as through combat. By default Circle unleashes SM #1 & R1 is for SM #2, while SM #3 requires both buttons to be pressed together, though there are two control schemes that also map SM #3 to R3 as an option. As for the remaining shoulder buttons, L1 is for guarding & dodging, which differ on whether you tap or hold & if you're moving at the time of pressing. Meanwhile, L2 & R2 are for two things, 7th Sense & Cosmo Burst. Cosmo Burst lets you slowly use Cosmo so that you can run at super speed, good for emergency escaping, as well as hit a powered up Attack or Special Move. Holding R2 while standing still also lets you charge up Cosmo a little faster, while also absorbing any collectible orbs around you, which correspond to temporary stat boosts & the like. You can also press L1+R2 for a Guard Burst for when you're feeling swamped, but it uses up most of your Cosmo Gauge & doesn't give you any extra invincibility after it's used. Also of note are Big Bang Attacks, which are what happens when a Cosmo Burst-ed SM hits when you've earned a glowing energy ball next to your health & Cosmo gauges; they get unique cutscenes when hit & deliver massive damage. Finally, 7th Sense uses up a chunk of your Cosmo Gauge in exchange for the ability to slow down time around you, and if you can guard or dodge an attack at the moment you'd normally get hit you'll automatically activate 7th Sense for a few seconds at no cost to your Cosmo.
In terms of the general structure of the game, Sanctuary Battle has a rather straightforward one. The primary mode of play is "Story Mode", which is split up between two types of stages. The first is the trek from one temple to another, where you take on hordes of nameless Sanctuary grunts of various sizes (small, small with a long range weapon, normal, large, large with a giant weapon, etc.) until you reach the end & face off against a mini-boss, with a member of the Saint Seiya supporting cast taking up that spot in each stage, like Cassios, Ophiuchus Shaina, & Eagle Marin, plus characters who normally wouldn't even be there, namely Lizard Misty & the Black Saints; the game even made up three new Black Saints (Black Lizard, Black Eagle, & Black Ophiuchus). The other stage type is a one-on-one boss battle against a Gold Saint, which is made up of multiple "forms", in a sense, as depleting a boss' health bar will activate a cutscene that moves the fight to the next form, complete with a fully refilled health bar & some new attacks. Usually these boss fights have two or three forms, and when the final form is halfway defeated the boss will enter a final mode where they just go whole ham on you & you fight in an empty "Cosmo Field". Meanwhile, you only have one life for each stage but get continues that let you revive right where you left off at, even in the middle of a boss fight, which are limited to only three (five, if you play in the easiest two difficulties). After finishing a stage you earn both EXP, which over time give your current character level ups for their stats (Health, Cosmo, Attack, Defense, & Luck), & Cosmo Points/CP, which can be spent between stages to give a small increase to a specific stat or level up a Special Move so that it's more powerful; however, you can only level up if you have enough CP in advance for the next level. There are also Skills you can equip to give you special abilities (like Cosmo refill during 7th Sense, or a second air dash), but cost obscene amounts of CP to actually purchase. Using even one continue, though, removes a notable bonus to your score for that stage (20,000 points), & that does effect how much EXP & CP you earn, so it's usually best to aim for completion without continuing, unless you literally die right before hitting the final blow, or something. Rinse & repeat for all of the stages until you've finished the story, and that's the general gist of Sanctuary Battle, at its most basic level.
So how does the gameplay itself work? The answer to that does admittedly depend on the type of stage you're playing, but overall it actually works rather well. When it comes to the traversal stages where you take on hordes of foes the combat is overall solid, with your attacks all having a decent amount of spread to them, allowing you to hit multiple enemies at once, and even moves that technically target just a single foe (like Seiya's Pegasus Rolling Crash) still tend to emit a shockwave that can hit other enemies around you. The Regular & Strong Attacks have a decent amount of combos to work off of, since you can string up to six Regular Attacks on their own, you can also pop enemies into the air & execute air combos, the Special Moves are generally intended to be linked into from your combos (especially if you use a Cosmo Burst), and while grunts don't attack you all at once it's not rare at all to see you knocked out of a combo by someone that manages to sneak an attack in amongst the crowd; small guys who use fire are an especially annoying threat. The game also uses the Havok physics engine, so you can destroy parts of the environment around you, like giant pillars, and said debris can actually hurt & damage both you & your foes, so you can sometimes use that to your advantage when fighting giant groups of grunts. The main problem with these stages, unfortunately, come from one overall flaw: A lack of any camera control. Simply put, the camera is 100% fixed at all times during gameplay, facing forwards no matter what you do (outside of the occasional moment where the camera swings for a turn in the stage), and while it does pull back a decent amount when backtracking (in case you missed an enemy & the like), it definitely isn't an ideal way of handling things. Because of this, it is entirely possible to get hit by an enemy that you can't see if it's "behind" the fixed camera at the moment of attack, and while it's certainly not a common occurrence the fact that it CAN happen is disappointing. It's a bizarre omission, especially for late 2011 on the PS3, but I think it's easy to see why the camera is like this when you consider the other type of stage.
Which brings us to the one-on-one boss fights against the Gold Saints, and these stages are easily the highlight of the entire game. As mentioned before, these are multi-part battles where each new section adds more moves to the current boss' arsenal, you only have a single health bar (& limited continues) to defeat them within, and health pick ups are limited to only the small spirit orbs that drop from the environment you destroy, alongside orbs for temporary stat boosts; you do technically regain health naturally, but outside of certain story moments it's rather slow. Not just that, but these aren't bosses that you can simply go hog wild on, because these fights are true to the series, and that means that Gold Saints aren't foes you can just brute strength into submission. If you try to attack a boss randomly they will simply tank your moves with super armor, you'll deal only minuscule damage (which can certainly help if a health bar is near its end), and the boss will simply respond with one of their attacks, if not simply doing a Guard Burst of their own (& they seem to have infinite Cosmo to spend). Instead, you have to find openings & take advantage of that in order to hit them when their guard is down, and while you can certainly do that here & there on your own the game really intends on you honing your last-moment guards & dodges, activating free moments of 7th Sense in order to sneak in combos & special moves for bigger damage. Some bosses have easier to find openings, but can make up for that in other ways. Make no mistake, Sanctuary Battle's boss fights against the Gold Saints are purposefully meant to be challenging tests of reflexes, daring you to figure out the proper timing of their attacks so that you can activate a quick burst of 7th Sense & have just enough time to move in and attack. At the same time, some attacks (like Gemini Saga's Another Dimension) require specific solutions to get past, especially good usage of 7th Sense & Cosmo Burst, so there's also some meter management to consider. Is it worth using up some of your Cosmo Gauge for a Special Move, or should you save it in case you need to manually activate a 7th Sense?
Honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if Dimps was maybe inspired in part by FromSoftware's Demon's Souls for these boss fights, because there is a similar feeling of "avoiding attacks, while finding & creating openings to deliver damage" when fighting the Gold Saints; the first Dark Souls game only came out a couple of months before this game did in Japan. As for the fixed camera I mentioned before, there's really no problem to be found here. Sure, you still don't have any control over the camera during boss fights, but that's simply because the camera stays fixated on the boss like a hard lock-on, and even when they start teleporting around the place it only takes no more than a second for the camera to find its placement. It really gives the idea that Dimps originally designed Sanctuary Battle around the boss fights first, & maybe even the original plan was to exclusively be nothing but boss fights, but at some point it was decided that there should also be more traditional action stages between each boss fight. Since the camera was designed around being non-controllable for the boss fights Dimps seemingly decided to maintain that camera system, instead of creating one solely for the traditional stages (or, hell, redesign the boss fights entirely for a controllable camera). This game also supports two-players, namely co-op in Mission Mode, and that's really where the camera can become a problem (as there's no split-screen option), which just makes me think all the more so that Dimps did originally design Sanctuary Battle as a single-player experience where you fought tough boss fights first, and then the other elements came in later, likely via requests from Bandai Namco.
In the end, though, it's really the boss fights that make Sanctuary Battle such a joy to play. Each boss fight against a Gold Saint has something unique from each other, resulting in you needing to take each fight with its own strategy, to some extent. Taurus Aldebaran is a bit of an introduction to learning the timing for free 7th Sense activation by last-moment dodging, since his Great Horn attack comes out suddenly. Fighting Cancer Deathmask with Shiryu is like playing a fighting game where you're a close-range character fighting a wild zoner, so you need to find your way around Deathmask's traps & blockades, all while he's kicking energy balls at you as though he's a Captain Tsubasa character. Leo Aiolia requires you to take risks and come at him up close, baiting him to throw out a Lighting Plasma, and you either get away to snipe him with a long-range attack or you risk trying to catch him with Seiya's Rolling Crash. Virgo Shaka can be fought up close, but in reality it's best to fight him like you're playing a shoot-em-up, evading his flurries of projectiles so that you can hit him afar from behind. Aries Mu can only be fought in Mission Mode, but he's all about keeping yourself close to him so that he can't play keep away with his Crystal Wall, while trying to pummel you with his long-range specials. Scorpio Miro only has to hit you with his Scarlet Needle 14 times before being able to deliver an instant kill on the 15th & final one, Antares, and the timing to properly dodge these blows is immensely tight (not to mention Miro can literally just do it suddenly while running, and from any distance) so you'll more than likely manually activate 7th Sense to avoid it, which uses up Cosmo... and that's not even including the multiple slow moving Restriction waves he can throw out in succession, literally restricting where you can move at points. And then there's Capricorn Shura (...sigh), whose Excalibur slashes not only have long range & can come out rather quickly, but can also be thrown out horizontally, diagonally, & vertically, with the vertical slashes even leaving behind a flaming trail that can hurt you & also create literal barriers to prevent you from reliably hitting him. Pisces Aphrodite is another annoying one, too, as his Royal Demon Rose hits repeatedly without your character reacting to it, so it can just tear through a health meter in no time. Finally, Sagittarius Aiolos (also only in Mission Mode) is, understandably, a demigod whose guard is almost never down, even while attacking, and his Atomic Thunderbolt can last for a good few seconds.
As for the previously mentioned Mission Mode, it tasks you to complete a variety of multi-stage missions with various themes, like "Defeat Each of the Bronze Saints without their Cloths" (i.e. reduced defense but increased attack), "Get Through a Specific Stretch of Sanctuary" (both trek stages & boss stages), "Defeat a Themed Collection of Bosses", etc., and this is the only way to actually fight characters like Mu & Aiolos; you also are allowed to choose from whatever character you've unlocked. There's actually a surprisingly hefty amount of single-player missions (26 & even two Survival Mode stages), but there are also five "Tag Missions", which allow either a single player to team up with an AI partner or have two players work together for completion, and there's even a bonus mechanic where a player can sacrifice part of their life in order to revive a downed partner during battle, which is cool. However, make no mistake, Mission Mode is more or less designed to be played after having played through Story Mode & leveling up various characters, because while some of the early missions can be dealt with fine enough (but are essentially just like Story Mode, only without cutscenes & simply one-phase bosses), the later ones hold nothing back & require some powering up in order to make even a dent in. The missions are also categorized between offline & online, though the latter is solely for online leaderboards, so don't expect any sort of proper online play, unfortunately.
And, most surprising of all... this STILL isn't the end of the modes! After completing Story Mode you then unlock "Aiolos Saga", which has you play as Aiolos as he whisks away baby Athena from Sanctuary after her attempted assassination; it's an immensely short campaign at only three normal stages & three bosses. After beating that you then unlock more Story Mode options (ones for Aiolia, Shaina, Marin, & Ikki), with there being a total of six campaigns! Sure, everything outside of the "Sanctuary Saga" is super short (everything after Aiolos is no more than two stages, tops), but it's cool to see the player get some bonus content. There's also a Gallery where you can unlock & view character models, cutscenes (both for story & Big Bang Attacks), & even a rather extensive Myth Cloth photo catalog; I honestly think it features literally every Myth Cloth Bandai ever released up to that point.
Visually the game actually looks rather good, with characters being adapted from the Saint Seiya anime extremely well, and all of the special attacks in particular were transitioned over more or less perfectly into 3D space; the Big Bang Attack cutscenes, in particular, look great. For example, seeing Gemini Saga's Galaxian Explosion, which literally just makes planets & asteroids fall onto the battlefield, is truly a thing to behold. However, Dimps also pushes the PS3 a little too much at points, namely when there's a lot of wild action happening at once, complete with the Havok physics engine needing to calculate a lot of simultaneous environmental destruction. To be fair, the frame rate generally is extremely solid, & I believe does aim for 60 fps, but it's impossible to miss the rare moment when things get a little too hectic for the PS3 to keep up without dropping the frame rate; I seriously managed to drop it so low that I thought the game crashed for a moment, but that was an extreme outlier. The Japanese-only voice cast here is the standard Saint Seiya cast that's generally been used since Hades Inferno in 2005, so it features the likes of Masakazu Morita (Seiya), Takahiro Sakurai (Shiryu), Katsuyuki Konishi (Ikki), Takumi Yamazaki (Mu), Ryotaro Okiayu (Saga), etc., and by late 2011 they had all become more than acclimated to their roles, so the voice work here is great & very fitting for the series.
Meanwhile, the music here was done by Yoshitaka Hirota, best known for composing the scores to games like Faselei!, the Shadow Hearts trilogy (though he was only one of many composers for those games), & the 2008 remake of Klonoa for the Wii; prior to all that he was a part of Square's sound design team from 1994 to 1999, arguably the studio's most iconic era. While music during certain cutscenes does sound to be new arrangements of some of the late Seiji Yokoyama's iconic Seiya TV score (Aiolos' theme is 100% that, to be sure), the actual stages & boss fights feature wholly original songs by Hirota, and they're just outstanding. It's (understandably) much more "game-y" than what people would normally expect from Saint Seiya, but that also means that the various "themes" for the Gold Saints sound very much like proper anthems for each of them; my personal favorites would include Aiolia's, Shura's, Camus', & Aphrodite's themes. The game also includes the anime's iconic first OP theme, "Pegasus Fantasy" by Make-Up, as its own OP theme (though with completely original CG footage) & the song even plays for the final boss fight of "Sanctuary Saga" in Story Mode; however, for whatever reason, it's only the OP version, not the full version, so it does get repetitive. While first ED theme "Eien Blue" by Make-Up isn't used in its traditional way here, an instrumental arrangement by Hirota does get used for the Aiolos vs. Shura fight in the "Aiolos Saga", which is still cool to hear. Without a doubt, Yoshitaka Hirota did Saint Seiya proper justice with this game's soundtrack.
In terms of the notable parts of the dev team at Dimps, Sanctuary Battle's overall game design was headed up by Hirotoshi Shiozaki, who had previously lead design for Street Fighter IV & would later help design Dragon Ball: Xenoverse. Meanwhile, the lead character modeler was Shohei Imamura (who also worked on SFIV), and his team did a rather excellent job at taking Shingo Araki & Michi Himeno's iconic interpretation of Masami Kurumada's characters for the anime & converting them into polygonal 3D models. While there is no cel shading to be found here the characters still have a touch of shading to them that feels right for a game based on an anime. Also, interestingly enough, a "Studio Trigger, Inc." is credited as a "Supporting Corporation", and if that's indeed the anime studio then that would make Sanctuary Battle its very first credit, as Trigger had only been officially founded three months prior to the game's original Japanese release, and the game released only one month after the "Trigger" name was publicly revealed.
As stated as the start of this review, Saint Seiya video games have tended to become pigeonholed into a scant few genres, and while that's understandable due to the series' action-heavy focus it also does make one a little tired of the same thing over & over between releases. I mean, I did really like Brave Soldiers & Soldiers' Soul when they came out, but arena fighters have often been the de facto video game genre for action manga over the past decade or so. That's what makes Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle so unique, in comparison, because what Dimps made here was a game that, while technically being an improvement on the two PS2 games it had developed before, really does feel like the kind of game you wish you saw more of for Saint Seiya. The series is at its best when it's about Seiya & his friends facing off against insurmountable odds, especially foes who come off like truly inescapable & undefeatable monoliths of power, and Sanctuary Battle's boss fights against the Gold Saints truly do live up to that. Sure, there can be a little cheese to be learned for dealing with some of them (the final fights against Saga are admittedly not that tough, especially after dealing with Shura & Aphrodite), but this game absolutely makes all of them feel like the strongest of Athena's armored warriors, and that's something that simply can't be replicated in a traditional fighting game. Make no mistake, Dimps didn't care one bit about "balancing" these characters at all (Phoenix Ikki is ridiculously overpowered from the start, and becomes capable of beating bosses instantly in Mission Mode very quickly), but that's what makes defeating the bosses feel so rewarding... especially since now YOU get to play as them in Mission Mode; rain planets & asteroids down on fools as Saga to your heart's content!
Sure, the traditional stages can get a bit repetitive (which is kind of inherent to brawlers, admittedly) & the lack of any camera control there isn't ideal, but I still wouldn't call them "bad"; they're just not quite as good as the boss fights. Honestly, though, I would love to have seen Dimps continue with this format for future Saint Seiya games, as I'd gladly take a "Poseidon Battle" & "Hades Battle" (or even an "Asgard Battle"), and I seriously do feel that Sanctuary Battle should be given the HD remaster treatment today. Aside from slightly cleaner visuals, maybe adding in proper camera control for the traditional stages, & (hopefully) the removal of the rare frame rate drops, the game also had a bunch of DLC which looks to have become delisted over the years. This included bonus missions & even entire playable characters, namely Libra Dohko, Unicorn Jabu, Hydra Ichi, Wyvern Rhadamanthys, Siren Sorrento, & Odin Robe Seiya, as well as new outfits for the main Bronzes, like their later "New Cloths" & the Power of Gold. Since this game only ever saw release in specific regions that meant that players from regions that had to import (like the US & Canada) were essentially locked out of that DLC, barring going through the trouble of making foreign PSN accounts to match the region of the game they bought & needing to buy foreign gift cards in order make the purchases (i.e. deal with fluctuating exchange rates).
In all honesty, Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle may very well remain the absolute best Saint Seiya video game ever made, and I wish more people could experience it today without having to dig out a PS3 or rely on emulation, because it truly remains an absolute blast to play, flaws & all, even 13 years later.
Game © Masami Kurumada/Shueisha/Toei Animation © 2011 Bandai Namco
I actually got this about ten years ago and enjoyed it quite a bit. Still play it from time to time. Good job on the review.
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