E3 2011: Guardian Heroes Preview (XBLA)

Posted by Mark Salmela on 06.12.2011

Hands on: A Treasure Classic from the Sega Saturn makes its way to Xbox Live Arcade. 411’s Mark Salmela goes hands-on with this old-school classic.

Treasure is known for making a lot of cult classic games. Treasure is the studio behind games such as Ikaruga, Gunstar Heroes, Bangai-O, Sin and Punishment, and Radiant Silvergun. In my opinion one of Treasure's best games was a beat-em-up on the Sega Saturn known as Guardian Heroes. Guardian Heroes did see a sequel on the Gameboy Advance but the original has never been seen on any other console, until now with the release of Guardian Heroes on Xbox Live Arcade.



The best game I can compare Guardian Heroes to is Castle Crashers, also for XBLA. In Guardian Heroes you'll choose one of several characters and go around fighting a variety of enemies while leveling up your character using an RPG style stat system. In addition to hand-to-hand combat there's also magic attacks, with a magic bar determining how much and how often you can use attacks, with different attacks using different amounts of your magic bar. As you defeat enemies you level up your character and at the end of each level you can level up various stats such as your health, your strength for melee combat, and your magic abilities. Each character specializes in certain types of combat but you're free to level them up any way you want.

Guardian Heroes has a very deep story, and in something that was very rare for the 1990's the game had a branching paths. As the story progresses you'll have several opportunities to choose which dialogue your character says, with each option having a different outcome on what happens with the story. The levels you play, enemies you fight, and even the endings you get vary wildly depending on what options you choose. Overall there's somewhere around 30 different levels in Guardian Heroes, but you'll only play around 10 of them on a given playthrough, with the others accessible by choosing different combinations of dialogue.



In addition to your character you'll often have AI teammates, including for most of the game the Guardian Hero, who will definitely come in handy. Without getting into spoilers the story revolves around the Guardian Hero and his powers. You can control how the Guardian Hero fights, whether you want him to be aggressive, passive, or somewhere in-between. In Guardian Heroes you can do local co-op or online co-op, as well as an arena style multiplayer battle for up to 12 people online.

Guardian Heroes is being given the HD treatment for the XBLA release with brand new graphics developed by the original team over at Treasure. I do have to say that the new HD graphics are kind of bland and muddy, and I'm not a fan. Thankfully you can choose to play the game in its original cartoon sprites, which while not crisp I personally think look better and gives a better old school feel. Overall Guardian Heroes was one of the Sega Saturn's best games and I couldn't be happier it's coming to Xbox Live Arcade. Look for Guardian Heroes sometime late this summer or early fall.