Shaman King: Master of Spirits Review

Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t want to show off Super Mario Sunshine until it was near complete for fear other developers would steal the water pack idea. Nobody did. That’s surprising, because it seems every game “inspired by” a movie or cartoon does nothing but “borrows” from already established game franchises. Shaman King, then, is nothing more than an anime-based hybrid of Sabre Wulf, Castlevania, and Legend of Zelda. Those games are much better in their respective genres than Shaman King is in trying to make them a collaboration, but you should play this one anyway.

Most GBA spin-off games succumb to the platformer genre, and this is where Shaman King safely enters. It is more familiar to Castlevania than it is Super Mario, however, in theme and in play. Levels are multi-layered with alternate paths full of grim enemies such as bats, skeletons, and other fantasy characters. Your life meter isn’t easily replenished, either, forcing you to be a bit more careful about how you play. The hero is limited to one basic attack, but, like the creature roster in Sabre Wulf, he, too, can find and equip “spirits.” The player has four decks, where each deck has a certain amount of slots which spirits can be assigned to. Each spirit grants you a special attack, maneuver, or status element boost (at the expense of magic points). You can only use one deck at a time, though, so you’ll have to flip through them while you play. All this spirit juggling is a little overwhelming in the beginning, but once you get used to the setup, it’s actually a fun way to broaden the game. Secret spirit combinations even unlock more lethal attacks, so it’s fun to mix and match and see what happens.

Shaman King plays out over a world map which you directly travel across. When you’re on the map screen, you can access the “store” at any time. Here, you can buy food items to restore health with the money you [hopefully] found in the dungeons. Each dot on the map represents a level (no way!), and many dots branch into other areas which can only be accessed when certain skills have been obtained. This frees the game from being entirely linear and makes it feel like a Legend of Zelda adventure. It also creates one of Shaman King’s biggest problems. This isn’t like the world maps in Super Mario World where you can go wherever you want and press B to enter a level. In Shaman King, if you need to go back to a level on the other side of the map, you have to actually backtrack through a series of levels to get there. In a 3D adventure game, backtracking makes the overworld feel more realistic. This doesn’t work in 2D, because you are limited to what you can do. It especially doesn’t work for Shaman King, because the map doesn’t label anything. The backtracking is eventually fixed about 3/4 the way into the game with a spirit that lets you warp to the end of a level you have already beaten, but it doesn’t excuse the poorly designed map in the first place.

The health meter is also a hassle. You can collect special stones which, like Link’s heart pieces, eventually increase your max HP, but it’s very difficult to keep the meter full. There are no “free” hearts lying around for you to pick up. You have to rely on your inventory of food. Let’s say you’re not very good at this game and find yourself needing to buy a lot of food. Money is hard to find, however, therefore limiting and eventually cutting off your food supply. This is a worst case scenario, though. While it’s a little stressful trying to keep a good stock of food, one could argue this makes the game more challenging. You decide.

I was somewhat disappointed with what I couldn’t do in Shaman King. You can only swing your sword forward. That’s it! What happened to up and down strokes? Those come in handy, you know. These are the most basic and standard controls you can get. And you know what? That’s okay. The spirits compensate for the game’s systematic simplicity. Attack and Technique spirits can be assigned to the L and R buttons, and the more spirits you have, the more you can do. It all works out in the end.

By now, even bad GBA games are starting to look fairly good. Shaman King is quite simple visually. The flat, clean paint job highlights the anime/manga (whichever it is) source material. All animation looks rather good, too, but it just doesn’t fit. While the main character’s walk cycle is fluid, it doesn’t look like he’s really walking on anything. Technicalities aside, this is a fairly smooth go.

I usually play my GBA with the volume off, because few GBA games are worth listening to. Shaman King, on the other hand, totally surprised me. Its music is superb (as far as Game Boy music goes). The eerie adventure overtone sounds better than higher-valued games like Mario vs. Donkey Kong and Metroid Fusion. Yeah, that says a lot. It could have been an accident, however, because the sound effects are low key in comparison. The sample played when the hero jumps/lands reminds me more of that obnoxious pop in a clipped mp3 than it does footsteps. Overall, though, Shaman King sounds great. Plug in those headphones.

When I finished this game, my game timer said five hours, but that doesn’t take into account all the times I had to restart (and there were many). At the absolute most, I can see someone playing this for ten hours. That’s pushing it, though, because it’s really not a very long game. If you have a hankering to find all the goodies, you could certainly go back through all the levels and use newer abilities to discover new secrets. I doubt it would be very much fun to play through the whole game again, however, since the majority of its fun comes later when the cool spirits are finally available.

Final Comments

Shaman King is fairly straightforward and derivative, but it actually works more than it doesn’t under those conditions. The spirit assigning is actually fun and fairly deep, but the refreshing adventure feel is undermined by a ridiculously sloppy map setup. Shaman King is still a surprise hit, and those of you who are starting to run out of Game Boy Advance games to play should go ahead and pick it up.