Shaman King: Legacy of the Spirits

Shaman King: Legacy of the Spirits, Soaring Hawk and Shaman King: Legacy of the Spirits, Sprinting Wolf are role-playing video games based on the Shaman King manga and anime series. The games were released for the Game Boy Advance by Konami on February 8, 2005. Both Soaring Hawk and Sprinting Wolf feature the same story, gameplay, characters and locations. The difference is that each has its own set of spirits so to recruit all spirits the player has to trade them via Game Link Cable between the games.

Gameplay
Shaman King: Legacy of the Spirits is a role-playing video game—the first Shaman King game on the genre. The player controls Yoh Asakura, a young shaman who has the ability to communicate with spirits and along with the samurai spirit Amidamaru will battle other shamans to become the Shaman King. As the game progresses Yoh is sent to different areas of a world map where the player has to fulfill tasks for the inhabitants—that vary from going to some place, talking to other people or collecting items. After the tasks are complete, a new area is unlocked in the world map. As the player walks through the scenario to perform the tasks, a random battle with a spirit or another shaman can happen. In this case, the player can flee the battle if it proves difficult and if it causes too much damage there is a save point that restore all health.

The player can capture the spirits by defeating them in battle or by throwing an item known as mortuary tablet after weakening them. The player uses its spirits to fight on one-on-one turn-based battles that last until a shaman defeats all the opponent's spirits. While the player is allowed to store twenty of these captured spirits with him, only a roster of six spirits is allowed per battle. During a turn, the player can choose to attack, to change the active spirit with another from the roster, or to use an item from the inventory—that can restore health or cure status effect, like sleep or poison, gained in battle. The player aims to reduce the opponent spirit's healths to zero, and for such each spirit has a maximum of six attacks that can be used only 20–30 times per battle, with some special attacks limited to five times. Also, there are different types of attacks associated with elementary properties that can be more or less effective depending on the opponent spirit's type.

After winning a battle, Yoh and the spirits gain experience points, and yen is collected. Earning experience, the spirits level up, increasing their attack power, health, and every five levels they learn new attacks. When Yoh levels up, he gains the ability to command high-leved spirits and to merge them to create new ones. Every ten levels, Yoh can merge more powerful types of spirits, and some of them cannot be acquired otherwise. To acquire all the 177 collectible spirits the player has to merge and beat them, but also to trade spirits between the Soaring Hawk and Sprinting Wolf versions through Game Link Cable.

Reception
All reviewers compared Shaman King: Legacy of the Spirits's gameplay to that of Pokémon series;   some of them unfavorably. Frank Provo of GameSpot said, "It isn't as comprehensive or glamorous as any of Nintendo's Pokémon games". Justin Leeper of G4 TV, however, said that in comparison to other Pokémon clones it brings new elements that makes it better than most GBA RPGs and help separate it from the other titles like Dragon Warrior Monsters or Robopon. <!-- "The Pokemon-esque combat is still as fun as always, especially with the quirky spirit types you find (movie critic, karaoke singer, etc.)"

"A neat variation is the ability to combine two spirits to get a new one"

"pleasing to the eye"

"The story and characters are decently fleshed out, even if preparing for a monumental fighting tournament is old hat. ... the dialogue between him and his overbearing fiancée is entertaining. Principle enemies have personality"

Leeper's main critics were that battles occurred with too much frequency and that the strikes missed the opponents too much.

"horrible music, an average battle system, a short run to the end, and no replayability,"

"What makes the battle system lopsided is one spirit picked up early in the game's plot far outstrips everything else in power, except against one specific type of enemy which only shows up near the very end of the game. Additional problems with the battle system include a disgustingly high chance to miss for both the enemy and the allied spirit. To add insult to injury, the encounter rate is completely batty. In some cases Yoh can travel large areas without meeting a single foe; yet the next time he goes through, he could encounter enemies as often as every step. These random encounters are rarely, if ever, necessary to actually level up any spirits, and so this flaky encounter rate is a severe annoyance."

"except these attacks all have a finite amount of uses (usually 20-30, except very special attacks which are 5) which when attached with the aforementioned huge miss rate, means constant returning to the one save spot in the game to rest and recharge the spirits' powers."

The music is not "sweet" and the sound effects do not fit it well.

"While the anime stills of the characters are neatly done, little else about the game stands out at all, especially when the characters are moving during directed scenes, there's odd little snafus. These include sluggishness and characters zigzagging crazily to get down stairs."

"it is laughably easy"

"incomplete plot ... horrendous gaps and unfinished business"

"the idea of spirits, the battle system, a tournament-style play all have been seen in many games both recently and stretching back a number of years. While they are put together differently in Legacy, the end result does not show much actual unique content."

"One of the well-done parts of the game, so few and far between, is the localizatation. The dialogue is written in a humorous fashion, which matches well to overall feeling of the game, mostly given by Yoh's persona. The characters each have distinct personalities (even if some are two dimensional). Character evolutions, while played out quickly, do follow logical order. Not all characters are exactly endearing though, even some of the good guys. Aside from good dialogue, there's little else to say positively."

"Shaman King: Legacy of the Spirits doesn't go out of its way to keep you occupied. There are a few optional side quests, but only a few. Even if you make sure to complete them all, the entire game can be completed in less than 15 hours. The developers didn't bother to build any minigames or gadgets into the game to draw out the overall length of the quest. It's also particularly disappointing that the link cable mode is limited to trading and doesn't let you battle your friends, which is something that games of this type traditionally do allow."

"So too, Shaman King doesn't flex the graphical or audio capabilities of the GBA to the same extent that games like Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, or DemiKids have. The backgrounds are flat and bland, and they don't have any animated features. The characters are the same sort of big-headed 2D sprites that we've been seeing in 16-bit role-playing games for more than a decade now. The portraits used to portray the spirits in the battle view are large, colorful, and highly detailed, but they don't move whatsoever. In fact, the same thing happens no matter what attack is used--the screen flashes and the portrait shakes for a second. The accompanying sound effects are equally plain, mainly a few thuds and pops here and there, but the music should at least please anyone who likes traditional Asian instruments mixed in with peppy rock and techno riffs."

"Since it doesn't deliver the same degree of variety or glitz that other similar games have, it isn't recommended for people who are unfamiliar with the TV show or who have already played the best the genre has to offer, namely Pokémon."

"A tighter focus on the elemental system would have added another facet to battles that are often decided by which spirit has the more hit points."

"There are a few ways to start a spirit duel in Shaman King. The most common encounters are random battles with spirits that populate the various locations on the map screen. Many gamers find random battles to be frustrating or annoying and Shaman King does little to side step this issue. The random occurrence of a battle is so frequent that you may encounter four or five angry spirits in the time it takes you to walk across the GBA screen" I need to read the rest of IGN article -->