Battle Houshin is an import GameCube title. Special thanks to Lan-Kwei for furnishing us with this product!

It’s customary this time of year for Nintendophiles everywhere to freak out about the smallest speculation, or BS rumor. Whether it’s the 16 different Zelda titles to appear on GameCube, or some GameCube developer is now developing games for your toaster…you name it. It happens every single year. Pre-E3 hysteria sets in and the general uninformed public goes wacko. For a site Director like myself that’s trying to plan E3 and do 84853766475 other things, it gets a little irritating. It’s actually to the point where I’ve had serious violent thoughts. Without resorting to actual physical violence, I needed a cure. Enter Koei’s Battle Houshin.

First thing I have to note is that there is a pile of Japanese in this game. I would say Battle Houshin is 98% Japanese. Fortunately after a little trial and error, it was pretty easy to figure out the menus. There seems to be a story mode, a challenge (or survival) mode, and the option to link to the related GBA game, Magical Houshin. I could be wrong, but that’s what I’ve deciphered on my own so far.

The story mode is the meat of the game. You have 4 characters to choose from, all with different attributes. Some are better fighters, some have stronger magic abilities, others are faster in battle. Select your character, and the adventure begins. Battle Houshin could have some deep evolving story dealing with the characters of the anime Houshin Engi, but I don’t have a clue what’s going on due to the language barrier. I don’t know if there’s a princess to save, or whether the world is coming to an end. What I do know is that there’s a lot of butt kicking to be done.

There are elements of Battle Houshin that are very reminiscent of Sin and Punishment’s massive amount of enemies and bosses. Take Sin and Punishment off rails, and replace the shooting with physical fighting. Yet, it goes much deeper than that. Battle Houshin is a combination of a few different genres: action, fighter, platformer, RPG, and even shooter. Battle Houshin has parts of Zelda’s sword fighting, Maximo’s platformer setup and simple fighting, and then add a dash of FFVII’s magic setup. There’s even some simple puzzle/maze type things thrown in the mix. Nothing overly difficult, but Battle Houshin will always keep you on your toes. It might sound complicated, but it’s very simple, and a wonderful experience.

The controls are easy, and intuitive. A – Attack, B – jump, X + Y control magic attacks, R – roll, L – rotates camera quickly, C-stick controls the camera.

The word “battle” is in the games title for a reason. There’s a lot of fighting in Battle Houshin to say the least. You enter a level with your team, and you will be faced with various baddies that you need to take out. Your teammates aren’t really that powerful, and don’t really do that much damage. I usually let them distract bigger or more difficult enemies while I come up from behind to lay havoc. Unfortunately I don’t think Battle Houshin can be played cooperatively, which is a shame. This game would be a blast split screen.

You take on the enemies with physical and magical forces. Physical attacks are accomplished by pressing the attack button and moving your analog stick. Move forward, and you’ll slam into your enemy. If you repeatedly tap the attack button, you’ll keep swinging your weapon to attack. You can also jump, then swing, then rotate the control stick pull a 360 strike when surrounded. Very Zelda-esque. When attacking you can build hit combos. This refreshes you magic bar. You can rack up hit combos by repeatedly bashing one enemy, or mowing down multiple enemies at the same time. Sure, you can lock up enemies in the wall and hit them 40 more times than you need to, but hey…it’s really fun.

The magic system isn’t as deep as a full-fledged RPG, but it suits Battle Houshin. Before you begin a level, you are given the option to equip certain Poopai, which act a lot like Djinn in Golden Sun. There are 4 different Poopai, one corresponding to each of the four elements, air, fire, water, thunder/lightning. By combining these, you can strengthen your health, and enable different magic attacks. It becomes very helpful to be able to alter your abilities depending which level you are in. When engaging enemies, often times you’ll be surrounded, and be pelted my projectile objects like arrows, fireballs, or rocks. This is where magic can really do some damage. Depending on which Poopai you have enabled, you can use lightning, air, fire and other attacks to clear the way. I’ve been surrounded by 30 soldiers and wolves, while being attacked by a huge boss and mowed down everyone with in seconds by combining a few magic and physical attacks. You can use projectile magic attacks to throw tornados, fireballs, and lightning. You can also charge up your weapon, and plow through enemies that have surrounded you. By alternating between physical and magic attacks you can sometimes pull off 60-100 hit combos. When you’re going up against 40 enemies and two or three bosses at the same time, you’ll need to do this to survive.

Visually Battle Houshin is above average. The cut scenes are fantastic. Even though it’s FMV, it’s very well done, regardless of whether I can understand it or not. For the type of game Battle Houshin is, I’m impressed with the fluid frame rate, and massive level design. Due to the fact that there’s going to be 30-50 people duking it out at the same time, characters and environments aren’t extremely detailed. Yet, it’s nothing to scoff at either. The levels are huge, and there’s just so much going on it makes sense that there isn’t a very high polygon count per character or enemy. Not to say the visuals disappoint, because they really don’t.

Koei’s audio team did do a great job with the soundtrack. The melodies are similar to those of an action-RPG; very epic and moving. The tracks do loop after a while, but go well with the style and gameplay of Battle Houshin. The characters scream a lot, and talk to and taunt the enemies. Due to the language barrier, I can’t really understand what’s going on, yet it sounds cool. The rest of the in-game sound effects are top notch.

Battle Houshin is an excellent import game, and fortunately there are rumblings of this game coming to the states this fall (hopefully with its GBA counterpart). Even though there are gobs of Japanese, it’s not too difficult to figure out what to do. I’m totally sucked into Battle Houshin, and am having a blast mowing down countless enemies and bosses. I am rather surprised and disappointed this import title hasn’t made more of a splash here in the States. If you’re in need of something a little different, and don’t mind the Japanese, by all means, give Battle Houshin a try.