Eighting, developer of Zatch Bell! Mamodo Battles, is also responsible for Naruto Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3, which is more or less one of the best games out on the GameCube right now. And, although Zatch Bell looks and controls just wonderfully (like Naruto 3), it falls short, pretty much due to character balance alone.

Mamodos are the stars of the show. They come from the Mamodo world, and need to find human partners to help them cast magic and battle for the position of king of all Mamodos. That's why there are usually four characters on screen, despite being a two-player game; the player controls a Mamodo, and the human partner follows them around. Playing head to head, Mamodos can do a chain attack along the lines of B-B-B-B, a partner attack with forward + B, a 'Flying Spell' attack with up + B, and various magic attacks with any direction + A. X is guard, and Y is for counter-attacks. Also, 'L' charges and launches the Ultimate Spell. The controls are configurable, which is quite nice since I'd wager that most people would prefer to have 'R' as guard.

There are two meters besides the life bar: the Partner meter and Devotion meter. The Partner meter is the juice needed to keep up magic spells, and the Devotion meter, when full, allows use of the Ultimate Spell. The Ultimate Spell takes some time to activate, but does massive damage and cannot be blocked (the damage can be reduced with a well timed guard, though). If the opponent starts his Ultimate Spell while the other is charging, spells collide in a Dragon Ball Z-ish button-mashing frenzy; whoever can hammer 'A' the fastest gets his spell through.

Chain attacks vary in usefulness by character, and this is where the huge imbalances come into play. A character like Zatch has a chain that can be blocked midway through. Because it's easy to block or Just Guard (explained below), that means Zatch can be punished just for trying at all, and thus he eats some big damage. Meanwhile, a character like Wonrei can guarantee a big chain and infinite juggle combo (until the opponent counters out of it) off of an initial jab. Brago can do similarly overpowered stuff like guarantee an Ultimate Spell or other attack off of his (extremely fast and unblockable) stun move. Ick.

There's a Develop Mode for characters, but it's really about adding stats and numbers to the entirely wrong game genre. Unlock points are used to boost the striking, spell power, or HP stats for a single character; it's not like any new moves or anything are added. It's been a bit of a terrible trend in the last few years to add stats and cards and things to games that just don't need them. Yeah, there are cards in this game, too. Completing whole galleries unlocks characters, or so GameFAQs says. Each gallery has dozens of cards, so it takes quite a while. Not to mention the character that unlocks after 300 matches in Time Attack... however, there's a password mode, so faster ways to unlock goodies may appear in time as passwords find their way onto the internet.

Zatch Bell has some good things going for it, though. The Just Guard feature doesn't seem to be a bad idea at all (and in fact it's the only defense against otherwise stagger-inducing attacks). It works similarly to a guard impact in Soul Calibur II; by blocking at the perfect instant, it parries the move and puts the opponent in a stagger. It doesn't level the field between all of the characters, but it's a step in the right direction. The characters look great (the game is incredibly colorful in general) and the story mode is pretty nice. In fact, there are six stories, each with a different character. Between fights, characters sass each other with all the wonderful voice acting and goofy writing of English-dubbed Saturday-morning anime. Whatever, I like that. Destinations are selectable, but it still ends up being pretty linear: "No one here!" "Let's go somewhere else!"

Story mode is fun for a while, two-player Versus mode is fun for about half an hour, and buying cards and stats makes me die a little bit on the inside. If the characters were anywhere close to balanced, or if it were four-player or had some other awesome redeeming quality, I could recommend Zatch Bell, but the value is just not there.

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