Reviewed: August 20, 2005
Reviewed by: Roger Cox

Publisher
Konami

Developer
Konami

Released: August 2, 2005
Genre: Action / Adventure
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone

8
8
8
7
8.0

Supported Features:

Anime Story
Asakura Yoh is a shaman, a person who communicates with ghosts. He enters the Shaman Fight, for whoever wins the tournament gets to commune with the Great Spirit, God . . . that and his fiancé Anna wants to be the wife of the Shaman King. Helping him are his friends Manta, Horo Horo, Ryu, and his samurai ghost partner, Amidamaru.

The Shaman Fight only occurs once every 500 years, and whoever wins becomes the Shaman King and can use the most powerful spirits ever. Asakura Yoh comes to Tokyo to train and become the Shaman King. Accompanied by many friends, he defeats many enemies and gains even more friends along and the way.

Yoh is a young shaman, one who can see and communicate with spirits. Shamans also have another power, the ability to unify with spirits and use the spirit's fighting skills. Yoh is training to become the Shaman King, the strongest among all Shamans. The title is only won by winning the Grand Tournament that takes place every 500 years. Helping him are his best friend Morty, a short kid who can also see ghosts, Amidamaru, an old samurai and his spirit partner, and his fiancé Ana, a spirit medium and his trainer. However, another Shaman family is trying to keep Yoh out of the tournament. Along the way he meets a many other misfit ghosts and wannabe Shamans.

While that is the main story of the series, the second installment of Shaman Kings for the GBA has a more direct story line.

Game Story
“In this exciting, action-packed adventure, players continue in their quest to become the next Shaman King. Returning to the role of Yoh Asakura, players must traverse multiple stages filled with perils, enemies, and traps in order to stop a diabolical shaman from resurrecting the evil "Guardian of Demons." To assist Yoh in his quest, players can collect the spirits of vanquished opponents and use these spirits to help him in battle. As players progress they build their skills and unlock special moves, combo systems, and abilities. Additionally, they can upgrade their spirits and use the enhanced spirit system to negotiate treacherous levels filled with traps.”

Features:

• Collect the spirits of vanquished opponents and tactically use these spirits in battle
• Summon old and new Guardian Ghosts in the battle to defeat your foes
• Strategically use Spirit Unity and Spirit Control as you summon offensive and defensive moves
• Upgrade your spirits and use the enhanced spirit system to negotiate treacherous levels filled with traps
• Special items and unlock able moves to challenge players of all skill levels

Like all of the other Shaman King games in the past you control the main character. This time around your goal is to track down and confront Zeke and stop him. You travel from place to place on a world map moving from point to point every two or three load times. Basically you move back and forth between the map and the stages fighting hordes of different enemies along the way. You also obtain many guardian ghosts and spirit upgrades during your adventure.

Guardian Ghosts are summoned using a deck feature in the game. You can set the decks up on the menu screen and then summon them by pressing the button you assigned them to. Doing this uses up your energy bar, also known as the Furyoku Gauge. This energy bar is also used up when you perform a special move, known as Spirit Control.

These attacks are powerful and are often used against difficult enemies/bosses. Most guardian ghosts are used for other special abilities (example: pushing a box). Between each stage you can save or visit the stop to sell and buy items. As for saving, it is extremely fast and instantaneous.

As far as controls are concerned, Konami really used the limited buttons in their favor by implementing the deck feature for spirit/ghost control. You won’t find anything wrong with the controls other than learning to use the deck feature, which is necessary to beat the game.

However, the graphics aren’t cutting edge or 3D. They aren’t anything gamers haven’t seen before, but they are done really well in a tried and true way. A lot of GBA games don’t even come close to being decent, so it came as a nice surprise to play a great looking game on my Gameboy.

There are a wide variety of different noises and sound effects. On top of that, the voice acting (although limited) is top notch, straight from the TV show. Shaman King 2 keeps the sounds fresh and never annoying, as is the case with most Gameboy games.

The overall game takes no more than 4 hours to beat, but I found myself going back and fighting bosses over and over because it was fun. You can re-fight any boss in the game that you have already destroyed anytime you wish. It’s a nice feature that I wish more games had. The main value here is that this is an easy to load, quick to play and save game that offers up plenty of fun action gameplay.