Game:

Digimon Battle Spirit (2001)

Duration: 14:55

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Here is an interesting game...and from Bandai no less. Okay, perhaps it's wrong to assume that Bandai's games aren't interesting. They are; but I will say that they publish and/or develop too many crappy licensed games for their own good. If it wasn't a million and one Dragon Ball games back in the day, it was some other less-than-stellar product. However...Bandai DID come through every now and then; they published "Shin Kidou Senshi Gundam W: Endless Duel" (people who have played it will know what I'm talking about) for the Super Famicom and it was a great game. "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition" was also good.

The number of original content from Bandai...In my experiences (could be wrong), they hardly make anything that isn't related to an anime, cartoon, or some other thing. For that reason, Star Hearts (assuming it isn't based on anything in particular) is quite a surprise from them. It also happens to be rather cool too.

I haven't bothered translating the story much (or in other words, at all), but I can tell you some general things. You can play as either a boy or a girl (Danda is the boy; Taama/Tarma is the girl) and set their ages (from age 2 to 56). They have slightly different base stats from each other, but the general story seems the same. You are on a quest to meet/find various spirits who have lost their way and help people to gain various powers to restore the balance between the various nations. One such spirit you will meet is Nymph; a water spirit that gives you the magic power of water when you free...it? I'm not sure what Nymph is in this game. You will meet animal people in Orgeland and more reserved and intellectual people in places like Alchemia, etc. Various story parts are in the game and broken up into "events", that have a starting point and ending point. When you start an event, a message will pop up and when you clear an event, you will get a "event clear" message and must progress through new areas to start more events...the world is actually pretty large.

The game is sorta slow paced, but it has lots of things that you can obtain and do. You can buy and sell stuff at shops, find treasure, go through dungeons full of traps, obtain magic, and more. The stat building aspect of the game is odd as stats are enhanced by beating on mystical drums scattered about, as well as meeting special dieties all over the place. You can find some by cutting bushes and destroying other objects. You also get a lot of items like a dungeon exiting item and various weapons that you must switch between strategically as different areas will be easier with different weapons. Some weapons also have special properties...a quick spear will thrust a lot faster than a regular spear.

Without getting too long-winded, there's lots to do and find (including e-Pets). The visuals are actually pretty nice and it's a good game that is actually a WonderSwan Color game...There are various monochromatic WonderSwan games that I like, but I'm somewhat turned off by the lack of color (Really, given when the WS was made, I felt all of its games should've been color). As a Japanese website put it, "SH is sorta an odd semi-blend of Seiken Densetsu and Legend of Zelda". It's still significantly different from either of those games, but I can relate to that...Also, there is another version of SH known as "Star Hearts Taikenban" (an earlier demo build)...I sampled it briefly and I don't see any difference in the game whatsoever (except a slightly different title screen).

Also, if anyone knows, there is supposedly music content from Warner Chappell in this video...I highly doubt that, but whatever, so long as they leave me alone. Enjoy.