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Unlike many of the title’s I’ve had the pleasure of
reviewing since the inception of the Electronic Articles, Saint
Seiya: The Sanctuary is certainly in need of an introduction.
However, after countless hours searching the internet, exchange with
colleagues, competitors, friends, the kids at the bus stop… there
is little I can offer. The information available detailed Saint
Seiya as an anime series popular in
France
, following the legendary Seiya and the Bronze Knights in
their battle against  the Gold Knights to save humanity. Throw in all
sorts of twisted-takes on Greek mythology and some obnoxious
teen-angst dialogue, and it appears we have a reasonable idea of the
anime that we may well be presented with in the near future.
Saint Seiya: The Sanctuary, by default, is a 3D
beat-‘em-up. Following the basic premise of the genre, two
characters begin in an arena with a handful of moves and a demeaning
energy bar. This is all but where the genre-formulaic play ends. The
title manages to break away from tradition with ease as some truly
original and compelling ideas are buried within a frustrated
presentation.
At first, playing through the cut-scene heavy Story Mode, the
controls appear totally inappropriate for the fighting system. Each
character’s moves are placed identically, in a similar fashion to Super
Smash Bros. Melee, with Cross and Square being your Attack
buttons, Circle for Special Attacks, R1 for Block and Triangle for
Dash. Seemingly limited, it takes time to realise the wealth
invested in such a simple system, with each character having a huge
variety of Special Attacks available on simple variations of 
pressing the Circle Button – R1 and Circle, single press, repeated
press, hold and release, Towards and Circle, Away and Circle…
And
yet this goes further. Saint Seiya: The Sanctuary benefits
from a totally renovated Special Attack Bar. The meter at the bottom
of the screen denotes three levels of attack. As the meter builds
over time and with each successfully landed attack or defence, so
will your Special Attacks grow in strength. However, these Special
Attacks will also cost you a varied amount of this build-up, so
continual misses can be disastrous. Additionally, when your Special
Attack Bar fills, you will be able to charge your Cosmos – an
extra Special Attack which, depending on your character selection,
can charge between one and three levels. Holding the Circle Button
for the desired charge will, if landed correctly, initiate a
cut-scene demonstrating your power. Although these attacks can be
devastating, they can also be reversed. The basic Energy Bar has
also been adjusted – instead of receiving the basic
first-to-two-rounds treatment, once your energy has been drained you
will enter a screen denoting a blessing from Athena, tapping the
four face buttons as well as pivoting the left Analogue Stick
back-and-forth right to left will give you the chance to recharge
your energy bar to a varying degree. However, should you be felled
by a Cosmos attack, there’s no chance of a come-back.
The
title features graphics that, at least to a certain degree, reflect
the innovation in the gameplay. Each of the characters in the game
wear a shining suit of armou r with amazing detail and glimmering
effect which, although clearly at the deficit of the background
detail, is one of the best texture effects seen on the PlayStation2.
The cut-scenes are well detailed, although the lip-synching is
terrible – which leads me onto the sound… Hmm… rarely would I
judge a film or musical score by such merit, but with the
set-in-stone distribution patterns for videogames it feels
unjustified that such a revealing title for Atari should be tailored
only for the dominant French market. This could be prejudice,
however, as being a member of the typically dominant market for
European distribution and typically snobbish with it, I am unaware
as to the current total of European releases which feature another
language in full-speech other than English, and am reluctant to
trail through my extensive back catalogue to fulfil any perverted
desire I have to come up with another useless statistic.
Saint
Seiya: The Sanctuary is destined to be an undiscovered
PlayStation2 gem. Being a title receiving seemingly little press
coverage and appearing on shop shelves long before any new of the
series being aired on British television – you have to wonder how
anyone will discover a game that clearly wants to be discovered.
Innovation within rigid constraints is far too often overlooked in
this industry, and Saint Seiya: The Sanctuary deserves to be
noticed.
 
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