Shaman King: Master of Spirits 1 & 2

By Squalid Pumpkin - 7/12/09

In 2003, the world was given "Aria of Sorrow". A year later, America received a GBA game based on the Shonen Jump manga Shaman King, titled "Shaman King: Master of Spirits", also from Konami, resembling the former in many ways.

Shaman King: Master of Spirits (click for larger image)	Shaman King: Master of Spirits 2 (click for larger image)

Foremost being the Tactical Souls system. As Yoh Asakura one equips two souls at a time, one for button R, the other for button L. Killing fixed enemies brings out souls (it's not based on chance like in Aria of Sorrow, so get 'em all), and sometimes souls are just sitting around for you to take (like souls in lamps in the Sorrow titles). One also has four soul decks - you equip souls to other decks and can switch by the Select button. Kind of like Dawn of Sorrow.

                    

The familiarities are striking, and get this - Shaman King: Master of Spirits was released a year before Aria of Sorrow in Japan. While it certainly borrowed skeletons, bats, and technical details like moving boxes, who borrowed the Tactical Souls system?

By the way, you acquire the soul Tokageroh in order to push wooden boxes a la Circle of the Moon, as well as Lee Pai-Long to slide, Chloe to use a "Homing Pendulum" to hang on to hooks like in Super Castlevania IV, Tamegoroh to recover health slowly by standing still, Pascal Avaf to pause in midair, Yamagami to have four fireballs spin around you, Gabriel to make light in the darkness, Blaumro to reduce the enemy's health with a WHIP, as well as a couple souls and combos resembling item crushes.

                    

Some of these could be considered iffy at best. So the game also features bats, skeletons, skeleton archers, beasts that throw barrels at you, axe armors, white dragons, and more. You certainly don't level up, but you DO collect Magatama Beads which increase your max health after four are collected, in addition to swords that increase your attack and other such accessories.

If you thought the Super Metroid-style Castlevania games all look alike, wait till you see Master of Spirits 2, released in the US in 2005. It has the same gritty mood, which I'd say is a good thing. There's even a place right at the beginning of the map (you use a map like in the early Castlevanias) where you can fight all the game's bosses if you so choose, just like Harmony of Dissonance's Boss Rush Mode.

                    

I never would have gotten these games had I not seen an ad for them and thought "Looks like Castlevania - gimme!" (If anyone out there has a product and doubts the effect of advertising, really, people aren't that hard to crack. ;) ) And it more than looked.

So if you want Castlevania-style platforming (and difficulty!), hit the used game stores or try e-bay before these titles are gone.

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