A sometimes fun game that serves as a decent through-back for fans of retro-gaming
The good folks at Starfish were pretty ambitious about this title, and you could tell. They didn't try to make the game flourish by present standards; they tried to make a game that could serve as a throw-back to the good old days of gaming. The graphics and sound is staight-up SNES, and most of the annoyances of this game are found in that era as well.
First off, the game has virtually no plot. If you play the single-player mode, you're treated to a cut scene at the beginning of the game (which consists of nothing more than the protagonist's face and text on the bottom of the screen) that explains why you're about to spend the rest of your sitting session killing monsters. You play as a Snow Goddess whose favorite person gets mysteriously ill, causing you to go collect certain ingrediants for his miracle cure. In a surprising bit of inspiration from the developers, the co-op mode has a different story; you and your sister decide to see who can kill the most monsters. The story is barely passable for both single-player and multiplayer.
Keeping up with the old-school theme of the game is its difficulty. Like games of the past, the difficulty doesn't necessarily come from hard enemies (though the boss battles are extremely difficult at times), but they come from the game's technical shortcomings. Sayuki, the Snow Goddess, travels with some odd rabbit-creature named Toto. Using the analog stick of the nunchuck, you move Sayuki and the Wii's IR moves Toto, who serves as a pointer to where Sayuki would shoot projectile weapons. Nothing about Toto works well. He moves in a strange, pixalated manner, the game's poor graphics and drab color palate often result in him simply blending into the environment, and worst of all, since the game treats him as a character, he can go behind an enemy, actually making him impossible to see. In the heat of a battle, you might have no clue where you're aiming to shoot, resulting in death many times.
I mentioned that the game was difficult, right? Because it will kick your ass all over the place. The technical shortcomings of the game and the occassionally over-powered enemies will often kill you. The game has a good check-point system thankfully, even though you'll never know when you hit one of the points. To make the situation worse is that you often only have three points for life (but through the rare power-up, you can get more), meaning that if a boss does an unavoidable attack (which happens every battle), then you're likely to die and revert back to the last check-point. The insane difficulty lengthen out an otherwise short game, so it's not the worst thing that the game punishes the player.
What's somewhat strange about this game, though, is despite all the complaints about the game, it still can be fun. Sure, it can be extremely frustrating, but until you reach your boiling point, it's actually enjoyable. The game could have benefited from simple things, like bringing the cursor into the new millenium, but for the most part, many of the game's faults are oddly welcome. The graphics aren't ugly, just dated. The sound isn't bad, just dated. The difficulty is through the roof, but oddly welcome. If Starfish had made this game as if it was made for current systems, it would have been considerably better. I have no objection to games going for a retro-feeling, but even the greatest older games have problems that can be annoying today. Starfish needed to find a good balance of new and old, which they failed to do.
For a budget price of $20, Heavenly Guardian is an easy recommendation for anyone who wants to relieve what they feel to be the golden age of gaming. For everyone else though, they should go in with a bit of caution, since the game might be completely unplayable for those who are pampered by the present day standards and 1080p.