Soul Eater Monotone Princess (Wii Import Review)

Why do some Anime games suck so bad? Correction with exception of "Ghost In The Shell" and some "DBZ" games. Anime games have not lived up to expectation in the gaming world. I manage to play Soul Eater Monotone Princess for the Wii. It was released 2008 in Japan, with no signs of a release date in USA. Should you sell your soul to play this game?

Story - I don't understand Japanese so here is the description from PlayAsia.com

Wandering souls, the time for salvation has come.” the strange man declared to the crowd in the dead of the night. And all who have attended this meeting disappeared. A mass disappearance of people is prompting action from the death angel academy as the teacher has assigned the task of investigating the case to his students. However, upon investigating the incident, Mako and her friends came upon white, masked creatures and agents who have been gathering souls. Predators usually devour souls they have gathered, but these agents who called themselves hatchers of the demon's egg are gathering them for unknown purposes. Soon, our beloved cast realized that the scheme behind the agents and the appearance of the white masks are far more dangerous than any other assignments the academy has ever set for them.

Gameplay - The gameplay is truly a headache. I have no idea what Square Enix was trying to do. The A button is used to attack with one of your three characters. You can use Maka Albarn, Death the Kid & Black Star. Each character has a different wide range of attacks. By using the pressing the A button and the Wii more you will do a special move. The Z button is control the camera angle, but good luck doing that. The camera angles in this game are horrendous too me. It doesn't respond well and good luck when it comes to battles, because it's a chore getting the camera angles to work. The B button is used to locked on the enemy, this actually works well unless you're fighting multiple enemies, because with the camera angle will not show you who is coming behind you. The A.I. is joke, especially in the earlier missions. The enemies just stand there and let you hit them. The boss fights range from easy, to normal and some are hard. However it's not really challenging and the missions are repetitive. A warning to those who don't know Japanese. The game is heavy on dialogue and really drags the game. I must've of been waiting for 10 minutes just to play the next mission. I was pressing the A button for a while to skip dialogue. Overall the gameplay is repetitve, clunky and just boring.

Gameplay Video


Graphics - The graphics on Soul Eater looks like it could of been on the PSP. The graphics are average at best. I wouldn't even consider it Gamecube stature. There are no lag issues, but there are a lot of pixel images. I just didn't like how they try to capture the Soul Eater world.

Sound - The sound is really good. They make use of the original Japanese voice cast and have a great opening song. The music is cool but nothing special.

Replay Value - Unless you are a die hard Soul Eater fan, this game is only a one trip ride.

Final Grade D+
Soul Eater Monotone Princess gets a D+. This game is just to boring, frustrating and clunky. This is a game strictly for the die hard fans. I found the import price at 30 dollars, but play at your own risk.