Day 37 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S

Okay, I swear my wife picked this game, but surprisingly it turned out to be a pretty solid beat em up and a great multiplayer title. Please keep in mind my knowledge of Sailor Moon is fairly limited, so if anything that I write here turns out to be incorrect please let me know in the comments (like I'm sure my wife is going to do).

Sailor Moon S is a blatant Street Fighter 2 clone, and while it's certainly not in the same league as SF2, it's a very good beat em up. The controls are responsive and special moves are simple to execute, but there's also some big finishing moves that require a little more effort. The effort is certainly rewarded however, as not only do you deal immense damage to your opponent, but Sailor Moon S is superbly animated and worthy of the franchise.

There are 9 characters to choose from but they're all Sailor Scouts, so no Tuxedo Mask or any antagonists from the series (apparently Sailor Saturn is also missing). It feels like a wasted opportunity with the amount of characters being very limited and I must brush up on my Japanese, as I'm wondering what on earth happens to make 9 protagonists beat the hell out of each other.



There's also a unique attribute customisation screen that allows you tweak certain aspects of your chosen character, for example increasing the amount of health you will start with. This has some drawbacks because opponents can become more difficult to defeat, meaning most fights will end on a 'Time Out' depriving you of that satisfying KO finish. I also felt the levels could be a bit more dynamic, a majority of them are just still images of locations from the show, it would be better if there was some breakable objects or animated backgrounds.

Sailor Moon S may have it's faults, but it has enough fan service to satisfy the most ardent Sailor Moon fan (hearing the theme song on the SNES is awesome). The game is also bloody difficult as I've been playing for about an hour and had my arse handed to me. Plus my wife is also taking great pleasure at defeating me, so I think I'll put on some Silent Hill before we go to bed. ^_^