Guardian Heroes is Final Fight at its best.  Well the story line is this group of heroes finds a sword, it awakens a dead solider, and you fight the rest of the game trying to restore peace to the land.  Along the way you'll get a lot of plot twists.  There are five charcthers to choose from and and a versus mode that allows up to six players. 

Graphics:
        The graphics are amazing.  There is so much going on the screen at the same time.  There can be up to 15 characthers on screen.  Each characther is doing their own thing.  Like you can be casting a huge spell striking a few of your enemies and some of your other enemies can be casting their own spell.  Sometimes with so much going on you might get lost, but luckily all this is separated by three planes the foreground, middleground, and background.  The only problem with the graphics is that if something gets to close to the camera it gets pixely.  Luckily it doesn't happen very often.

SOUND/MUSIC:
        The music is okay.  The music won't get you thrilled or get on your nerves like in Sonic R.  The sound effects are pretty good.  From shooting your lighting, creating a ice pond, or a fireball they each sound different. The hits sound very high impact.  Like a sword slash or twirling a bo staff or just breaking stuff it sounds cool.

GAMEPLAY:
        The gameplay has rocks!  Each charather has at least 5 or 6 special moves.  In addition to that some have 5 ro 6 spells at their disposal.  This game is an action/adventure with rpg elements.  Some of the elements are strength, vitality, luck, speed, etc.  Besides the rpg elements your charathers talk to your enemies or talk amongst themselves, but after playing for a while you'll know what they're saying and just try to scroll through it as fast as possible.  The more enemies you defeat the more experience points you get.  Thus adding to attributes making your charather stronger.  You'll also be able to control an undead, golden warrior.  You can give him various commands.  After completing a stage you'll be able to choose multiple paths.  So choose carefully. 

REPLAY:
        With the multiple paths you'll be able to get multiple endings.  7 of them to be exact.  If you liked Final Fight or action you'll love this game.  It gets a little of everything.  With the versus mode and up to 45 fighters to choose from it's a definite buy.  Since it's only about $20.00 new or $15.00 at EB used you can't go wrong.

BOTTOMLINE[NEXT-GENERATION'S IDEA NOT MINE]:Final Fight type games can't get better than this.

RATINGS:
GRAPHICS:7/10
MUSIC:6/10
SOUND:9/10
GAMEPLAY:7/10
REPLAY:10/10
OVERALL:8/10

- JL