Reviews from

in the past


This is a fun beat em up, with characters that actually play differently from each other, multiple paths for replayability, leveling up, and a cool plane switching mechanic. Nothing outstanding but worth playing

the entire game's budget was spent on the intro

whenever this game gets a new release, I pray it gets 4 player in story mode.


só terminei pq sabia que nao demoraria muito, mas tambem isso só piorou, pois o jogo é tao repetitivo que ele parece que tem 10h a mais do que vc imagina...
é uma pena, eu ouvi muita gente elogiando o game, tinha criado um certo hype pra joga-lo, acho que acabei esperando demais :(

I've heard a lot of great things about Guardian Heroes over the years, but I think this might just be my least favorite Treasure game.

One part beat-em-up, one part action-RPG, Guardian Heroes is definitely interesting in concept. You select from one of four characters with different stat builds and proficiencies before being set loose in a fantasy world on the brink of war by two feuding clans of spirits. How you progress through the game and what ending you ultimately get depends on several dialog prompts throughout the game, and in a way it's quite similar to Shadow the Hedgehog, giving it some replayability.

Treasure, as usual, knocks it out of the park with presentation. Animations are smooth, characters are suitably cartoonish, environments are colorful, and the soundtrack is full of bangers. There is a bit too much reuse of enemy sprites, with most being recolors of the same basic soldiers and orcs, but Guardian Heroes has so much of that Treasure charm that it's easy to give it a pass.

Less forgivable is the difficulty balancing, however. My initial playthrough got me about 80% through the game, and rather than sit there and slog through all of that a second time I decided to max out my character's stats, easy thanks to my Saturn's hacked Action Replay. But even with Han at his absolute zenith and the game set on easy, enemies are still spongy and more than capable of locking you in a juggle from which there's little hope of escape other than dumb luck. Two bosses in particular just fly around and spit magic everywhere, making them a nightmare to even approach let alone damage, and I'm just not sure how to beat them without cheating. By the end of the game, basic enemies will block through all of your attacks, and when you do manage to hit them they still have more than enough health to shoulder several combos. Magic appears to be a counterbalance to this, but it deals such pitiful damage that it only becomes useful when you can buy half a screen of space to spam it relentlessly.

As I finished the game a blue screen popped up, warning me about the dangers of pirating this game. It's not unlike the dozens of fake copyright warning videos people seem to love making for retro games. Guardian Heroes is intended for personal use, and it is a crime to sell, reproduce, or even rent the game. As I turned off my Sega Saturn and pulled out the CD-R I burned Guardian Heroes to, I thought "Perhaps... but not today."

ゲームとしては大味なつくりなんだけど大味すぎてそこがよい。はちゃめちゃな乱闘はダウンタウンシリーズ的に楽しめる。

some of the most fun i've ever had playing a video game

Changing planes is interesting, but uuuhhhhhh.... battles with multiple enemies are kind of a mess. Especially when you can get juggled even on the ground.
Its one of those games that are just fine with another human player. Story mode is kinda cool. There are 30 stages total but you really go through like, 7 or 8 stages total depending on what story path you choose.
Can be mashy fun til you realize the lack of.... design... I guess.

Um hack slash divertido, bonito, difícil, as vezes até injusto, e com uma jogabilidade ambiciosa que precisaria de mais polimento, é um bom jogo casual

I respect it and its mechanics but I'm honestly not a huge fan of it.

Wish I could play the better 360 version but the saturn one is still pretty good

arena's even more fun with more people to join in the fun.

Got an hour in and was killed by one of the bosses and didn't have any continues left so stopped playing.

One of the Saturn games I most regret not buying, because then I might have had time to learn how to play this well enough to beat it. It still looms large in my memory, of this seemingly impossible triple co-op fighting game. It felt endless in options when I played it as a kid, and that sensation doesn't always hold up upon revisiting something. That's the main thing that's kept me from trying it again, fair or unfair. Maybe someday!

On the surface it was a standard for the time side scrolling beat-em-up. However, the branching storylines, multiple characters, RPG elements, and secrets made this game very special to me. One of those games that’s much, much better than it had to be.

is it odd for me to say this is probably treasure's most complete, uncompromised work? if so i'll just stick with saying it's my favorite.
tonight the love of my life proposed to me. we're engaged now. i got to play this game in her arms. i played as nicole and she was serena. it really felt like a perfect way to mark the occasion. i love her so much.

Guardian Heroes é o meu primeiro jogo finalizado em 2023, zerei ele via steam deck. Fiz 2 finais diferentes com 2 personagens distintos, achei o jogo divertido porém chegou uma hora que ja não me prendia tanto por ser muito repetitivo mesmo tendo caminhos diferentes para você seguir, achei bem interessante a história e os personagens bem carismáticos. Não jogaria de novo (pelo menos por um tempo) mas com certeza vale a experiência

Gosh, Guardian Heroes. It's a classic! It looks wonderful! It has SO MUCH HEART

But I don't really like it =(

I am the world's biggest Saturn booster. I love the Saturn to death. I have so much Sega Saturn stuff! And I also love Gunstar Heroes!

But goodness, I can't love Guardian Heroes the way some folks do. It feels too loosy-goosy, and it feels too hard at times, and it suffers from the same problem I have with a lot of things: when I know there's a bajillion things to unlock, it just makes things drag for me.

There's SO MUCH here to love for people though.

Probably the best game ever made that I can't fucking play. Great story and presentation as you can usually expect from Treasure, but what I really love is getting juggled over and over again by the baddies five different times for five different endings.

I mean sure, I've played some hard games before, but I have to say, in all my years I've never played a game that just disregards the difficulty setting you ask for. And just so I could see the endings I put it on the debug mode, set the characters to the highest level and maxed out their stats, and I was still getting my ass kicked! I'd be very interested to learn how the developers got any actual debugging done there.

There’s something to be said for the way you can clear this in 30 minutes- things like the touch-of-death quality that combat has, where one or two mistakes can see your entire health bar depleted in an instant, or the fact that your AI companion undermines so much of the balance- it all actually ends up being pretty easy to forgive when restarting is such a non-commitment. (Also helped by the stupid number of different routes, so each playthrough can be radically different)

Think the brevity also lends the game a more playful attitude; there’s a leveling system, where in a full-length game you’d feel obliged to ration out points and make a well-rounded character, but here, the prospect of making some weird, experimental build is a lot more inviting. It’s fun just to see what happens when you put everything in magic or luck- you’ll lose, what, half-an-hour?

I will say, it’s one of the worst first impressions I’ve had in recent memory: play as frontman Han and you’ll wade through an aggressively mediocre beat ‘em up where you have fairly limited options to deal with enemies, spamming the same few moves over and over. But finish the game once, and you unlock Serena, a knight whose kit feels the best-suited to managing all the chaos onscreen, balancing magic and physical damage, strength and speed- she’s even the most important character in the story! Most of my problems with the game have cooled as I’ve put more time into it, but I think it’s a misstep that the most balanced character is initially locked behind a more lopsided playthrough.

Get past that though, and you’re treated to a game that offers a surprising degree of flexibility to carve out your own playstyle, set in a world that’s filled to the brim with the best kind of melodrama and passion.

(Also, if you do play it, you might want to play the 360 version specifically, apparently the Saturn original suffers from long load times and unskippable cutscenes.)

This game's actually pretty fun for the most part. Juggling enemies is satisfying, especially as Ginjirou and the action is really frantic and lively. I got to the end of 2 playthroughs, one as Ginjirou and one as Han and the endgame levels really just kill the fun with the tanky enemies becoming a wall of death forcing you to just use your safest moves over and over again to slowly chip away at their health.

Disclaimers: played about half an hour of this game, with one character. Not a fan of beat-em-ups in the first place.

I found Guardian Heroes to be interesting-looking, with crisp, cool character models and animations... and that's about where the positives end. I want a beat-em-up game to be simple, and this one attempts to shoehorn in RPG elements, different combos for each character, a second on-screen character you can give commands to, three seperate planes of play, and a shitload of enemies to battle. It offers little in the way of simple pleasures (beyond watching the heavy attack animations stick), and devolves into a difficult, overcrowded mess within the first five levels.

I think die-hard fans of the genre might find a lot to like, but it ain't for me.


-------Guardian Heroes is probably one of the most interesting side-scrolling brawlers I've ever played. It seemed like no matter when I picked it up, it was always showing me something new. It's RPG elements are fascinating, it's character designs are unique, and it's story is surprisingly complex and sweeping. I also love how any character from the story-mode can be played through the arcade and versus modes. The gallery offers a open glance into how much density Guardian Heroes offers. 30 story-missions, 90 characters, and a great soundtrack make up this display. The fighting mechanics are pretty deeps with button combos and weighted attacks. There's also a magic system, and even character classes worked into the fold. I imagine Guardian Heroes would be a fantastic multiplayer expierence.
-------However, even with this wondrous variety, I feel as if Guardian Heroes falters in it's key areas. For one, I don't think it's juggles any of it's systems extremely well. There are clear repeat scenes within the story missions without much variation. The karma system is under-baked with it being hard to be any kind of “evil.” Some of the story characters felt better to play than others. In fact one, Han, is the canonical hero of the narrative, and is the only character that can get a “boost” in stats from one specific story path. Finally, I feel as if the gameplay in general is just too chaotic. Bosses are too tough and responsive, the AI can easily out-number and juggle you, and it is very easy to lose your place on the screen. Regardless, I think this Sega Saturn cult-classic is still worth playing. Treasure always seems to surprise me, and this is one of their most sensory overload games I've played to date. For better, and for worse. - [06/10]