Mystic Heroes (PlayStation 2)

Mystic Heroes is a fighting game loosely based on the novel Fengshen Yanyi (16th century). The player takes the role of a hero who fights against the evil ex-emperor Kang and his magical army. The gameplay itself is simple: the player wades through enemy hordes and kills them all. He has the choice between eight characters which all have different advantages and disadvantages – but basically the player chooses between sword and magical attacks. He can also use combo attacks.

During the course of the game the player can find magical runes which give him additional magical abilities and power-ups, e.g. health and mana refreshments or temporary and permanent improvements to the attacking and defending statistics. In fact, some of these runes have to be earned by completing the story mode multiple times – the player can use the same character for this and gets to retain their abilities and statistics. Mana also replenishes with every defeated foe. Besides the main story mode, there is also a Survival mode.

This version of the game features several additions in comparison to the GameCube version: increased magic levels (depending on the runes equipped), four new playable characters, a new boss, levels can be chosen separately after beating the game, plus the new Mission Mode. In this mode, the player has to solve small missions, e.g. defending a castle or escorting ghosts.