Nowadays, the quality of anime games are more than just cynical cash cows looking to quickly milk an intellectual property, many have pretty substantial gameplay and can be gateways for people to show interest in the manga or television series. In the late 90's to roughly 2007, during the initial boom period of anime distribution in the United States, a good chunk of the games based on your Dragonballs, Mobile Suit Gundams, and Full Metal Alchemists ranged from merely okay and pretty decent to downright horrific tragedies of interactive programming (Orphen: Scion of Sorcery, which sadly isn't a sports sedan you can train to be a black mage, but a PS2 game that's capable of frightening the dead). Shaman King, an action series based on Hiroyuki Takei's manga and adapted for television, had several games released in the U.S., Master of Spirit, a Zelda 2 style action game, and Power of Spirit, a tactical turn-based RPG.

The Shaman King plot revolves around a young medium name Yoh Asakura and his quest to become the Shaman King, gaining the ability to awaken the Great Spirit, which has the power to reshape the world. To do this, he must first win the Shaman Fights, a tournament held every 500 years. Aided by his fiance Anna Kyoyama, Yoh embarks on a grueling training regimen to ensure he's prepared. 

Produced by WinkySoft and published by Konami in 2004, Power of Spirit takes place right before the Shaman Fights and acts as its own original story. Yoh is preparing to train for the Shaman Tournament and looks to be at the top of his game, until Silva arrives and tells him that he will never improve until he endures a long, unskippable tutorial as to how the game plays. The next morning, or sometime shortly thereafter, Yoh and the gang are chatting about the tourney when we are introduced to Meril Inugami, an enigmatic, yet adorable little girl who makes the mistake of glomping Yoh right in front of Anna.

The graphics, there isn’t much to talk about that’s good in this department for several reasons. 1) There aren’t any full-motion cut scenes during the story portion of the game, so you never really get a great look at the character models. They are mostly displayed from a distance, but from what you can see, they don’t look too bad, if you don’t mind staring at the top of their heads for 94% of gameplay. The color and surrounding scenery is mostly garish and dark, not really bursting with any kind of life, and attacks that you would think should light up the screen with some visual effects ignite with the ferocity of a wet firecracker! 

This really would’ve been a case where utilizing cel-shading could’ve benefited greatly, because outside of still images, Power of Spirit is not an appealing game to look at. It would be a bit too harsh to say that it’s completely bad, but for PlayStation 2 game, it is a little placid. There is an opening CGI animated sequence, and for what it's worth, it looks pretty good. I have no issues with the light novel style story presentation, the likeness of the characters are done well enough. It's just very washed over.

The controls, this is a mixed bag for me, as I love a good tactics game and I can appreciate a good fighting game as well. Power of Spirit shows some ambition and combines a fighting game with a tactical RPG. In fairness, the fighting game portion of the engine plays like a slower, muddier version of one of the Naruto Ultimate Ninja games, and it works on that level. It handles well enough, allowing Yoh to move in three dimensions, use some basic combos as well as learn new skills as he levels up (btw, he’s the only character you’re allowed to control, which bites). The tactics half of it feels a little clunky.

Back to that tutorial, Silva explains how Yoh works in battle (movement, selecting attacks, skills, items), but there are no further menus that explain how the OTHER characters function in battle!! The first time I had a second party member, I just assumed that you select that character, choose an enemy, and you go into battle with them via the fighting screen. What really happened during a battle with the Hana-Gumi, I selected Meril to fight Matilda and Marion cleaned her clock in one shot!! I had no idea what happened.

So the it was the enemies’ turn to strike, and Kanna attacked ME, but before going to fight screen, a battle point counter appeared and I was given the option to select something for Meril, Spirit Unity 100% or Spirit Control (Unity allows your character to charge their Furyoku for that round if they survive and Control sends them into battle with no restrictions). Then I get the battle screen VS menu and Meril is now fighting along my side!! Ooooooh, okay, now I get it!! It turns out that if any character other than Yoh engages in a fight, it becomes a battle of attributes. If your teammate is weaker than his opponent, or has no other teammate in range to join them in battle, they will lose with no chance of saving them. I understand that this is the nature of tactics games, but the balance can swing wildly and slightly weaker characters become hard to train without it being matchup specific.

 The story plays out like a short movie or a multipart filler from the TV series, which I’m in favor of. It’s not perfect, but certainly enjoyable. I had fun with the engine once I got he hang of it. The learning curve may be  bit obtuse, but underneath that is a game with respectable difficulty. It took guts to try to meld a fighting game with a tactics game, and to that I give it kudos. There was certainly more attempts to make a memorable gameplaying experience, and only missed slightly off-center. At 20 chapters long, it’s a pretty hearty game, just enough to get your fill. I don’t think it’s as fun as Master of Spirits, but a game that just does enough right to keep from being super bland.