This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

Shaman King: Master of the Spirits 2 is a sequel to last year’s under-the-radar title, which in turn is based on Fox Network’s Saturday morning cartoon Shaman King. For those unfamiliar with the anime, Shaman King involves a young boy named Yoh and his quest to enter the Grand Shaman Tournament which is held every 500 years. The winner receives the King of Spirits which grants considerable power – enough to change the world. But, the King of Spirits has grown silent and so the tournament has been delayed. That, however, isn’t enough for Yoh’s evil older brother, Zeke, to find a way to take the King of Spirits for himself to create a world of only shamans.



Knowing Shaman King’s main story isn’t all that important as the game mostly plays like a sidestory more than anything else. I don’t follow the show myself, but even I was able to pick up on the story, though in Master of the Spirits 2 it is pretty skimpy.

For those not familiar with this or the previous Shaman King GBA release, this game’s closest relative would be Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. It plays like a watered-down version of that game which makes sense considering that both were developed by Konami and that MotS 2 is aimed squarely at the children. Though not setup in one large castle, MotS features an overworld map with a number of dots marking side scrolling stages in which Yoh will jump and slash his way through a fair amount of enemies.

In another nod to Aria of Sorrow, MotS features a guardian ghost system that has more than its fair share of similarities to AoS’ spirit system. As the game progress, you’ll collect a ghost here and there and each ghost gives Yoh some sort of ability, such as a longer jump, the ability to shoot projectiles, or block attacks, when equipped. What makes the system here a little more user friendly than Aria of Sorrow’s constant switching is that Yoh is initially given four decks (new decks can be bought at shops for a maximum of ten decks). You can set up each deck for a specific purpose. For example, you can have one deck that turns Yoh into a bruising tank while having two other setups for underwater and ice stages. And you can switch a deck on the fly by hitting select. Yoh only starts out with one equip-able slot per deck, but as he finds more equipment he’ll be able to attach up to five guardian ghosts per deck, which leaves you up to 50 slots to assign. Considering that there are over 70 Guardian ghosts to collect, the amount of combinations is tremendous.

The guardian ghost system goes deeper by introducing new techniques that are only unlocked by combining the right guardians together. The best part is that once you unlock the technique, you don’t have to remember the correct setup of ghosts as the game will add the new technique to your guardian list and will automatically equip the right guardians to a deck when the technique is selected. Though there aren’t more than a handful of these abilities, the fact that it is in the game is a welcomed addition.

Not having played a GBA Castlevania in quite sometime, it was nice to see that Konami didn’t shortchange the game in the graphics department. It doesn’t share the same dark gothic atmosphere as that great series, instead swapping the palette with bright colorful backgrounds which is very fitting. The character sprites are also very bright and colorful and feature wonderfully smooth animations. Also, when activating a guarding ability, the game will randomly freeze and a nicely drawn interpretation of the Guardian ghost will flash on screen. However, there are times I wish I could turn this option off as sometimes it really interferes with flow of the game.



On the technical side of things, there’s not much to complain about – decent gameplay, a deep spirit system, and some nice graphics and music tracks. Beyond that though, Master of the Spirits falls short, literally, in a lot of ways.

Shaman King is one short game. I was able to go from start to finish with more than 80% of the ghosts found in less than eight hours. That’s shorter than what seems like most movies these days. And part of the short game time is that the game is woefully easy. Some of the ghosts are given to you by defeated bosses, but most are either in clear daylight or the enemy that drops the ghost flashes white. Thus you could really just fly through the stages by avoiding every enemy except the ones carrying ghosts since you don’t gain any experience points by defeating them. The RPG leveling-type system from Castlevania would have alleviated this problem and probably would have added a couple of hours to the gameplay. But, that would have made this title a little less accessible to the kids, so I won’t condemn this game just for that.

Another gripe is that despite the large number of ghosts available, I only ended up using a handful of them. And despite using so little, I was still able to whiz right through the game, as the ones necessary to continue on are always given to you. And when you are given a new ghost, it’s one with an ability that just screams at you to tell you which stage to attack next.

And now for one last complaint. Though this is very nitpicky, I didn’t like the control when using the Chloe ghost, which gives you an extendable grappling hook – it just didn’t feel tight and refined. Though there aren’t many times when its use is necessary for progression, those parts can and will get frustrating because of the way Yoh controls in the air with Chloe.



If you can get past the brevity and the fact that this game is aimed for kids, then Shaman King: Master of the Spirits 2 may just be a game GBA owners with a penchant for action platformers could grow fond of. It offers some decent gameplay with a deep guardian ghost system along with some impressive graphics. Moreover, Castlevania fans will get a kick out of playing a game that really is just a stripped-down version Aria of Sorrow and may even fill the void until Soma Cruz’s sequel, Dawn of Sorrow, hits the DS later this year.

Deep Guardian ghost system. Castlevania-style gameplay is always a plus.

Bright colorful graphics and smooth animations complete the package.

Some tracks are nice, most are forgettable. Voices are used sparingly, but are loud and clear.

Again, you can’t go wrong by copying Castlevania.

Game is painfully short, and hunting for all the ghosts isn’t going to add more than 2 hours.

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