I've only seen a couple of episodes of the anime, so I should really get around to watching the source material. As far as Sailor Moon beat em ups go, this is considered to be the best one. Beat em ups are a very fun genre to dabble in when it comes to 1ccs, they're not like the great shmups which you can pour hundreds or thousands of hours into... a good, even a great beat em up seems to wear out its welcome much sooner and a 1cc seems to often be a fairly natural stopping point. The scoring system in Sailor Moon (or most beat em ups) might not be my cup of tea. Or at the very least, It doesn't stand out to me compared to other things. So I see little incentive to master the game to that level, currently. It's a fun game to play, up until you're too good at it. That's how beat em ups are.
So, this is a game that in many ways follows the fundamentals I've familiarized myself with from games like Final Fight. I enjoy this familiarity in beat em ups, where it feels like my skill transfers over between titles. The controls feels great and are easy to get the hang of. You can choose between 5 of the girls from the series: Sailor Moon, Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Venus, Sailor Mars. I wish I could get more into the differences between these girls, but to be quite frank, they're all quite similar. The more important differences seem to be subtle enough that I can't quite wrap my head around them without a lot of experience. I will say that each girl feels good to play in her own way though and that the most important thing to distinguish the girls to me has been the main combo and how easy this is to use against enemies. I had the best result with Sailor Jupiter as her main combo seems to be almost unbreakable by most enemies. The other character I played more of is Sailor Mercury and either I got better at the game immediately after switching to Jupiter or Mercury's main combo is simply worse at hitting things consistently.
This is typical arcade beat em up fare on the surface. You have your main combo, you can run, you can jump attack (forwards or backwards), running jump attack, running attack, grab, punch up to 3 times in grabs, throw backwards or forwards in a grab (up to 2 punches first), and the standard desperation move that uses up health if it hits things. You can also collect up to 5 crystals which you can use to damage everything on the screen after a beautiful cutscene. More crystals = more damage & fancier cutscene. Each girl gets her own crystal cutscenes and damage type from the crystals; purely cosmetic. One thing that this game doesn't have that is present in Final Fight and many games influenced by it is a throw for a combo finisher. You only get one combo finisher in this game. While I felt a bit naked without this ability at first, as I got better at the game I realized the intricate balance revolves around having to grab things manually. The game was intentionally designed for you to only be able to throw enemies by grabbing them first. It's something you have to learn to do confidently to play well. It would also be nice if the game had a Haggar-type character for a different playstyle but hey, what we've got is fun as it is.
As it turns out, the game is quite hard. It may even seem unfair at first. The main thing regarding the controls you need to understand is the way your main attacks stun enemies. Your main combo consists of 5 hits (unique for each girl). In order to play well, you really want to familiarize yourself with the exact feel of each individual hit for the girl you are using. Each hit is pivotal in its own way. The first hit is the one that initially stuns the enemies, you can use this one hit, if you are close enough to an enemy, to right afterwards walk up to them and grab them so you can throw them where they need to be. The 3rd or 4th (depending on character and playstyle) hit should often be cancelled instead of finishing the combo with your 5th hit. This is because of the long stun duration of each hit; if you cancel your 3rd or 4th hit, quickly turn around and rehit the enemy before the stun wears off, you can infinite the enemy. This can be used against almost every single thing in the game! It might not look fun. It might look cheap, it might even look dumb, but it is without a doubt the way the game was intentionally designed. If you finish your combo, the 5th hit will knock the enemies forward into the ground. While this is sometimes a good thing, it can also be a bad thing; for example, it wastes time. I'll get more into that. Another example: It pushes the enemies away from you if you want to attack them again. You have to move forward, perhaps this will spawn more enemies you do not want to spawn and fight until you are finished with your current group. Bosses especially should be abused as much as possible because it is the only sensible and fair way to fight them. Use your infinite as much as you can. Try to group enemies up by using your beat em up fundamentals and throwing them into a big group, and try to keep as many as you can in an infinite. Any that break free needs to be reacted to and taken care of in some way. A good player will make this game look more like a relatively simple matter of basics and memorization while a bad player will make it look completely impossible. Unlike many other beat em ups it tends to be difficult to use vertical space to grab enemies in this game, without stunning them first. Many are too erratic and fast and many have counters.
What's this about wasting time? Why would that be so bad? Can't you play arcade beat em ups relatively slowly and carefully? Yes, normally, that would be the case. But Sailor Moon is not a normal game. This game has a timer that wants you to die, fast. On some stages, notably stage 5 and 8, the timer is so strict that even if you speedrun the stage you might run out of time and die (use your crystals in order to avoid this fate). You do not want to die in this game, because you only start with 1 extra life and there are NO extends. If you die 2 times, it's game over.
Due to the strict timer and familiar moveset (with a twist), the way you end up playing the game is to try to get through everything quickly and efficiently. Every second you spend trying to manage the enemies without actually damaging them could lead to a timeout... at least on the nastiest timed levels. Personally I find this to be generally fun. It feels good to handle enemies efficiently in this game with the infinite and all the other tools at your disposal. This is not only because of the timer and the ease of control of the playable girls, but also because of the enemy design. The enemies in this game are great and are some of the most fun enemies to fight in any beat em up. When I began playing the other week or so, I was absolutely delighted by how aggressively and quickly all the enemies in Sailor Moon attempt to maneuver around you to mess with you. They're constantly trying to go behind you, to move away from you, to scatter around the screen. In beat em ups you really want to try to group the enemies up to fight them effectively, and Sailor Moon is a game that offers great enemy AI to make this challenging and fun. You've got the ninjas, which are some of the most fun enemies ever IMO. They can do so many different things and they are dangerous. Trying to deal with 3 ninjas all at once in stage 6 is so much fun! Then there's the tennis guys with their legendary grab range. And then you've got those annoying Onibabas with their bullshit horn dashes. And their bullshit offscreen garbage! Actually, that kinda sucks, the offscreen garbage... that's an Onibaba specialty; staying offscreen and refusing to come out so that you waste time. Anyway, bottom line is the enemies are great in this game and they come in many different combinations. The only enemy that is really specific to one stage that has mostly that enemy is the masked men in stage 5. Those are actually pretty vicious and are great at sneaking in punches while you try to combo, which is why i pay close attention to what they're up to so i can try to stun one before he sneaks a hit on me if I'm fighting another masked dude at the same time. Then I pick up the sneaky fuck and throw him into my previous target!
The bosses in the game are a bit more difficult to compliment. Bosses in beat em ups tend to be a bit lame. It's a weakness of the genre and Sailor Moon is no exception. For the most part, they are pretty much impossible to fight without a sound plan which consists of some form of repeated abuse, usually a delicate infinite. Infinites on other enemies are simpler to pull off but infinites on bosses are delicate. Most bosses are "invulnerable" if they feel like being (if they start punching you, you should not attempt to hit them. Move away and try again or desperation.)
Bosses which need to be infinited are weird and do require a bit of practice to understand how to infinite this specific boss. Garoben should be infinited by being almost entirely inside of her horizontal position, while carefully approaching outside of her range vertically. Obviously to any players of arcade beat em ups, understanding and using vertical space properly is key, since vertical and horizontal space have different functions.
Kyulene is a little similar, but you can stay farther away from her horizontally. She's also a bit unique in that the infinite works differently if shes flying or on the ground. Zoisite can be abused by throwing her around over and over and never letting her get away when she gets up from the ground, either by running towards her or throwing her into a wall and then going backwards. Basically, every boss has its own little trick, which is sometimes quite hard (Twin Kyulene, Kunzite & Zoisite) and sometimes... laughably simple (Queen Beryl, the final boss).
Scoring is a bit awkward, although I wouldn't say it's bad per se. It does seem to suit the game and It's the logical step to go for if you just want more Sailor Moon in your life, right? You get points "per attack" on targets. What I mean is you don't actually gain any score for attacking multiple enemies at once. For a game with such strict timers and in a genre where enemy herding is important, It's pretty interesting of the game to want you to fight enemies 1 by 1 for optimal score. Obviously the timer won't actually let you do this all game. With swift yet delicate button presses you can actually stunlock an enemy both to your left and your right simultaneously. Furthermore, throwing an enemy gives great score, but also takes a lot of time (the enemy needs to come back before it can be attacked again) and does more damage. Obviously then, it's optimal to throw enemies when they have only 1 hit remaining anyway, for maximum score.
The other ways of gaining more score I've noted includes collecting crystals when you already have the maximum number of 5. There is seemingly luck involved here as not all crystal drops are consistent (some can be food items). Stage 5 and 8 are the stages that are incredibly rough on time without using crystals. Luckily though, you can use your crystals on the stage 8 midboss (which is essentially the true last boss) as there are no more crystals to be collected afterwards for more points anyway. So Stage 5 would be the hardest one to get through without running out of time when it comes to no-crystal use score play.
The last thing I've noted, which is very significant, is that some multiphase bosses (Any where Tuxedo Mask doesn't interrupt the fight) can be infinited even when they've already taken enough damage to be sent to the next phase. Their HP will get stuck and you can simply keep hitting them for more points. The trigger point for being sent to the next phase is being sent to the floor or for the stunlock to end. Finishing your combo, interrupting your combo, or getting timed out will all end the infinite. Stage 3 and 7 are the places where you can get a lot of score from this. Killing off a life on purpose can gain a lot of extra score by using up an entirely new timer for a lengthy infinite. All in all, a strong player focusing on score can get about twice as much points than a basic 1cc by using these techniques. Sailor Venus seems to be the girl to use for score due to her speedy 3 hit infinites, I think.
So, in terms of pure gameplay, I recommend Sailor Moon. I recommend it but only to people that genuinely enjoy this genre for what it is. It's pure beat em up fun. It offers a fun challenge. If you think it's too hard, I still recommend 2 player mode. 2 Players makes the game far easier. As far as I could tell, the game didn't add any enemies or anything like that. So you can split the enemies in half for each player! In fact, right after having No-death cleared this game with a friend, I still needed to use a couple of continues to finish the game on my own. That goes to show how much easier it gets with 2 players.
Now, having talked extensively about playing the game, I wish I was able to talk more about playing the game from the point of view of a fan of the anime... Perhaps another reviewer could fill in on that aspect more. I understand that enemies and bosses in the game are taken from the anime and I assume that fans of the anime will be delighted by the presentation here. Still, I want to stress, that as someone who didn't watch Sailor Moon, I was delighted by the art design regardless. The sprites and levels look beautiful. The most gorgeous thing in the game has got to be the Kyulene boss cutscene (when she flies up to the tower). That's unbelievably gorgeous stuff. It all makes sense really, when it turned out that Joker Jun is the Graphic Designer. That's the guy behind the beautiful art of ESP Ra De and Air Gallet, with their legendary final boss visuals. Using the crystals gives you crisp and good looking cutscenes that I believe are taken straight from the show. If you like the show and you have no interest in getting good at this game, it might still interest you to just check it out and marvel at it. The soundtrack is a little odd, there are some catchy tunes but also some more esoteric tracks that may not be to everyone's tastes. I enjoy it, however. Of course, it must be mentioned, that the game doesn't just look great visually on a technical level, but that I also like it for personal reasons. The girls are very cute. The enemies are precisely to my taste as well. Kyulene is a beautiful boss to be honest, and Bakene looks seriously hilarious when you infinite him, as it freezes on one of like two funny looking frames. Great personality in this game, really!
Overall, I'd call this one of the more solid arcade beat em ups I've played. I enjoyed it enough to 1cc it with Sailor Jupiter and I may just 1cc with more girls. I heard it was supposed to be one of the hardest beat em ups but I'm not sure I'd go that far. It's a bit milder than I thought based on its reputation. Still hard, though, it's just that a lot of the difficulty stems from the initial confusion of how to even handle the game. Once you plan things out properly and understand on a base level how to react to various situations, it's doable! And even if you're bad like I was initially, it's always a fun time! That's most important thing, isn't it? Why improve at a game if you don't enjoy the process? This is a great game to pick up and play and try to improve in, without any long term commitment.
A great Sailor Moon game, check it out in MAME!
So, this is a game that in many ways follows the fundamentals I've familiarized myself with from games like Final Fight. I enjoy this familiarity in beat em ups, where it feels like my skill transfers over between titles. The controls feels great and are easy to get the hang of. You can choose between 5 of the girls from the series: Sailor Moon, Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Venus, Sailor Mars. I wish I could get more into the differences between these girls, but to be quite frank, they're all quite similar. The more important differences seem to be subtle enough that I can't quite wrap my head around them without a lot of experience. I will say that each girl feels good to play in her own way though and that the most important thing to distinguish the girls to me has been the main combo and how easy this is to use against enemies. I had the best result with Sailor Jupiter as her main combo seems to be almost unbreakable by most enemies. The other character I played more of is Sailor Mercury and either I got better at the game immediately after switching to Jupiter or Mercury's main combo is simply worse at hitting things consistently.
This is typical arcade beat em up fare on the surface. You have your main combo, you can run, you can jump attack (forwards or backwards), running jump attack, running attack, grab, punch up to 3 times in grabs, throw backwards or forwards in a grab (up to 2 punches first), and the standard desperation move that uses up health if it hits things. You can also collect up to 5 crystals which you can use to damage everything on the screen after a beautiful cutscene. More crystals = more damage & fancier cutscene. Each girl gets her own crystal cutscenes and damage type from the crystals; purely cosmetic. One thing that this game doesn't have that is present in Final Fight and many games influenced by it is a throw for a combo finisher. You only get one combo finisher in this game. While I felt a bit naked without this ability at first, as I got better at the game I realized the intricate balance revolves around having to grab things manually. The game was intentionally designed for you to only be able to throw enemies by grabbing them first. It's something you have to learn to do confidently to play well. It would also be nice if the game had a Haggar-type character for a different playstyle but hey, what we've got is fun as it is.
As it turns out, the game is quite hard. It may even seem unfair at first. The main thing regarding the controls you need to understand is the way your main attacks stun enemies. Your main combo consists of 5 hits (unique for each girl). In order to play well, you really want to familiarize yourself with the exact feel of each individual hit for the girl you are using. Each hit is pivotal in its own way. The first hit is the one that initially stuns the enemies, you can use this one hit, if you are close enough to an enemy, to right afterwards walk up to them and grab them so you can throw them where they need to be. The 3rd or 4th (depending on character and playstyle) hit should often be cancelled instead of finishing the combo with your 5th hit. This is because of the long stun duration of each hit; if you cancel your 3rd or 4th hit, quickly turn around and rehit the enemy before the stun wears off, you can infinite the enemy. This can be used against almost every single thing in the game! It might not look fun. It might look cheap, it might even look dumb, but it is without a doubt the way the game was intentionally designed. If you finish your combo, the 5th hit will knock the enemies forward into the ground. While this is sometimes a good thing, it can also be a bad thing; for example, it wastes time. I'll get more into that. Another example: It pushes the enemies away from you if you want to attack them again. You have to move forward, perhaps this will spawn more enemies you do not want to spawn and fight until you are finished with your current group. Bosses especially should be abused as much as possible because it is the only sensible and fair way to fight them. Use your infinite as much as you can. Try to group enemies up by using your beat em up fundamentals and throwing them into a big group, and try to keep as many as you can in an infinite. Any that break free needs to be reacted to and taken care of in some way. A good player will make this game look more like a relatively simple matter of basics and memorization while a bad player will make it look completely impossible. Unlike many other beat em ups it tends to be difficult to use vertical space to grab enemies in this game, without stunning them first. Many are too erratic and fast and many have counters.
What's this about wasting time? Why would that be so bad? Can't you play arcade beat em ups relatively slowly and carefully? Yes, normally, that would be the case. But Sailor Moon is not a normal game. This game has a timer that wants you to die, fast. On some stages, notably stage 5 and 8, the timer is so strict that even if you speedrun the stage you might run out of time and die (use your crystals in order to avoid this fate). You do not want to die in this game, because you only start with 1 extra life and there are NO extends. If you die 2 times, it's game over.
Due to the strict timer and familiar moveset (with a twist), the way you end up playing the game is to try to get through everything quickly and efficiently. Every second you spend trying to manage the enemies without actually damaging them could lead to a timeout... at least on the nastiest timed levels. Personally I find this to be generally fun. It feels good to handle enemies efficiently in this game with the infinite and all the other tools at your disposal. This is not only because of the timer and the ease of control of the playable girls, but also because of the enemy design. The enemies in this game are great and are some of the most fun enemies to fight in any beat em up. When I began playing the other week or so, I was absolutely delighted by how aggressively and quickly all the enemies in Sailor Moon attempt to maneuver around you to mess with you. They're constantly trying to go behind you, to move away from you, to scatter around the screen. In beat em ups you really want to try to group the enemies up to fight them effectively, and Sailor Moon is a game that offers great enemy AI to make this challenging and fun. You've got the ninjas, which are some of the most fun enemies ever IMO. They can do so many different things and they are dangerous. Trying to deal with 3 ninjas all at once in stage 6 is so much fun! Then there's the tennis guys with their legendary grab range. And then you've got those annoying Onibabas with their bullshit horn dashes. And their bullshit offscreen garbage! Actually, that kinda sucks, the offscreen garbage... that's an Onibaba specialty; staying offscreen and refusing to come out so that you waste time. Anyway, bottom line is the enemies are great in this game and they come in many different combinations. The only enemy that is really specific to one stage that has mostly that enemy is the masked men in stage 5. Those are actually pretty vicious and are great at sneaking in punches while you try to combo, which is why i pay close attention to what they're up to so i can try to stun one before he sneaks a hit on me if I'm fighting another masked dude at the same time. Then I pick up the sneaky fuck and throw him into my previous target!
The bosses in the game are a bit more difficult to compliment. Bosses in beat em ups tend to be a bit lame. It's a weakness of the genre and Sailor Moon is no exception. For the most part, they are pretty much impossible to fight without a sound plan which consists of some form of repeated abuse, usually a delicate infinite. Infinites on other enemies are simpler to pull off but infinites on bosses are delicate. Most bosses are "invulnerable" if they feel like being (if they start punching you, you should not attempt to hit them. Move away and try again or desperation.)
Bosses which need to be infinited are weird and do require a bit of practice to understand how to infinite this specific boss. Garoben should be infinited by being almost entirely inside of her horizontal position, while carefully approaching outside of her range vertically. Obviously to any players of arcade beat em ups, understanding and using vertical space properly is key, since vertical and horizontal space have different functions.
Kyulene is a little similar, but you can stay farther away from her horizontally. She's also a bit unique in that the infinite works differently if shes flying or on the ground. Zoisite can be abused by throwing her around over and over and never letting her get away when she gets up from the ground, either by running towards her or throwing her into a wall and then going backwards. Basically, every boss has its own little trick, which is sometimes quite hard (Twin Kyulene, Kunzite & Zoisite) and sometimes... laughably simple (Queen Beryl, the final boss).
Scoring is a bit awkward, although I wouldn't say it's bad per se. It does seem to suit the game and It's the logical step to go for if you just want more Sailor Moon in your life, right? You get points "per attack" on targets. What I mean is you don't actually gain any score for attacking multiple enemies at once. For a game with such strict timers and in a genre where enemy herding is important, It's pretty interesting of the game to want you to fight enemies 1 by 1 for optimal score. Obviously the timer won't actually let you do this all game. With swift yet delicate button presses you can actually stunlock an enemy both to your left and your right simultaneously. Furthermore, throwing an enemy gives great score, but also takes a lot of time (the enemy needs to come back before it can be attacked again) and does more damage. Obviously then, it's optimal to throw enemies when they have only 1 hit remaining anyway, for maximum score.
The other ways of gaining more score I've noted includes collecting crystals when you already have the maximum number of 5. There is seemingly luck involved here as not all crystal drops are consistent (some can be food items). Stage 5 and 8 are the stages that are incredibly rough on time without using crystals. Luckily though, you can use your crystals on the stage 8 midboss (which is essentially the true last boss) as there are no more crystals to be collected afterwards for more points anyway. So Stage 5 would be the hardest one to get through without running out of time when it comes to no-crystal use score play.
The last thing I've noted, which is very significant, is that some multiphase bosses (Any where Tuxedo Mask doesn't interrupt the fight) can be infinited even when they've already taken enough damage to be sent to the next phase. Their HP will get stuck and you can simply keep hitting them for more points. The trigger point for being sent to the next phase is being sent to the floor or for the stunlock to end. Finishing your combo, interrupting your combo, or getting timed out will all end the infinite. Stage 3 and 7 are the places where you can get a lot of score from this. Killing off a life on purpose can gain a lot of extra score by using up an entirely new timer for a lengthy infinite. All in all, a strong player focusing on score can get about twice as much points than a basic 1cc by using these techniques. Sailor Venus seems to be the girl to use for score due to her speedy 3 hit infinites, I think.
So, in terms of pure gameplay, I recommend Sailor Moon. I recommend it but only to people that genuinely enjoy this genre for what it is. It's pure beat em up fun. It offers a fun challenge. If you think it's too hard, I still recommend 2 player mode. 2 Players makes the game far easier. As far as I could tell, the game didn't add any enemies or anything like that. So you can split the enemies in half for each player! In fact, right after having No-death cleared this game with a friend, I still needed to use a couple of continues to finish the game on my own. That goes to show how much easier it gets with 2 players.
Now, having talked extensively about playing the game, I wish I was able to talk more about playing the game from the point of view of a fan of the anime... Perhaps another reviewer could fill in on that aspect more. I understand that enemies and bosses in the game are taken from the anime and I assume that fans of the anime will be delighted by the presentation here. Still, I want to stress, that as someone who didn't watch Sailor Moon, I was delighted by the art design regardless. The sprites and levels look beautiful. The most gorgeous thing in the game has got to be the Kyulene boss cutscene (when she flies up to the tower). That's unbelievably gorgeous stuff. It all makes sense really, when it turned out that Joker Jun is the Graphic Designer. That's the guy behind the beautiful art of ESP Ra De and Air Gallet, with their legendary final boss visuals. Using the crystals gives you crisp and good looking cutscenes that I believe are taken straight from the show. If you like the show and you have no interest in getting good at this game, it might still interest you to just check it out and marvel at it. The soundtrack is a little odd, there are some catchy tunes but also some more esoteric tracks that may not be to everyone's tastes. I enjoy it, however. Of course, it must be mentioned, that the game doesn't just look great visually on a technical level, but that I also like it for personal reasons. The girls are very cute. The enemies are precisely to my taste as well. Kyulene is a beautiful boss to be honest, and Bakene looks seriously hilarious when you infinite him, as it freezes on one of like two funny looking frames. Great personality in this game, really!
Overall, I'd call this one of the more solid arcade beat em ups I've played. I enjoyed it enough to 1cc it with Sailor Jupiter and I may just 1cc with more girls. I heard it was supposed to be one of the hardest beat em ups but I'm not sure I'd go that far. It's a bit milder than I thought based on its reputation. Still hard, though, it's just that a lot of the difficulty stems from the initial confusion of how to even handle the game. Once you plan things out properly and understand on a base level how to react to various situations, it's doable! And even if you're bad like I was initially, it's always a fun time! That's most important thing, isn't it? Why improve at a game if you don't enjoy the process? This is a great game to pick up and play and try to improve in, without any long term commitment.
A great Sailor Moon game, check it out in MAME!