Xena Warrior Princess: Talisman of Fate

The company that gave us one of the most horrible games ever, Superman 64, gave us a real decent fighting game called Xena Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate. It’s a 4-player fighting game that has you playing as early characters from the show, such as Autolycus, Ceasar, Lao Ma and my favorite, Velasca.

The game is real simple, it’s a fighting game, you pick your character, fight your way to the end boss, which is Despair, and win the game. There are different modes you can play in this game that are quite a bit of a challenge such as God mode, that has you fighting two characters at once, and a mode I refuse to play, Titan mode, that has you fighting against three characters at once. All on the same team.

Yeap, that’s kind of unfair, especially when they all charge at you and you’re by yourself.

Anyways, the designs of these characters are Nitendo graphic-like looks, so they’re kind of bad but not in the most horrific way. The characters move really smoothly, even in the smallest arena they move perfectly fine. You can crouch, jump, jump off walls, change focus on your enemies...

Your characters also have different costumes, but I don’t think you can actually choose to select the costume of your choice. Your character has four in total, and you can view them when you’re fighting against three other computers or friends and they all choose the same character that you’re fighting. Though what’s weird is that, if you’re playing on a mode that has you come back to life after you’ve been defeated, your costume changes to player 4’s costume. And if that person dies all the way, your character will change into player three’s costume that is if they’re still living... I don’t quite understand why it does that, I should be in the same costume I started off in. When you’re suddenly fighting against three other people that looks like you, it can be frustrating to remember what character belongs to you. It just depends on what color team you are one.

Yeah, there’s teams in this game. You’re either the Fire, Sun, River or Forest team. Even when it’s a fatal-four way match, you still pick your color so you know who’s who.

Since I’m talking about teams, lets talk about the modes that you can play for the arcade mode. So there’s mortal, which is easy, then there’s warrior which is norma, and God is the hard mode. God mode is where you’re fighting two against one. Now this is somewhat key to note. So, let’s say you’re fighting Velasca and Joxer at Velasca’s arena. Velasca is going to be on defense while Joxer is going to be on offense. Now the difference between both of them is  that Velasca is just going to be standing still and throwing projectiles out at you every single time you’re not near her. Until your character is within walking range, she will attack you with her weapon, otherwise, she’ll just be throwing. Now Joxer on the other hand, will be coming after you, he will block most of your moves (as he normally does) and will follow you no matter where you go. This is like this no matter what level you’re on. The difficult one, in my opinion, is when you’re facing Xena and her partner on Xena’s arena. Xena has the only projectile that has two more chances in hitting you if her projectile misses. Which is kind of unfair to be honest, but she is the main character of the game go figure.

Since I really didn’t get a fair chance in Titan mode, I can only tell you that how things go in that mode is that they all gang up on you basically No one stands still, they all charge after you. Which sucks because if you’re fighting in a small arena, there’s no way you can move too much.

So what are the characters you can play as? Well there’s Xena, Gabrielle, Cesar, Ares, Velasca, Callisto, Lao Ma, Autolycus, Ephiny, Despair and Joxer. Joxer, who is the clumsiest character on the show is actually the toughest one right next to Lao Ma. He does tend to block a lot, which bothers me in some instances but he is hard to beat at times. Lao Ma, she just throws a series of combos and that long one that most characters have, it just annihilates you. What I do find a tad bit strange is this... When I first got the game, Gabrielle’s name was not Gabrielle in the character selection. Her name was actually “Hope,” the name of her daughter on the show. Why was she first called Hope? Hope isn’t even on the show that much, and yeah, later on she grows up to look identical towards her mother, but still. And, to make matters worse in this situation, there’s even a cheat code to change Hope’s name to Gabrielle! You’d think they would do it where you would change Gabrielle’s name to Hope, not the other way around.

Some of these codes are weird, most of them has you giving your characters clown noses, you can dress Despair in a bunny costume, and there’s a cheat code to unlock the Titan mode. I think they’re just plain weird, and some of them, when I tried inputing them, didn’t work.

The story and the endings aren’t really that much worth mentioning because it’s not too thrilled to be like “ohmigosh, what happened to them when they won? Did she/he die? Gain immortality?” The game just gets too boring every once and a while because your opponents LOVES to block in this game, and at times I feel like jumping and kicking them in the air does the trick. It’s a redundant thing to do, but this is the only way I can keep myself from turning off the game.

It’s not a bad game, but I wouldn’t call it a good one either. It’s not something I would spend so much money on if you see it behind a case, and why would it be behind a case to be honest unless you’re that big of a Xena fan. Bu’t I must admit, the game does have good qualities in it to play it every once and a while. It just wasn’t that great of a fighting game as there are plenty of flaws I could nitpick about, but because I’m in a good mood writing this, I don’t want to take that way from me.

So, all in all, I’d give this game a C for a grade.