Now I'm not exactly fond of the DW or SW games, but I am a drooling fan of both Gundam (UC ones at least) and Hokuto no Ken. Upon hearing that there would in fact be a localization I've held off on importing it and on November 2nd Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage will hit store shelves. I'm likely the only one that cares but I'm excited.
http://www.kensrage.com/us/top.html
The site has gone up recently and under the character's tab you can hear the dubbed voices for some of the characters. For the most part I'm okay with it but I am iffy on Souther (Thouzer here apparently I guess... I don't know), disappointed in Raoh's voice and while I like Ken's something seems slightly off. Rarely do I consider going with the japanese dub despite having the US version (save for if I'm curious) but I may really consider that this time around unless I hear more (and better).
This was also just an excuse for me to talk about big beefy hunks... yeah.~<3
Edit: Finished this a couple days ago. As my experience with DW/Musou games have taught me: expect repetition. And true to what's been established there was repetition. Now I don't know who here play DW: Gundam 2, but I did and it seemed to take steps to alleviate those issues a bit (for main/plot missions at least), this game seems to ignore those steps in the right direction and instead opts to have me do the same thing over and over.
Take this for example, going through the game you'll have different characters int he same level, now playing as one you may get to jump over a wall but with another character you can't one would assume you can get to a new area, but then you remember it's a musou game as soon as you jump over that wall and reach the same area you would have with another character by simply walking.
This also probably isn't a good game to get into if you're not a fan of the series, not only because you risk whether or not you find it appealing, but because you will get like only 10% of the plot. Granted the DW Gundam game didn't give much but it seemd to cover better events better. I'll give an example albeit spoilerish:
Kenshiro meets with Jagi after the previous level when he says he more or less was going to go after him. And then you fight, and get mention of Toki and Raoh. All the while it skips over what reasons Jagi has to hate Kenshiro, the fact he manipulated Shin (whom you fought earlier) to become a dick and so on. Another example: "Thouzer" you'll hear about him killing his sensei thus making him a bitter man, and you might sympathize, but it conveniently skips over the parts where he is literally kicking puppies and enslaving children. You may see this as a minor detail. It bothers me because again I bring up DW Gundam 2, which followed plot events better.
That's more or less all that's wrong with the game to me.
On combat: I'm neutral on this, it's functional but I was never kept particularly interested in waht I was doing. And I noticed something odd: Kenshiro unstoppable badass of the 21st century takes like 15 punches to kill one mook, it takes Mamiya the weakest and most ineffectual character 2 hits... to kill five of them.
On the rest, if you played one Musou game you've played them all and will know how the rest of this plays like.
As a fan of HnK I give this a 7. Good enough.
As the normal passerby who would contemplate buying this I give it a 5. Average, not terrible, don't bother unless you're into Musou or are just VERY curious.
As I stated earlier this isn't a great place to start with HnK in contrast to DW Gundam 2 in which I can argue DW Gundam 2 is a decent place to start, but I don't know why you would.
Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage (Hokuto Musou)
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