I wanted to see what would happen next and was happy to beat up bad guys in order to do so. The narrative moves slowly and side missions eagerly pull you away from the main story whether you want them to or not, but I was engaged throughout. These minigames and side missions (like one where you have to track down the “shoulder pad killer”) are a highlight, and it is always a treat to see the super serious Kenshiro participate in some bizarre frivolity. Another has you donning a lab coat and playing a rhythm game where you beat up bad guys trying to steal medicine from a clinic. You can tackle minigames like one on a baseball field where thugs on motorcycles drive toward you and you knock them back with a giant piece of rebar. The melodrama of the main story is fun, but Lost Paradise shines brightest when it doesn’t take itself seriously. Yes, this is faithful to the original manga, but that didn’t keep me from feeling embarrassed about playing it in front of others. The main female characters are underdressed, and the male characters are walking muscle towers who deliver one-liners like, “Villains don’t need graves.” Plus, the violence is glorified in a way that would make the original Mortal Kombat proud. Though the upgrade system left me wanting more, I enjoyed the fighting despite the occasional difficulty spikes and repetition.įist of the North Star is an old property, and that age is reflected in how the world of Lost Paradise is rendered. This makes health and power upgrades the most useful options. Plenty of unlockable combat upgrades are available, but few changed the way I approached combat. You can upgrade your car with new materials, but they mostly offer underwhelmingly minor changes.Ĭreativity is not Kenshiro’s strong suit, and it shows in his fighting style. The clumsy driving suffers from awkward physics, but as a way to diversify the mission structure, I appreciate its presence. Walking from one story revelation to the next always involves getting sidetracked against your will, and a number of annoying missions force you to travel great distances to figure out what you need just so you can turn back around and get it.īetween (and during) the story and side missions, you drive around a large open wasteland and fight thousands of bad guys. The surprises drive engagement but are doled out at a snail’s pace. People you think are dead rarely are, and if they wear a mask, you better believe they’re hiding a revelation under there. The narrative is built around soap-opera-style twists from severely serious characters who like to keep secrets. Kenshiro explores a large city full of quest-givers and minigames, beats up groups of thugs, and sometimes takes a car out into the nearby wasteland to find materials and explore other, smaller towns. In that strange paradox, Lost Paradise builds up an interesting, melodramatic, and sometimes humorous story. He tries to avoid violence as best he can, but sometimes the only way to do that is to punch people so hard that their bodies burst like over-inflated balloons. This makes him a very powerful person in the apocalyptic world, but he has a heart of gold and cares only about finding his fiancée. When done correctly, this causes them to explode in violent displays. In a world ravaged by nuclear destruction, Kenshiro is a master of the Hokuto Shinken style of martial arts, which focuses on attacking pressure points on his opponents’ bodies. In some ways, this weird amalgamation of franchises works, but it’s not without shortcomings. Lost Paradise tells a new story in the Fist of the North Star mythos but borrows known characters and story elements from the source material and structures the experience to play like the developer’s other game series, Yakuza. Originally published in the mid-‘80s, Fist of the North Star is a successful, post-apocalyptic manga that follows a martial artist named Kenshiro who has the power to make heads explode with a single punch.
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