Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise - Falling short of being a masterpiece
If you’re from my generation, and your anime block was similar to what we got in Italy, then you might’ve heard or even seen Fist of the North Star on television. The story of man wandering the wasteland of a post apocalyptic world in the desperate search of his lost love: along the way he will face various trials, helping the people in this world, clashing fists with powerful foes and becoming the beacon of hope in a world ravaged by fear and violence.
Buronson and Tetsuo Hara created a masterpiece that still holds incredibly well today. Kenshiro is the stoic hero that would never turn his back on injustices while also never being afraid about showing his more fragile side, in a world where compassion equals to weakness. His enemies are also pretty layered too, they aren’t all completely crazed psychopaths with no morality, they have a lot of nuance and each fight with them carries a lot of emotional weight and pathos. After 40 years it’s still a cornerstone of anime and manga.
This series is no stranger to a lot of video game adaptations, out of all of them though there was one in particular that caught my attention because of the people that worked on it: RGG Studio! A studio that I became extremely familiar with thanks to Yakuza 0, my introduction to the Yakuza series, which I still love to this day.
This felt like a match made in heaven since both series had a lot of points in common between them: a strong and stoic protagonist who always puts helping others before himself, a heavy dramatic story, memorable villains and emotional battles. It really felt like a match made in heaven, and finally after all this time, I managed to finally play this game. Was it worth all the wait? Let’s find out.
Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise
About the Plot
Contrary to the norm of anime inspired videogames who tend to just recreate the plot of the story by going through the most important battles like a bullet point, Lost Paradise creates an alternative story to the original. The story starts after the fight between Kenshiro and Shin at southern cross city. Ken is still looking out for his lover Yuria when he overhears rumors about a woman with the same name headed to a city called Eden.
What Kenshiro finds there might as well be a true earthly paradise. The whole city is self sufficient, they have food, electricity and clean water for all the inhabitants, all thanks to the installation which Eden has been built around, a giant dome called Sphere City.
After a turbulent meeting with the city guards guided by captain Jagre, Kenshiro manages to meet the ruler of the city, Queen Xsana, who confirms to him that Yuria has indeed arrived in Eden, but she was severely wounded. To heal her wounds she was brought to a chamber in Sphere City called “chamber of miracles” where there’s a machine who they say is capable of healing any wound of those who rest inside it. Unfortunately right after the device activated, Sphere City completely sealed itself and no one has been able to enter it since.
To make matters worse there are constant incursions by Kyo-oh and his Army of Ruin. He’s a very powerful warrior whose identity is covered behind a mask and for years he’s slowly amassing a powerful army in order to conquer Eden. Caught in the crossfire, Kenshiro decides to stop at Eden in order to both wait for Yuria and stop Kyo-Oh’s desire of conquest.
Of course I was happy to see them, and I think their inclusion was a necessity since the target of this type of games are mainly the fan of the product it’s based on, but considering how the main plot is extremely contained and barely lasts over ten hours, they should’ve been relegated to substories and rather than the main plot.
This also has the side effect of making the original characters of Eden feel like they’ve been put to the side and not getting the focus they deserved. I wanted to see a much deeper dive in the relationship between Xsana and his father Nadai, a bigger focus on the blooming friendship between Kenshiro and Jagre and finally making Kyo-Oh and his lieutenant Targa more ruthless in their mission about conquering Eden. The city itself is literally a paradise for a world like this and the possibilities for a complex story filled to the brim with intrigue, betrayal and people brought to the limit in order to conquer it and instill their perfect idea of a society that should run this world.
But I admit, most of my disappointments are probably due the extremely high expectations I created for myself. RGG Studio has always been excellent with drama and character work with the Yakuza series and expecting the same level of care and nuance in what’s essentially a Licensed Game, and thus bound to very different constrictions, was very naive. I don’t wanna make it sound like I hated the experience though, the story is still enjoyable, the characters have been portrayed perfectly and it was incredibly fun to see those iconic battles recreated with the vast and powerful tools of the Hokuto Shinken in my hands.
The cherry on top was an excellent presentation: the battle choreography and direction complete with the voice acting are very high level, there is a lot of care and attention to replicate moments from the anime to perfection. I also love the style chosen for the coloring, it really makes it look like the characters are popping straight off the pages of the manga and it looks beautiful. For every flaw the story might have the game completely makes up for it thanks to this aesthetic, sound and most of all… Gameplay!
About the Gameplay
In terms of pure gameplay, we aren’t going much off the beaten path of what works for the Yakuza series. We control Kenshiro during his exploration of Eden with various enemies pulling us into fights.. The combat system is about chaining up combos with light and heavy attacks and ending it up with a special Hokuto technique that will most likely result in our enemies exploding into giblets at our feet.
The enemy variety is fairly limited, mostly comprised of various buffed, shoulder pads wearing, mohawk sporting ravagers of the wasteland. Going from the slimmer types with less health but faster attacks to the giant or fat dudes which have a lot more health, attack slower but are also very hard or impossible to stagger. And if you find yourself in a desperate situation Kenshiro can take advantage of Burst mode, a temporary buff that not only makes your attacks hit harder but gives you more options in movement to take care of enemies around you.
During the course of your adventure Kenshiro will gain levels and it’s up to us to decide how to spend those levels in the different skill trees at your disposal. You can concentrate on just leveling up your life bar and attack stats, unlock more movement options for agility and combo strings or unlock more special attacks that can be used in specific situations during combat. You’re completely free when it comes to character management so you can adjust him in the way that fits your playstyle the most.
But combat is just a very small portion of this game because, as always, RGG Studio’s biggest talent is filling up a relatively small city with a ton of side activities, and this game is no exception to that rule. The sheer quantity of side activities in Eden is staggering and they will become your major time investment in this game, a lot more than the main story.
Besides the substories where we’re gonna help the people of Eden with their problems, we also have activities like exploring the wastelands with our trusty buggy. You can run around collecting various materials which would unlock more and more upgrades for your vehicle which will allow you to take part in some races, where you will start small rivalries with other competitions in your quest to become the champion of the wasteland. There’s also treasure maps to find which will give you rewards like unlocking classic SEGA arcade games like Outrun and Space Harrier. There’s even a port of a very old japanese Kenshiro game for the Sega Master System!
Another activity that will become extremely time consuming is the host club management. where you have to manage a club in order to repay a debt of 100 million! The minigame is very simple, you recruit girls to your club, you choose the best ones to call at work depending on the clients you’re expecting that night and just make sure the client have a very nice evening while also serving a dose of Hokuto Shinken to the ones that create the most problems.
But the activities I had the most fun doing were the bartending and clinic ones, both these minigames really show how much the developers had fun putting this game together.
The bartending job is very simple just three different QTE minigames to serve the drink to our client, but it’s just the sight of smoking wearing Kenshiro: chiseling down a giant ice block, shaking a drink at the speed of sound and mixing a drink so quickly that it causes a tornado to form out of the glass… I was laughing so hard the entire time!
It needs to be said that all of these side activities aren’t exactly clear of any flaw. Managing the car was very time consuming because of the grind for materials and the Host Club got really monotonous really fast because of how repetitive it felt. If I had more free time in my hands I probably would’ve tried to complete everything, but I am unfortunately at a period in my life where I have to manage how I spent my free time, but for all you that have a lot of time to dedicate to this game and find themselves having fun with all these stuff, it’s certainly a positive note to have all this range of content available.
I really think more studios should follow the example set by RGG Studio with their games, sometimes you don’t need an exaggerating expansive world, all you need is just a small contained one which is incredibly dense with content.
I can also hear some of you probably scratching their heads and think these minigames are way too exaggerated or out of place in something which is extremely serious and dramatic like Fist of the North Star, but honestly this is where RGG Studio shines the most! Their ability to mix up an enthralling, very serious story with most the fun and hilarious side activities is next to none, and I applaud them for actually working up and adapting some of their staple content in a way that’s fitting to the world of First of the North Star instead of just recycling what they already had in Yakuza.
In Conclusion
So, do I recommend this game? The answer is complicated!
If you’re already a fan of Fist of the North Star, I assume that you most likely already played this game, but… if you’re like me and haven’t until now,I think you really should! It’s fun, varied, chock full of content and very easy to find at a low price. The only downside is that this game is still a Playstation 4 exclusive, so if you don’t have a Sony console in your home, you’re basically out of luck.
If you have never heard of Fist of the North Star, I doubt that playing this game will actually make you curious enough to check out the series, I actually feel that might give you the wrong impression about it. So my advice in that case is to look up the anime or manga and then maybe give a chance to the game later.
The story of Fist of the North Star is one that every fan of the media should experience at least once in their life! It’s the story about a man in search of his lost love that becomes the beacon of hope for the oppressed in a world where the strongest rules and the weak succumbs. It’s a touching story with incredible characters that I think will resonate with a ton of people today.
So what do you think? Did you enjoy this game? How attached are you to Fist of the North Star? Let me know in the comments. In the meantime I still have a couple of things to add about the plot, so follow me to the…
SPOILER SECTION - Proceed at your own risk
So, let’s talk about Eden because it’s really the part of the story that felt.. quite a bit of a stretch. What’s hiding in Sphere City and what’s the chamber of miracles?
Sphere City is a relic of the world before the apocalypse, a giant warehouse of nuclear missiles complete with nuclear reactor, a vaste water supply complete with an epuration system to make it last potentially forever. This “paradise” was first discovered by Raoh and Nadai. With the latter receiving the task of protecting the structure because of how extremely dangerous it would’ve been for the entire world.
Since then, Nadai has kept himself busy as the ruler of Eden in order to create a stable self-sufficient society. In doing so though he slaughtered everyone in the town that knew about the secret of Sphere City, until he was the only one left in the know. Until one day when he almost fell into temptation of using the Chamber of Miracles to heal his dying wife. After that he realized he wasn’t suited to lead the city and thus took the identity of Kyo-Oh and put together the army of ruin. His true objective wasn’t conquest, rather to keep the most dangerous ravagers of the wasteland in check while also forcing Eden to be always vigilant about dangers.
But why is this chamber of miracles so important? Because apparently the healing pod of that chamber is also linked to a countdown timer which once the patient is properly healed will launch all the nuclear missiles of Sphere City, leaving the person in the pod as the only person alive and waking up into a completely destroyed world.
For what lore reason should exist a healing chamber capable of housing a single person to receive some cures just for them to wake up in a world completely destroyed by a nuclear holocaust?! What was the end goal of those who built it?! I could’ve understood if there were dozens of healing pods, that way a nation could’ve been selective of the people who they would save and then repopulate whatever was left of the earth later, but we only see the single healing pod and everything seems built to house that single pod. It’s a system that leaves you more confused the more you think about it.
I’m aware that this is just a narrative device that exists solely to give Kenshiro a reason to free Yuria from the chamber before the missile launch takes place, with the risk that maybe she wasn’t fully healed yet, putting him in the position of choosing between saving her loved one and the rest of the world. But unfortunately this is handled sloppily and way too quickly since by the time everything is revealed we’re basically at the very tail end of the game.
Unfortunately this isn’t the only plot point that’s very hastily and sloppily handled, let’s talk about the guy that will become our true main villain in all of this story, lieutenant Targa.
As I said before, during his time as king of Eden, Nadai killed everyone that happened to be in the know about Sphere City’s secret, by those who were killed there were Targa’s parents and since then his only purpose has been one of vengeance, and he wasn’t acting alone, there was another orphan that was helping in this quest… a boy called Jagre!
The two were thus biding their time, waiting in the shadows for the right moment to strike. And thus once Nadai opened the doors of Sphere City in order for Kenshiro to stop the timer and save Yuria, they decided to strike, with Targa now aiming to use the arsenal of the city to create his own perfect world.
I love the idea of this twist! Jagre’s betrayal was something I completely didn’t see coming! But again, once all of this happens we are basically minutes before the final boss fight. Jagre goes from traitor to resentful in the span of ten minutes! It’s way too rushed and doesn’t have the impact it could’ve had if the story actually had time to breathe a little.
As much as I enjoyed my time with this game, the main plot has been unfortunately a bit of a disappointment in how it was handled, it’s clear that for whatever reason, RGG Studio wasn’t able to deliver their best work in terms of writing.
Did you feel the same way? Did you enjoy the plot in spite of all this, or even to you this felt way too much of a mess? Let me know because I'm really curious about it!
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