Shaman King: Power of Spirit (PlayStation 2, 2004)

Okay, cool, awesome, STELLAR, wow, amazing, superstacular, spectacular, megadooper cool, ooberstellar, uber awesome

I liked the game, at a great price, and I was able to find the game after searching for it over 6 yrs after I missed the first release of the game in department stores.

Much loved.

my son loves it, says it's much more of a challenge than he thought! he says it has great graphics, gameplay is fluid, and he can't put it down since it came in the mail. he definitely recommends this game to everyone. he usually beats most games within the first couple of hours but he has been working on this one for over a day and still has not beat it. he absolutely loves it.

Just for starters, I am not a fan of Shaman King. In fact, I had never seen, nor even heard of it before playing this game. So if you enjoy the series, you may like the game more than I did.
This game is not long, maybe 7 hours or so, and even less is the time you spend in the combat mode actually playing. Probably two-thirds, or more, of this game is dialogue. And maybe a quarter of the dialogue is actually voiced. The voices seem to cut in and out through a scene. In my opinion, just keep the voices off, but whatever. The story is a bit rough, but that may be due to my lack of knowledge of the series itself.
Now onto the combat section, which you actually do get to see now and then. It starts out as turn-based, you moving your character close enough to the enemy in order to engage in the real combat. Your other options in this turn based area are: using items, a special ability for each character, provoke, etc. AND, I am not kidding, a save option that does not work. It saves, but if you die and continue, you start at the beginning of the battle. If you shut it off and load, you start at the intermission. Do not know why the save option is even there. Just avoid using it. Ok, anyways, you decide to actually battle a foe. If it is the main character, Yoh Asakura, you will get to control the battle. With any of the other characters, it is just auto-calculated based on their stats. Now, inside the battle system is when this game does get fun, if you are not playing this for the story. You enter into battle mode, you do your first shiny power up, and then you wail on the enemies with your sword, using effective button combos. But, beware, you can't use your healing items in battle mode. So it's not so great, but it is still entertaining. You win the battle, you get experience, you move on.
So the basics of this game is, Talk,Fight,Talk,Talk,Fight,Talk...It is not real exciting, but hey, its not bad either. I have played much worse. For fans of this series, go get it, this game is for you. For those who don't know it, it seems to be pretty cheap, go try it out. If you don't like it, I'm sure you can pawn it off to a friend who is a fan.