Following on from the legacy of the previous film, the Heated Battle of the Gods continues the previous film's legacy of oversimplifying the plot structure and characters of the franchise, but to an even worse degree. Without major spoilers and linking back to my review of the prior film, Evil Goddess Eris, the plot is the same structure of big bad wants to kill Athena -> Athena is trapped somehow -> Bronze Saints fight to save her -> Resolution involving the Saggitarius Cloth. What makes this film even worse in its execution of an oversimplified version of the main series' common structure is has to dowith its main villain, his henchmen and the method in which Athena is incapacitated. Whereas Eris' portrayal in the previous film hearkened back to her depiction in mythology, Drbal being an evil Odin is not only inaccurate to the mythology, but makes him a very one-dimensional and stupid character (if he was strong enough to overpower Athena, why even bother with all the secrecy?). His henchmen are all very one-note or lacking in characterisation as well and serve as no more than punching bags for the Bronze Saints, and very soft punching bags at that when this was created during the time the 12 Zodiac Palaces battle was ongoing in the anime and presumably set after it commenced (given Athena's Saints being referred to as those of Sanctuary), yet none of the God Warriors required the Saints to use the Seventh Sense and even Drbal wasn't treat as an overwhelming threat to a Gold Saint.
The redeeming elements of this film, beyond the great art as with the first, would be Frey's actions in actively opposing Drbal's actions despite his affiliation with Asgard adding a bit more to character motivations than most of the other films did. On the subject of characters and Asgard, however, this further devalues the film as what potential to be found within its premise was executed to a far greater degree with the anime's Asgard Arc which makes this film absolutely redundant.

Overall, there's no need to waste time with this one beyond seeing some of its nice art and animation when its paper thin plot and characters were remade into something far better and even the later films' shared continuity completely ignores it. Easily the worst of the original 4 Saint Seiya films.