Muramasa: the Demon Blade

First, I have to say that I'm very, very burned out on Muramasa. It's a great game, but putting in the last 15-20 hours of it over the span of about two days? Probably not the best idea if you want to like the game in the future, sometimes. Of course, that's probably because the end is the most boring part. But, I digress.

The game is, as I said, great, though it's not without flaws. The thing they manage best, though, is pulling off atmosphere. For those unfamiliar with Vanillaware, they specialize in gorgeous looking 2D games. If you've not seen screenshots of the game, nothing I can do will do it justice, so go check some out. This art, though, works amazingly well for this game. They also focus on the background, making the backgrounds change among areas and reflect the area you traveled through, are about to travel through, etc. It's amazing when you look at the background and see... Japan, as you're climbing a mountain, and you're near the top. Or when you approach a city, and you notice... the background is increasingly more *on fire*. Further, the voiced dialogue of the game was left entirely in the original Japanese. Sure, it may have been a budget thing on the localization team's fault, but I think it adds to the game.

Another great thing, is that the bosses of this game are the main attraction. Every boss is larger than life and will likely punish you the first time you fight it - But then you'll swap your equips around, notice some patterns, and do better. Each boss is a huge encounter, though, with flashy attacks and a feeling of "I'm fighting HIM/HER/THAT?!" at the beginning. I loved it. It also helps that you fight 6 gods over the span of the game. Those are interesting, to say the least. The bosses make up for the lack of variety elsewhere with their changing attacks, varying patterns, and the complex way they fight.

And now, a double edged sword (do ho). The swords: There are 108 of them to equip in the game. Each one has a different attack strength, different stat requirements to wield it, a potential passive ability, and a special attack. The special attack is really what differentiates them, as the properties of each special attack differ widely. The best ones, though, invariably hit a number of times while giving you a long span of invincibility frames. But, see, you won't end up using more than maybe 2/3 of these, as they tend to unlock in large clusters. You have to forge the swords. Early game, this causes you to get a new plot sword, which lets you forge new swords, and probably only be able to forge one more, so you phase new swords in slowly, using them all. Towards midgame, however, you get a plot sword, then immediately can forge 3-4 new swords, giving you a bunch of swords, and all but those with the best ability fall by the wayside. And, due to how the special attacks work, some swords end up being totally useless. There were times when I got a new set of swords and only used one, because their special attacks sucked. It would have been nice for the special attacks to have been balanced better and for the swords to have felt a bit more different. Ideally, less swords (though 108 swords is a neat touch, given that it's not 99 or 100, and it's a number sacred to Buddhism) that felt more different and dropped slower.

The controls were mostly great, with a touch of bad. The best thing was that there was one attack button. Tap it to attack, hold it and hit a direction to attack in that direction. Tapping up in the ground gives you a slashing uppercut that launches, down in the air stabs down to the ground very quickly, and left and right gives you a dash in that direction that attacks anything you pass over. It's a very fluid and mobile system. However, the one thing I dislike about it is that the damn dodge button isn't a button but hitting down-left or down-right. This is fairly hard to trigger on command on the ... not amazing Wii d-pad. On the classic controller, though, you can at least switch to using the analog stick to dodge, which works a bit better. I... really wish dodge would have been a button, though.

The endings for the game are another nice touch - There's 3 for each character. The game has two narratives, which interweave to make the whole story in the end. When you finish one of them for the first time, you get a sword. You finish the other character's, and you get another sword, and then both characters can use all the swords that the other has access to. This lets you forge more swords that require you to have swords from both characters. Then, if you beat the game as either character again while wielding the swords you get for beating the game, you get a different ending (and a different final boss, for that matter). Then, finally, if you beat the game *again* while wielding the last sword on the forge tree, you get the last ending for the characters. I really liked this idea, as it lets you watch any of the endings again when you want to, and is just a neat idea overall. The only flaw with this is that the requirements to wield the final sword require you to be at level 85+ with both characters. This necessitates grinding at the very end of the game, just to wield the sword to get the final ending. So, the only grindy part of the game is the very, very end, which is a ... bad idea. The third ending for each character is kind of worth it, and the levels go by pretty fast.


But now, the flaws.
First up, is the game's weird, weird difficulty curve. The enemies level up with you, at least on Shura (the harder difficulty), so the levels seem... not entirely useful, though it does seem like you do gain some ground as you level and face the same enemy, but you never just destroy them and become immune to their attacks. This just sort of... feels weird, in an RPG. It makes the enemy lairs, where the game recommend you be level X or above ... sort of odd to be level recommended, as leveling up only minorly helps.

Next, is that there is very, very little enemy diversity. I could probably name every non-boss enemy in the game. In fact... Monk, ninja (and, admittedly, they have variety within themselves, as they have different weapons), samurai/ronin, small oni (of which there are 3 types, which slightly differ in attack), the 4 big oni (who slightly differ from each other), toads, tengu, ghosts, ice spirits, ghost samurai, ghost gunmen. Then there are 4 other encounters you can have - Weird blob thing, flock of small things you'll kill in one attack and pose no threat, and 2 animals, which are there to give you cooking ingredients when they die. This is a total of 11 enemy types. In an action RPG. I didn't get too bored of them, but it would have been nice if it wasn't just a stream of palette swapped ninja as every third encounter.


Overall, it's a great game. A must play for those who like action RPGs. I've heard complaints about the game being too short, but to finish both characters was about 15-20 hours for me, then to get all the endings was about 25. Which is longer than most games nowadays, so, hey!