411mania.com: Games - Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii) Review

Gameplay

On the face of it, Muramasa is a very simple game. As I am the world's stingiest man I played the game using a Game Cube controller (no point wasting batteries!), which turned out to be a good decision. I don't get along with the nunchuk and I won't by a classic controller, so that seemed the best way to go. The A button is used for you attack, and holding it blocks. The X button uses your currently-equipped item and Y unleashes a special attack. You can switch between your equipped swords (which becomes very useful) by pulling the L trigger. As you progress through the first few battles though, you quickly realise that all those attacks you learned in the tutorial (you DID play through the tutorial, right?) are going to come in VERY handy. Combining presses of A with various directional pushes, you can perform rush attacks, uppercuts, mid-air juggles, downward thrusts and even repel projectile attacks. Switching blades once the right gauge is full will unleash a screen-wide attack that is essential in clearing you some space in larger fights.

Even the controls, which are easy to learn but provide a variety of attacks, wouldn't be enough to make this game any more than a slicing romp through feudal Japan. What adds the needed layer of complexity is the focus on swords. Early in the game you gain the ability to forge new swords, once you have collected the right number of souls (from slain enemies and also randomly strewn around the landscape) and spirit (obtained through various means, mainly through eating food to replenish health). The swords are laid out in a huge tree with many branches and sub-branches, and as you'd expect focusing on one branch will give you more powerful swords but less variety. Concentrating on pure attack power will leave you very dead very fast on the hard setting, as some bosses will be close to impossible without the secondary abilities on some blades. For example, if you're about to fight a boss that spews poison, you might want to sacrifice some attack power to equip the sword that makes you immune to poison. You know, just on the off chance you might need it to survive. Adding this tweak of strategy to the game not only makes this more than a bog-standard slasher, but it also gives more of an RPG feel to the game.

As you progress through the various screens on your way through the story, enemies will randomly generate for you to dispatch. These vary from ninjas to goblins and trolls and even samurai and umbrella-toting assassins, with some more fantastical beasts thrown in. Generally these conflicts don't present too much of a challenge, although the first time you meet the trolls they can be a little tough. After each fight you are presented with a screen showing the XP you have earned as a result. Bonuses are available for things like striking first, dispatching the enemies quickly and repelling attacks. There are also people to talk to as you progress, unveiling the storyline which is very reminiscent of various Japanese legends. Foxes, spirits and demons feature heavily in the game, and all the dialogue is in Japanese with English subtitles. There are also various shops you can enter, which can sell you everything from cookbooks to charms that will help you in boss battles. And really, these sections of the game are just an excuse to get to those boss battles, and they are epic. Even the very first boss is huge, has a variety of attacks and takes a good 10 minutes to beat due to the dozen or so life bars he has. And of course, they don't get any easier. Some of the later bosses can only be beaten with a combination of the right sword, patience and studying attack patterns. These battles are filled with tension and add a high level of excitement to the game, the type you used to feel in games like R-Type when you're on the edge of your seat. Down to your last sliver of life, no health boosts left and the boss is close to death, and it's a question of who can connect first. Pulse-quickening stuff!

Unfortunately, the layout of the map and the way the story progresses makes for some rather tedious back-pedalling through areas that you've already cleared. Although encounters are randomly generated, for some reason it seems as though enemies almost never respawn in screens through which you've already passed. There's also a disparity in the storylines: Kisuke's boss fights are a lot easier than Momohime's are. There's not much depth or originality to the story and it often feels like something is lost in the translation of the dialogue. Perhaps that is why the story feels somewhat lacking?

Graphics

A lot of attention has clearly gone into the graphics of this game. The environments are detailed and really suck you in to the Japanese mythical atmosphere of the story. Although you cannot interact with much of the scenery, you can see fish jumping out of rivers, flames flickering and dancing and even the protagonists stealing a glance at you as you dash through the screens. Unfortunately these backgrounds soon become boring: there aren't many of them, and you see them so often that you soon forget their beauty under a veneer of monotony. That's not helped by having to run back through the same areas a few times, making it even harder to admire the work that's been done. The boss fights do take place in more varied environments, but you won't have much time to enjoy that as you'll be far too busy trying to whup ass. One thing that surprised me was the presence of some slowdown in the boss fights and some of the larger random encounters. It's not much, and it doesn't often hurt the game, but it's not something you expect to see these days.

Sound

It's hard to rate the game on this aspect. The music in the game certainly feels Japanese, which further draws you in to the game and its characters. As for things like voice acting...no idea. I don't speak Japanese unfortunately, so I can't give this a fair rating. The sound effects are pretty much what you'd expect from this type of game: the sword sounds great coming out of the scabbard, but much of the rest of the game is the usual adventure game hodge-podge of slashing sounds. The non-boss enemies are pretty much devoid of noise, which is a disappointment, but it is good to hear the sound of steel on steel in the fights with samurai, or when deflecting a thrown shuriken.

Lasting Appeal

Fortunately, the frustration and boredom induced by running back through the same screens is mitigated by having something worthwhile at the end. Playing through both stories once took me about 20 hours, and that was without finding all the secrets. Considering that the final boss unlocks a whole new branch of blades, and you gain a new ability on completing the game the first time, you could easily play through again for fun and to make some more blades. There's also the possibility of playing through and focusing on a different branch of the sword tree. There's a few weeks of dedicated play in this title before you can feel like you truly completed it, but once that's done it's unlikely you'll go back to it.

Fun Factor

I think part of what makes this game fun is that it's a hybrid game. Playing on easy you can enjoy a mindless side-scrolling action game with little chance of dying. On the harder level, you get a more involved game that requires blocking, dodging, using the correct swords and actual planning and thought. With that said, you don't lose the hack-n-slash aspect of the easier mode, it just gets toned down. Discovering the little nuances and figuring out which sword you should be making can be great fun, and there's a lot of excitement to be had when battling the huge and complex bosses.

The 411

Although I enjoyed parts of this game, it's not one I can recommend with no qualification. There are parts of the game that will make you turn it off and leave it alone for a few days, like when you go into a boss fight while being totally unequipped, or when you realise you have to run through 15 empty screens to get to the next stage. In between those quibbles is a solid game with surprising depth for a 2D side-scroller and enough extras to keep you playing for longer than you'd expect.

Graphics	7.2	Sure it's gorgeous, but the slowdown and repetition hurt the final score.
Gameplay	8.0	Simplicity and complexity rarely share a bed or a game, but they do so here. The frustration is minor compared with the reward.
Sound	6.0	I can't rate this any higher because I just don't know what's happening. Fortunately, it doesn't matter.
Lasting Appeal	7.5	It's really a question of whether your desire to complete is greater than your desire to avoid redoing the same areas over and over.
Fun Factor	7.4	I enjoyed this game a lot, but not for long. That really sums it up.
Overall	7.3 [ Good ] legend

Screenshots

All 39 Muramasa: The Demon Blade Screenshots

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