About this series:
I write game reviews for the University of Missouri-Columbia's student-run newspaper The Maneater. However, the process usually goes something like this:
1) Write review.
2) Squash it down to under 600 words for the paper.
3) Feel unsatisfied with the final product.
So I'm taking this opportunity to share my full, un-edited reviews with you guys, complete with every facet of the games that I feel are worth discussing. Hope you enjoy!
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It still amazes me how often some ultra-niche Japanese games find their way to the western hemisphere. Plenty of popular games come from Japan (everyone and their mother knows who Mario is), but some games are so steeped in Japanese mythology and culture that it’s borderline pretentious.
We’re not talking about cutesy anime stuff, either. Muramasa: The Demon Blade is pure Japanese mythology and legend, depicting a world where powerful gods and demons walked among the living, and Heaven and Hell were just down the road. It’s a fictional version of the country’s earliest years, when inhabitants still lived in bamboo houses and horseback was the fastest mode of land travel. Ninjas and samurai compose more than half of the population, everyone has a hankering for rice balls and tofu, and for whatever reason, swords are really, really important.
This fantastical rendition of feudal Japan plays host to the tales of two characters. The princess Momohime becomes the unwilling victim of a mighty swordsman Jinkuro, whose soul had been forcibly removed from his body and so must seek refuge in Momohime’s body instead. Jinkuro forces Momohime’s disembodied soul to tag along while he seeks a powerful demonic blade as well as a new host body.
The young ninja protégé Kisuke has a decidedly less interesting story, mainly because a mysterious amnesia serves as the crux of his plight. He too seeks a demon blade for reasons he initially cannot remember, and so he pieces his memory back together along the way. And of course, this journey involves plenty of love, loss and vengeance. Yawn.
If you aren’t already accustomed to all of these ancient Japanese concepts, you might not have enough energy left to concentrate on the stories themselves. The U.S. publisher Ignition has kept localization to a minimum. Voice acting remains Japanese with English subtitles, and the amount of Japanese locations and characters to remember can get pretty overwhelming.
Just forget the fiction. Muramasa’s greatest strengths come through when the immediate goal is just “make all the bad guys disappear.” The precision and depth of the controls rival that of even modern action titles like the Ninja Gaiden games. Every slice feels like it has some serious heft and impact. It also avoids the trap of button-mashing with the multiple blades system. You can carry three swords into battle, and blocking attacks will eventually cause them to shatter, forcing you to constantly swap out for new ones and keep a close watch on their durability. The challenge and thrill of Muramasa’s combat far exceeded what I have come to expect from side-scrolling 2D games.
Oh yeah, didn’t I mention? 2D in every way, shape and form. Vanillaware maintains an admirable and uncompromising approach to 2D game design, from the gameplay to the visuals. Every character and object on the screen has mountains of detail and color. I can’t even begin to imagine how much money and man-hours were required just for art assets and animation.
Its design also feels like it fell out of a time warp from the early nineties. One huge map, sectioned off by cities, which are further sectioned off by a series of connected “rooms.” Muramasa couldn’t get any more old-school had it been rendered in 8-bit graphics. Yet, nostalgia doesn’t quite fit the description for the feeling that such a game evokes. Nostalgia implies that what once was fashionable now feels outdated. Muramasa just proves that these kinds of games never go out of style.
The game feels pretty meaty on content, even though the two character’s stories retread the exact same ground. Six hours seems like the average length for one character’s story on the easier difficulty, and somewhere around ten hours on the harder one, but much work remains unattended to after the completion of both. The stories have three different endings apiece depending on which blades you have equipped, so the quest to acquire all of the more than 100 swords in the game extends its life considerably. Also, personally, the harder difficulty feels more like the correct one, as health-recovery items feel pointless in the easier path, so taking on both stories under the more challenging circumstances gives the game even longer legs if you want.
Under normal circumstances, the barrier of entry for enjoying Muramasa should be prohibitively high for all but the most zealous Japanophiles. If a game is truly great, however, its greatness will come through in spite of cultural barriers. Ignition seemingly took a big risk by bringing Muramasa to a Western audience, but you don’t have to know what a ganmodoki is to appreciate beautiful graphics and deep, gratifying combat.
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Other Notes
- Getting from place to place in Muramasa has its ups and downs. Fast-travel options are available, but not in the ways you’d want them. You can use a relatively cheap item to immediately warp to your last save point, but this only cuts the legwork in half. Some travelers also offer boat rides, but they only appear in specific places, and your destination is pre-determined (and usually not where you planned). Warping between citites for free becomes available only after completing a story. So yes, lots of back-tracking. Is that so unbearable? Try soaking in the beautiful scenery along the way to take your mind off the menial task like I did.
- You can’t use items during battle unless they’re part of your five allotted slots in the Item Shortcut menu. This works well most of the time, as it forces you to make intelligent choices about how many recovery items you should carry, but I really wish I could use the items that cure status ailments (burning and poison) at any time. If you get poisoned or burned during a fight and don’t have the proper item in your shortcut menu, you’ll just have to grit your teeth until the effect wears off over time. Putting the item in your shortcut menu requires more foresight than most people probably have, and it feels wasteful to give up a slot for a health-recovery item just on the chance that the enemies in the next room have poison-based attacks.
- Beyond my personal detachment with Japanese mythology, I didn’t find either of the two stories at all compelling, even after witnessing all of the endings. Momohime and Kisuke’s tales intertwine in some of these, but are these encounters considered canon? I can’t tell without some sort of “true” ending that makes both main characters allies instead of adversaries. Without English voice acting for proper context, I can’t get any sense of emotion from the characters. At some point, I just decided that following the plots wasn’t worth my time and energy. Fighting demons and ninjas? That I can get behind.
- It aint anime, but man can the game get uncomfortably weird in spots. Both characters hang out with foxes that have shape-shifted into geisha women. I’m talking about ladies with fox ears and bushy tails, but also massive cleavage. Thanks for giving more material for furries to work with, Vanillaware. Then there’s the hot springs you can go to for restoring health, which basically gave the artists and excuse to draw Momohime with just a towel covering her up. Things get even more awkward when other characters are already in the hot springs before you. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be amused or aroused, but I’m neither; I’m just disturbed.