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Sunday
Sep132009

Muramasa: The Demon Blade Review

The art is beautiful, but don't expect much variety.

Imagine a world in which Disney created hentai porn. Imagine the beautiful hand drawn art of Disney, mixed with writing found in the porn industry. That’s the kind of feeling I get after playing Muramasa: The Demon Blade. The game is gorgeous and I found myself playing it for hours, but the more I played it, the less interested I became in it.

The art is beautiful; the gentle sway of wheat blowing in the background; the animations of the minor enemies; your character fighting for his or her life. The gorgeous artwork must have come at a price because you’re going to see that art a lot. There must have only been twenty to thirty backgrounds and stages. You will traverse the same field, town, city, forest, and cave over and over again; the same goes for enemies. I only noticed around ten different enemy types, not including the bosses.

Those impressions were only from playing as Mohimine, but Muramasa also includes a second character, who is called Kisuke. Kisuke travels the same world, but he starts off on the opposite side, which makes these thirty environments seems stretched out further. The environments do feature unique bosses from what I’ve played, which at least adds something new.

The gameplay is fun and I found myself addicted to leveling up. As you level up and defeat bosses, you can create better swords. Each sword requires that you have a certain strength and vitality to use it. You forge these swords by killing monsters and eating food. The game lets you know if you will be able to immediately use a sword before you actually create it; it’s a small, but nice feature.

I wanted to really like the swords, but you never really get attached to any of them; you are constantly upgrading to a new weapon. Each character has two styles: Blade and Long Blade. Blade is faster and Long Blade has a better reach. Besides the difference in style, each of the weapons also has a special power and some even give you effects (i.e. +2 to strength). One annoying aspect is that when you get a sword you like; a sword with a special you enjoy. You’ll upgrade it because it’s weak and while the next sword is vastly more powerful, the special is terrible. In the end, I stopped caring about the specials and just used whatever was available.

As stated previously, the combat starts out very fun, but like so much of this game, nothing about it ever really changes. You start out with every move unlocked and never learn anything new. It would have been nice to learn something new along the course of the game, if only to add some variety. You are allowed to carry three swords at a time and can switch between them as often as you like. You constantly need to keep your eye on the soul strength of your sword; every hit you take will deplete it. If it takes too much damage then it will break, leaving you open for horrible physical damage, while doing less damage yourself.

Muramasa has a lot to offer, but in the end, it’s basically the video game equivalent to Megan Fox. It’s beautiful to look at, but it doesn’t contain any real substance. I wish I could give it more sausages (Megan Fox too), but sadly I can only give Muramasa: The Demon Blade three sausages.

  • The Good: Beautiful art, fun combat, and some cool bosses.
  • The Bad: Monotonous areas, and a terrible story.
  • Feeling Robbed moment: Seeing the same cave...over and over again.

 

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