Muramasa: The Demon Blade Review

Not nearly as sharp as it looks

HIGH The hand-drawn artwork is incredible eye-candy.

LOW Feels empty and barren; a rough sketch of a bigger game.

WTF Did the developers honestly think that style trumps substance?

First things first—I need to say up front that I am a huge fan of Vanillaware's art team. Their visual designs are appealing, their artistry is clear to see, and the attention to detail given to every aspect of their presentation puts them near the top of the 2D game scene, hands down. They've done outstanding work in previous efforts, and Muramasa is no different. In fact, it may be their best work overall, and that's saying something. If games were critiqued solely on looks, Muramasa would be practically flawless.

However, it's a fact that it takes more than graphics to make a game. It can't be disputed. Although I have nothing but admiration for the intricate illustrations making up the face of Muramasa: The Demon Blade, I'm sad to report that I found nearly every other aspect of the title to be lackluster and incomplete to a ridiculous degree.

Although this 2D side-scrolling hack-n-slash game presents two characters (one a possessed princess, the other an amnesiac ninja) they're merely palette swaps for each other with no discernible difference in function. An argument might be made that each was worth including since they have different storylines, except that the plots are blurted out via impromptu dialogue snatches with little context and even less significance. There is no serious attempt made to give depth to the characters or their situations, and to say that the storytelling borders on nonsensical is being generous.

With nothing to sink dramatic teeth into, it falls to the graphics and gameplay to carry Muramasa's burden. The visuals certainly do their part, but there is precious little play to talk about.

To be fair, the mechanics of swordfighting are more elegant than they appear at first glance. By assigning attacks to one button and mapping different abilities to the D-pad, it's possible to have either character flashing back and forth across the screen in a deadly dance of upslashes, air dashes, or defensive rolls. Once the system is understood, it functions quite well and has a certain energy to the rhythm of orchestrating movement. Unfortunately, Vanillaware gives players little reason to take advantage of it.

Basically, every world in Muramasa is a series of empty squares laid out in linear fashion—and when I say "empty squares," that's exactly what I mean. The player starts at one end and crosses each zone until they reach a boss or some other event at the far end of the line. There are no puzzles, no platforming, no tricks or any interesting events... the player is simply pushing through from one side to the other and fighting a couple of quickie battles along the way. It's mind-numbingly boring, and I have a hard time believing that the developers have never had exposure to any of the countless titles prior to Muramasa which feature levels that actually progress, change, or develop in some way.

Adding insult to injury, these areas are recycled side-by-side, and there are an absurd number of them to cross. It's extremely common to pass through four or six identical areas, one right after the other with no difference between them and nothing noteworthy happening. Not only does this bring on an intense and constant sense of déjà vu, the sporadic ambushes from enemies are over in a matter of moments. The majority of the player's time with Muramasa is spent mowing down speed bumps while traveling between small segments with a bit of spark.

I will admit that when the end of each desolate, repetitive area is eventually reached, the boss battles are fairly interesting. Since their life bars tend to be quite long, the extended battles have a fair bit of kick, and a modicum of strategy is called for. That said, there are only a handful of them sprinkled throughout the game, and asking players to put up with the tedium of endlessly crossing these areas just for brief snatches of substance takes a lot of gall.

In a cursory attempt to add depth to this wading pool, Muramasa does feature a sword-development tree where a large number of blades can be unlocked by collecting the requisite points and leveling up to a required degree, but it's of little interest. Each sword feels like the last, with little effect on the generic combat or how it plays out. I felt no motivation whatsoever to earn the next blade, and the feature was produced in such straightforward fashion that it feels like it's there more out of obligation than because it actually enhances the game. At no point was there ever any "gee whiz" factor of getting a new piece of kit, and if the entire sword concept was removed, nothing significant would be lost.

In every way save the graphics, I found Muramasa: The Demon Blade to be a failure. It certainly appears to be an attractive package at first glance (doubly so on the Wii given its comparatively weak library) but the entire experience felt repetitive, shallow, and unfinished... a half-formed idea needing more meat on its bones rather than a completed project capable of commanding respect. To be brutally frank, the game failed to keep my attention for even the first hour, and the next two I put in were exactly like the first. I love the art—really, really do, but graphics alone can't carry a game. Besides its looks, Muramasa doesn't have a leg to stand on. Rating: 3.0 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Wii. Approximately 3.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains alcohol reference, fantasy violence, and suggestive themes. The violence consists of the characters slashing at enemy ninja and demons, and the suggestive themes are a few quasi-risque reveals of female characters. None of this will corrupt any youth as far as I'm concerned, although stuff of this sort is best left to the teens (and above.)

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: You won't have any problems. All dialogue is subtitled and there are no important audio cues necessary for play. Totally accessible.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade Second Opinion

The Blunted Blade

HIGH Gloriously detailed artwork.

LOW Repetitive, simplistic combat.

WTF To access the hot springs, just ask a bath monkey.

Japan's greatest swordsmiths, Masamune and Muramasa, were not contemporaries, but there are several legends involving both of them. One tells of a competition in which each one forged a sword and lowered the blade into a river. Masamune's sword seemed to be inert: fish swam up to it, the flowers floating in the river brushed by without harm. Muramasa's blade, in contrast, cut everything it touched. The fish were split in two, the flowers sliced to ribbons, and the very air hissed in pain as the weapon cleaved it. A passing monk saw the display and chided Muramasa, pointing out that Masamune's sword cut no undeserving thing, while Muramasa's blade killed indiscriminately. Time and legend have ascribed a bloodthirsty, evil aspect to Muramasa's swords, and it is this reputation that Muramasa: The Demon Blade aims to evoke.

Vanillaware, the creators of Muramasa, are probably best known for their 2007 role-playing game Odin Sphere, a game which was marked by a beautiful coherence of story, play, and symbolism. It would not be fair to expect another masterpiece of that quality, but I did expect the resemblance between the two games to be more than skin-deep. If you come to Muramasa looking for gorgeous 2D graphics and a fantastic score, you will not be disappointed. Unfortunately, the simplistic story and uneven design of Muramasa make it a hollow and repetitive experience.

Muramasa features two stories: that of the princess Momohime, possessed by the spirit of an evil swordsman, and that of the amnesiac ninja Kisuke. Unlike Odin Sphere, where the stories of the five main characters were intertwined in often surprising ways, these two tales have little besides backstory and a few shared characters connecting them. Moreover, the story is presented in very spare fashion, rarely offering anything more than a few lines of dialogue to explain why a particular boss must be fought or where to go next. There is no rich, textured narrative here, and as a result the game feels more like a quickie tour of Japanese folklore than a coherent story. The romance between Kisuke and Torahime is too understated, and Momohime's dedication to the reprehensible Yukinojyo is unmotivated and frankly sad.

The world of the game is, of course, feudal Japan, divided up into the provinces from the era of the Shogunate. These provinces appear in the game as a series of connected rooms (or zones), with some limited internal geography that must be traversed with light platforming. Sometimes these rooms are filled with enemies from the outset, in which case they can either be fought or bypassed. Random encounters also occur in these rooms, instead of in a separate battle stage, although when this happens the room no longer scrolls and the player must fight in the window onscreen at the moment of attack. Defeated enemies lose their souls, which can then be used to repair broken blades and forge new swords. Eating food (to provide "Spirit" to the character) is also necessary to forge additional weapons. The cooking element is very light, however, and most of the recipes rapidly become irrelevant because they have too small of a healing effect relative to the size of the life bar (which expands more than 50-fold over the course of the game).

The difficulty and complexity of combat, for the most part, depend entirely on the player's choice of "Muso" or "Shuro" play. In Muso mode, most battles can be won with sheer aggression, with the exception of some bosses and the random encounters with oni in the game's version of hell. In Shuro mode the fighting becomes more complex and tactical, although many enemies are still susceptible to a strategy of continual attack. Momohime and Kisuke have exactly the same controls and abilities, however, so the only real difference in gameplay between their respective stories is a few field enemies and the bosses. Even this disappears late in the game, when they gain the ability to fight each other's bosses. At that point the game reaches a repetitive nadir, but one that must be slogged through in order to level both of the characters up enough to wield the game's final sword and see the "true" endings. Leveling up the characters to defeat major enemies is generally unnecessary because the foes seem to scale with the character's level, particularly the bosses and the enemies leading up to them.

The troubling thing about these various components is that they all seem disconnected, or even opposed. The RPG elements, particularly the massive life bar, make the game's simplistic cooking system largely irrelevant. The scaling of enemies makes the leveling irrelevant, but at the same time, participation in the monotonous combat can only be justified by the need to level. The brilliant composers at Basiscape created a score that allows the battle music and field music to switch seamlessly between bars, and the battles take place without a screen swap, but the wonderful effect this has on the game's continuity is ruined by the scroll-lock and post-battle EXP screen. Momohime and Kisuke run around collecting souls all game, but the story essentially ignores this grim task. Moreover, the need to do it has no real bearing on the gameplay—unless a player consistently runs from every battle, he'll have little trouble gaining the souls required to forge all the swords twenty times over by the end of the game. Muramasa is fundamentally incoherent.

I can't help but feel that Muramasa would have been better off if Vanillaware had embraced the brawler at the game's core and discarded the RPG elements (and Muso difficulty) entirely. The process of leveling up doesn't really add anything to the game, and the character development offers nothing for the player to do. Because the expanding life bar and experience screen notably interfere with other elements of the game, why not just get rid of them? Focusing the game on tactical combat, and the sword system on the selection of special attacks or abilities, would have made this a game about fighting smart rather than just about whacking things with a sword until the next boss. Making Kisuke and Momohime play in noticeably different ways would also have made the game a more interesting experience.

Even those changes, though, would only somewhat ameliorate a fundamentally hollow experience. Muramasa: The Demon Blade reminds us of a famous swordsmith and his bloodthirsty blades, but the madness and viciousness thus evoked never really find their way into the gameplay or the thinly-presented story. Like its vast, fractured provinces, the various systems of the game never manage to form any coherent whole. Instead, the game comes across as a whole bunch of ideas thrown together willy-nilly and wrapped in as beautiful a package as possible. Muramasa has no secrets to reveal, no depths to plumb, no story to tell that equals its luxurious presentation. Like a ceremonial sword, it is glorious to behold, and better gazed upon than used. Rating: 6.0 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via retail purchase and reviewed on the Wii. Approximately 14 hours of play were devoted to single-player mode, completed one time at "Muso" difficulty with several additional chapters reviewed on "Shura" difficulty.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains alcohol reference, fantasy violence,and suggestive themes. The game features a great deal of violence but all of it is highly stylized rather than realistic. Some characters appear partially nude in the hot springs scenes, but it's nothing racier than you're likely to see on in a supermarket checkout aisle. Alcoholic beverages are a modestly effective healing item in the game, and alcohol references appear in several conversations.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: The score by Basiscape contributes significantly to the game's atmosphere. However, the actual gameplay does not rely on auditory cues and all dialogue is subtitled Japanese.