Swords Can Regenerate!

“Muramasa: The Demon Blade” comes to us exclusively for the Wii from Ignition.

If I am not mistaken, the developers of “Odin Sphere” worked on it and it shows. Not really. Well, it might show but I never had the pleasure of playing “Odin Sphere” although everyone tells me it was great. If you played it you are probably now excited about Muramasa. It’s a great looking game. It is FANTASTIC and BEAUTIFUL. The gameplay is a light action RPG sidescroller with regenerating zombie swords. There are some things I do not prefer about it, such as the random battle feeling encounters throughout levels. For example, when you travel through a level a large exclamation point will appear and then enemies will jump into the screen. This is how every battle works. I do not feel that individual battle encounters like this work for anything but a turn based RPG, yet this is by no means a deal breaker. I also found that certain menu aesthetics were almost too “video gamey,” if that even makes sense, and took me out of the immersive feel of the story and look. When I was about to reach the boss for the girl character’s demo level (you can choose between a boy and girl character for the demo and each have their own level) a large menu popped up reminding me that a hard boss was ahead and required me to pick either “Yes” to continue to the boss or “No” to turn back and level up or stock up on health items. It’s a good idea, but presenting it within the context of the game somehow would have been more preferable. Then again, I’m complaining about this in a game that shows full page stats after every enemy battle so maybe I’m just being picky here.

As I said in the whispery parenthesis, you pick between two characters to start the game. Each character has their own story and levels. They may battle through some similar environments but there is a lot unique about each individual character’s adventure. Different boss battles are even in place. The two in the demo took time to kill but were not very difficult. Still, for early bosses they were well designed and were as tall as the screen. Later bosses are said to be three times the size of the screen. I’m certainly intrigued.

The game is said to play out like a Metroid or Castlevania in terms of level design, with branching paths and the need to backtrack. Despite some misgivings about some of the title’s presentation I certainly have my eyes peeled for “Muramasa: The Demon Blade,” which releases this September.