In 2007, Vanillaware crafted a beautiful game in the form of Odin Sphere, a sidescrolling action game with gorgeous visuals and a host of RPG elements that helped mitigate the usual gripes consumers have with brawlers. Muramasa: The Demon Blade is Vanillaware’s latest foray into that genre, and the spiritual successor to Odin Sphere. Fans of Odin Sphere will quickly note similarities between the two, however it’s the few key differences that make Muramasa succeed in the areas Odin Sphere failed.
The two heroes of the game: Momohime and Kisuke.
Muramasa tells the stories of two different protagonists, who have by-and-large entirely separate storylines. Short of a few cameos in each others story the two characters never meet, and have entirely different ambitions. Momohime, the princess, has the more interesting story of the two, involving a stolen body and the soul of an evil criminal. Kisuke, the other protagonist, has a story which relies far more heavily on standard JRPG tropes. He is a lost, confused, slightly psychotic ninja with no memory. Despite the standard setup of Kisuke’s story, both his and Momohime’s storylines are intriguing enough to keep you interested and wanting to continue playing to see the next development.
Any plot development is done through speaking with other characters in the game world, as there are really no cutscenes to speak of. The localization team at Ignition made an interesting choice regarding the English dub, choosing not to do one at all. Whether you choose to believe the choice was made to maintain the original Japanese voices for authenticity purposes, or the far more likely scenario in which it was done to cut costs, is irrelevant in the end. Given both the setting and content of the game, retaining the original voice tracks truly benefited the entire experience. The game is steeped in Japanese culture, with many of the characters being pulled directly out of popular Japanese legends.
Muramasa’s controls may seem simple initially, with only the A button governing slashes, blocks, guard breaks, dash attacks and blocking. The way these moves incorporate directional inputs from the control stick on the nunchuck makes the controls feel very fluid and intuitive. It will take some time to become familiar with the unique controls, but after doing so they will feel very natural. One complaint that I had was with jumping. You jump by simply pushing up on the control stick, however it didn’t feel super responsive to me, though I admit I encountered the same issue with Super Smash Bros. Brawl, so perhaps the fault is mine. Either way, I would have appreciated the addition of a jump button; the B trigger would be perfect for the task. There are two difficulty levels, shura(hard) and muso(easy). Playing on muso, the player can virtually mash combinations of control stick and A button to deal a swift death to foes. This is also possible on shura, for at least the very beginning of the game. While muso remains painfully easy throughout, shura ramps up to a point where it expects you to have a full mastery of the controls, and execute your moves intelligently.
Momohime, performing one of the many special attacks.
As supplements to you basic attacks you may perform a special attack with the Z button on the nunchuck. Each blade has one predetermined special attack, which can be used as long as your blade is in sufficiently good condition. Additionally each blade has a unique skill, insofar as you will never find two with the exact same special attack, though many are simply powered-up versions of previous attacks, perhaps with a color change. Muramasa makes use of an interesting system in which each blade you have equipped (up to three at once) has a certain degree of wear it can sustain before breaking, represented by a meter underneath each blade. Both blocking, repelling attacks, and using special attacks cause far more wear on a weapon than normal attacks. It’s an interesting way to prevent players from repeatedly using specials and from blocking too often, putting a big emphasis on movement. It makes the gameplay feel very hectic no matter how many enemies are onscreen, and managing your blades’ wear-and-tear while battling myriad foes invokes a feeling of urgency to most battles. If a weapon breaks it becomes ineffective, and you must switch weapons with the C button. At times your blade icons at the top of the screen will glow white, providing the ability to use an entire-screen-attacking Quick Draw attack (an attack in which the blade is whipped from the sheath) by switching weapons.
Though breadth of attack methods succeeds in providing the player with a wealth of attack choices right from the start, it is also to the games detriment. Having all the abilities available from the start means that once you have mastered the controls you have mastered the game. No new attacks or maneuvers are introduced at any other point in the game. The core issue here is Muramasa’s identity. It’s a brawler. It’s a very pretty, well made brawler, but the core gameplay still cannot be saved by such things. It has various RPG trappings, from a level-up system, to cooking, to item equipping, to a tech/skill/blade tree, but in the end it still suffers from the same issues that plague all games of its ilk. After a while the gameplay begins to feel repetitive, no matter how much you change it up. By the time I finished the first story, Momohime’s, I’d had just about enough. Coming to Kisuke’s story a week and a half later I was able to enjoy it again, though the appeal had definitely worn thin.
Speaking of blades, it is well known that a ninja is only as good as his weapon, and in that area Muramasa has you covered. The titular swordsmith, Muramasa himself, has left himself entirely at your disposal, and by accessing his forge through the pause menu you can craft up to 108 different demon blades, provided you have unlocked the required branches of the “sword tree”, or tech tree of swords. If a blade is available to be forged, you can then craft it by paying a certain amount of souls(obtained through defeating enemies, or collecting random souls throughout various levels) and spirit(obtained by eating recovery items).
The most striking aspect of Muramasa, noticeable from the very moment you boot up the game, is the very distinctive art style. Taking the Wii’s lack of polygon-processing-power into account, the developers made superb use of hand drawn sprites. The sprites are nothing short of fantastic looking, and when combined with the beautiful hand drawn art that comprises the backgrounds it feels less like you’re playing a video game and more like playing a painting. The aforementioned backgrounds have a decent degree of variety, from vast, open fields to massive forests and even to both heaven and hell. Despite the variety, though, many backgrounds will be repeated two to three times in each characters story. The game also has a great deal of backtracking through already cleared areas, which becomes annoying. However, by repeatedly changing the scenery and providing a decent amount of time between repeats, the player should never feel like they’ve spent too much time in any one style of area.
Some of the backdrops in the game are truly breathtaking.
There’s a ton to see and do in this game, from going back to unlock previous unlockable doors to partaking in brutally difficult enemy lairs. Though it’s possible to complete the main game without doing such events, they offer a good opportunity to grind out a few levels if you wish. I averaged about 12 hours of playtime for each character on shura, a respectable amount of time for a game in this genre. Also I did not reach the level cap for either character, nor did I complete all the enemy lairs, so there is potentially even more gameplay to be gleaned. The framerate was predominately solid, but any time there were more than five or six enemies there would be noticeable chugs. Not enough to impair your ability to play, but it can be an annoyance at times.
So, much like Odin Sphere, Muramasa crafts a compelling story and successfully manages to create a hybrid brawler/RPG that provides a fantastic experience initially. Though again, much like its brawler brethren, it has difficulty maintaining that feeling throughout the roughly 25 hour adventure. That, in addition to the framerate hiccups, are most definitely worth noting, however the overall experience is still one that should be experienced by anyone who enjoys sidescrolling action games.
