Certainly worth seeing, not sure if it's worth playing.
I played the demo for Asura's Wrath and while I can appreciate the spectacle, I found it entirely too... QTE heavy. There was no way I was going to buy this. So I guess it's somewhat fortunate that my bro had more interest in it than I and picked it up for himself. With nothing else on my agenda I figured I'd give it a whirl.
And the full game is still entirely too QTE heavy.
Frankly I wish the QTE's weren't there at all, because I enjoyed watching it well enough.
I just didn't enjoy having to mash the B button a whole lot whenever engaged in whatever power struggle he Asura was currently in the middle of.
Between the QTE heavy cinematics there is some amount of actual gameplay to pad things out.
There's a rather simplistic beat-em up here. You mash B a whole lot to peform simple combos and then occasionally your heavy attack with the Y button which works on a cool down, but there's a meter that if you fill it you can enter "unlimited mode" and heavy attack to your hearts content.
You can lock on in the middle of combat but I found it entirely unnecessary. Stupidly enough the lock on doesn't stay engaged when you attempt to fight at range with your energy blasts, which kind of renders them useless in these encounters.
Though shooting becomes more important in other sections where you're flying about and you get an auto-lock via painting targets with your reticle. It's then a simple press of the Y button to send homing shots there way or you can just hold X to shoot rapid fire blasts.
Whether engaged on combat on the ground or in the air, encounters only last as long as it takes you to fill up your "burst" meter. When full you can activate your burst which triggers the next heavy QTE cinematic in which no doubt something bad ass will happen.
The beat-em up and shooting portions of the game are about as easy as they come, I didn't die once in the games 6-7 hour run time. Except to get the achievement for restarting from a check point after dying!
It's a decent looking game with an aesthetic that cribs from Asian mythology and sci-fi.
The game is over-the-top in all regards in typical Anime fashion, whether it's the characters being melodramatic in their kind of hokey dialogue or a planet sized dude trying to crush you with his thumb.
The voice acting is similarly over-the-top, but not in an intolerable fashion.
I quite liked the sound track.
To wrap things up whether you look it up on Youtube or just rent it I feel it's at least worth seeing for how ludicrous it is. It's the spectacle everyone says it is. I just don't feel there's much of a game here, especially not one I'd pay full price for.
