Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Muramasa: The Demon Blade was released on 2009 by Ignition Entertainment.  It was developed by Vanillaware, makers of the PS2 game Odin Sphere.  Like Odin Sphere, Muramasa is a 2D sidescroller with beautiful visuals.  But, where Odin Sphere was an RPG at heart, Muramasa is a brawler.  The brawler design is a simple one that hasn't been widely utilized as of late.  Whenever a new brawler is released, it is usually a commercial failure.  Does Muramasa's design match its fantastic visuals?  Not exactly, but despite being fairly simple it is highly satisfying to play.
 
Muramasa is broken up into two single-player campaigns.  One campaign tells the story of Momohime, a demon-possessed princess who, on the day she is to marry her fiancee, is forced to go on a journey by her demon.  The other campaign tells the story of Kisuke, an amnesiac ninja who is on the run from his ninja clan.  Both stories are heavily influenced by Japanese mythology and the Buddhist religion.  As a person who has little knowledge about either of these topics, there were times where I had no idea what was being discussed or who was being referenced.  Ignition didn't do very much to this English port.  The voice acting is all in Japanese with English subtitles and the references and terminology are not explained anywhere in the game or its manual.  Eventually, players who lack Japanese mythological or Buddhist knowledge will understand the story but it takes some work.
 
The game is set in an open world with a vast number of different locations the player can travel to.  The game has a map system, similar to the Metroid games, that helps the player travel through the world.   Certain areas of the world will be blocked off until a specific sword is acquired after defeating a boss.  Despite being open in design, Muramasa is a very linear game with a lot of backtracking.  There are no side-quests and, though the player can explore, the only thing they will find are items and challenge rooms.  The challenge rooms offer a variety of unique obstacles the player has to overcome in order to receive a unique item.  Each challenge room has an associated suggested level the character must have reached prior to entering the room.  The player levels by fighting in random battles that occur as the player travels through the world.  Most of the time I wasn't at a high enough level to enter these rooms and didn't think the rewards warranted backtracking to find the challenge rooms one again.  Throughout the game the player will find, or buy, a variety of healing items.  Most healing items come in the form of food which has an associated 'fullness' rating.  The fullness rating is a mechanic that keeps the player from overusing healing items.  The higher the fullness rating, the longer the player has to wait in order to heal again.  Other healing items don't affect the character's fullness but won't heal as much health.  The player can also cook food, by way of learned recipes and bought or found food-related items, which will heal the character.
 
The crux of the gameplay is the sword fighting system.  The system appears simple at first but under the surface players will find a fairly complex system.  To fight, the player presses two buttons, A and B, and a pushes the analog stick in one direction or another.  The A button is the standard attack and the B button allows the player to use a sword-specific special attack.  The A button can be mashed to allow for consistent sword slashes or held to allow for rapid combos.  The fighting is very flashy.  The player will fight on the ground, in the air, on one side of the screen, and the other all within the same random battle.  Though the fighting has depth, the enemies fought rarely require strategy on the normal difficulty.  On the hard difficulty, the fighting system has to be mastered in order to get very far in the game.  Throughout the game the player will either find, or forge, new swords.  Players find swords by defeating bosses.  Swords are forged through an option in the pause menu.  Swords have two requirements in order to be forged; souls and spirits.  Souls are found throughout the world or by defeating enemies.  Spirit is correlated with one's level.  One can forge over 100 unique swords.  Some of these swords are character specific.  After one beats the game one can player through the final act again with any sword the player wishes as long as it was forged or found (ending the character specific requirement).  There are two types of swords; long-swords and regular-swords.  Regular-swords are faster but deal less damage then a long-sword.  At one time, the player can have three swords equipped.  As the player fights the sword weakens.  Eventually, the sword will break the player must switch to a new sword.  While the sword is sheathed it rebuilds itself.   Playing through the game with both characters, I unlocked nearly 70 swords.  To unlock the rest, I would have to travel through the world collecting souls and leveling up.  I can't imagine doing this though as the need to get every sword isn't particularly strong. 
 
In between the fighting and traveling the player will have to manage some platforming.  The jumping controls are a little awkward.  To jump, the player must push 'up' on the analog stick regardless of the control scheme used (as there are many).  Pushing up and then left or right feels awkward and makes platforming harder then it needs to be.  Fortunately, besides the platforming, the game controls very well. 
 
The game is beautiful.  The game, sort of like Okami, looks like a moving painting.  Everything animates well and every character and environment shows incredible creativity and skill.  The most impressive feat is how many layers are represented on every screen in the game.  By layers, I mean the background and foreground layers that surround the plane with which the player controls the character.  The multiple layers give this 2D game an incredible sense of depth.  It truly is amazing to look at.  The music has a very typical, older Japanese sound with heavy percussion and wind-instrument use.  But, occasionally, modern music styles, like rock and electronic, are thrown in during fights or cutscenes.  These genres feel a bit out of place for the setting.  The sound design is very good as well.  The surround sound adds a fullness to the environments and the sword noises sound pitch perfect.
 
There is a lot to like with Muramasa.  The game is incredibly good looking and the world is varied and massive.  The fighting system is very satisfying and the game is fairly long with a lot of replay value if the player is interesting in collecting every sword and finishing every challenge room.  But the game is also very simple.  The fighting system, on the normal difficulty, doesn't require much skill until some, but not many, of the boss fights.  There is a lot of backtracking and not a lot of incentive to forge every sword or take on every challenge room.  The design has depth but when it comes down to it all you do is run to a spot, fight random, easy battles along the way, and fight a boss that may, but usually won't, require some strategy.  The players that take on the harder difficulty may find a more satisfying fighting system but, for most of us who will only play through the game on normal, Muramasa is a lot of great looking, but very simple, flash.