Gorgeous. Not much else you can say about this.

It just keeps getting better.

I hope they keep the Japanese voice work and give the West some English subtitles. It would lessen the game to have the voice work removed, to have English voice work in it's place.

This game really doesn't appeal to me. It feels kinda outdated.

Absolutely beautiful. Loved Odin Sphere and will be buying this day 1 (yet I still own no Wii). 2D sprites live on! Hopefully the voice work remains the same and that no content is left out for its release outside of Japan. I believe XSeed was bringing this to North America; they're pretty good.

Brace yourselves for one hell of a game. I just played the tutorial and a couple of minutes of the first level. The gorgeous visuals (remember what it was like to play Baird for the first time? There's that, but better, in the first level. Youtube-videos don't do it justice.) are accompanied by a very fluid, very intuitive control scheme. Playing Muramasa is extremely pleasant; even though I had no idea what the on-screen text said, I think I got a good picture of the controls. Combat is heavily influenced by the control stick on the nunchuck in combination with the A button. c button changes weapons, sometimes somehow triggering a nice full-screen attack (dunno what' up with that), B is special attack, D-pad for Items. I didn't use the Z button, and there was no kind of gesture input. Which I found rather irritating, because some gesture based attacks would fit great in there. Maybe later in the game? I didn't really play that long.
Enemies respawn. Bleh. But it's fun to deal with them.

But a great engine. True 16:9 480p without over/underscan as well - A rarity these days.

Can't wait for a localized version.

How did you play the game?

I ninja'd a NTSC-J copy. The game hit filesharing yesterday.

I could play via that way, but I wont be. Vanillaware are a miniscule developer (30 man team) that need all the money they can get.  I will be happy to pay for the game and get a boxed copy. or at least my brother will. He lives out there and could send me a Japanese copy. He's already asked, but I said no. I want to experience the full extent of the story, this is a RPG after all.

There's no reason to deduce that because I DLd a NTSC-J to get a look at the game I won't be paying for a copy.

True, but lets be honest here, how much of the game have you played so far?. Surely you have had more than a look?. If you do end up completing the game that's bound to diminish any eagerness to buy it.

As a matter of principle, I don't download pirated games of this type. These are hard times for big developers, and even harder for the small ones like Vanillaware.

"True, but lets be honest here, how much of the game have you played so far?. Surely you have had more than a look?

Here is a hot spring screenshot:

Yeah, I know, the screenshot sucks(maybe even blows)... wait, what the hell is going on in there?

Sweet pic, really touching and quite beautiful I think.

If US gets it first I might just import. If there's a working hack for my firmware by then at least :S

"If US gets it first I might just import. If there's a working hack for my firmware by then at least :S"

I did. SDHC support dood. That's why I'm hoping for a new hack by that time :P

Well, did you have the Homebrew-Channel installed before you updated? If you did, you have everything you need to region-free your wii.

No, I didn't, I meant what I said.

Al3xand3r said:

"If US gets it first I might just import. If there's a working hack for my firmware by then at least :S"

GT have a bunch of nice highres import gameplay vids.

"Here is a hot spring screenshot:

Yeah, I know, the screenshot sucks(maybe even blows)... wait, what the hell is going on in there?

"

Now that everyone and his mom pirat....imported it, I won't watch more videos until I can buy it. Beautiful is the only word that can describe it anyway, and I don't want anything more spoiled by people who are playing it already.

mmmm busty fox chicks I'm sold

Europe's still getting it from Rising Star Games. That XSEED statement sounds like a diff publisher snatched the game from them.

Man, I wish this had an HD port.