Muramasa: The Demon Blade

When I called out Muramasa's combat for being "sophisticated and varied," I didn't realize how tiresome it would become after a few hours of not getting any more sophisticated or varied. While it's fun for a few minutes at a time, battling demons and ninjas and shit in Muramasa becomes phenomenally dull in short order, as the game sends wave after wave of enemy at your sword, and you either master the arts of dodging and slowly wittling down your foes (in hard mode), or, like me, get bored and mash the A button until you can get to the next screen (in easy mode).

Between the broken map, utterly dull backtracking, a shallow equipment system, and the aforementioned tedious combat, the gameplay in Muramasa just isn't very fun (at least, not sustainably so). The sword forging system seemed interesting at first, but since the game requires you to collect story-milestone swords to progress along forging paths, and new swords are locked by stats you get from leveling up, and leveling up is directly correlated to how many screens you've progressed through, and the differences between swords are almost solely numeric strength, it's really a thin veil over a thoroughly linear experience.

And so Muramasa comes down to a question of finding the right motivation to get through the unremarkable gameplay. The impossible-to-follow story certainly isn't it. The graphics are, well, beautiful -- but that simply isn't enough.

I'm glad I tried Muramasa out, but it has completely failed to give me any reason to see it through.

Better than: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Not as good as: Dead Space: Extraction
Maybe I'm just racist: but the excessively Japanese story and setting meant absolutely nothing to me

Progress: Gave Up -- Momohime Act 4