| Musashi: Samurai Legend review |
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Like an old folk tale of swords and fantasies, altered and exaggerated by time and teller, Musashi Samurai Legend re-tells the story of Squaresoft’s Brave Fencer Musashi, the fable being transformed by technology and fashion. In many respects, the skeleton from which this hack 'n' slash action game is built around largely remains the same: summoned from another world by a princess whose Kingdom is under threat, Musashi must save the five maidens whose unlocked powers will bring about the fall of the oppressive Gandrake Corporation. Armed with swordplay fitting of his samurai title and the ability to duplicate the abilities of his foes, Musashi must also help rescue the other inhabitants of the (now empty) airborne town in which he is first summoned.
In this respect, the collection aspect inherent in Musashi’s design still works just as it did back in 1998. Satisfying as it is to see the town fill up one-by-one with inhabitants, finding them is a fairly linear experience, with few villagers being placed too far away from Musashi’s path. Nor do the other opportunities for collection offer much significance as neither the process of collecting cards and ores nor the rewards they offer are of any genuine interest.
While the ribs and limbs may feel familiar, the backbone to Musashi is quite different. The gameplay leans more towards an action-orientated realisation of the Musashi legend, as opposed to the original’s emphasis on puzzles. While a few token mysteries remain, progression comes largely from cleaving (with satisfyingly graphic effects) straight through all that oppose Musashi. The moves Musashi assimilates from his enemies only rarely function in a puzzle context with most moves being simple additions to his roster of combat options.
The real shame with this shift is that the combat in Musashi isn’t actually very engaging and by no means interesting enough to be the sole focus of the game. Copying moves from foes adds some interest but the clumsiness of the process of switching and choosing which move to assign to the circle button only encourages the player to find a single move that they like and to use only that. That Musashi has to physically stop moving when he switches swords to allow the PS2 to load up his new blade adds to the frustration and stop-start nature of combat. It’s hard to imagine how such an unwieldy system could be designed in light of Kingdom Hearts’ superior battles. At any rate, all this switching is made even more unnecessary as most foes will perish under the standard ‘tap-square-repeatedly’ combo, and the repetition of enemy designs with variations on the base designs for each level emphasise the occasional monotony of combat.
Regular foes tend to act with little intelligence, relying on highly predictable and basic attack patterns with subsequently little challenge. It is only the size and relative complexity of boss battles that offer any real excitement to rival that of the wonderful, Gainax-animated intro sequence, and even these encounters are not difficult to overcome. The camera often does little to help the player, contorting itself into awkward positions. Sometimes it feels too rigidly bound to Musashi, sometimes it feels too loose; manual correction of the camera in either of these instances involves an unintuitive poke at the right analog stick to re-centre or adjust it which feels unnatural and awkward.
An RPG-esque experience system supplements the combat but offers only a limited scope for customisation, with pure stats and levels dominating in the end. And these stats will end up dominating all enemies as players are left to repeatedly fight endlessly respawning adversaries and gain excess experience as they search levels for the next point to progress in the story. Often being poorly labelled or indicated, finding where to go next can be the most frustrating puzzle of all in Musashi, closely followed by the necessity to return to Musashi’s bedroom in order to save and end the game.
Yet Musashi’s gameplay is unlikely to be what first draws most people to the title as it all looks very attractive despite the cliché that the cel-shading effect it employs has become. Tetsuya Nomura’s bold yet detailed designs still glisten with all the verve of his seminal character designs from Final Fantasy VII. The hair-raising and accessory-laden models which have become somewhat of a trademark of Nomura’s work may not appeal to all, but they lend a great deal of charm and character to the game as their bright aesthetics also transfer over to the world in which they inhabit.
It therefore comes as another shame that other aspects let the game down in this respect, despite being built on such vivid foundations. The game engine chugs along, indecisive as to whether it should be running at sixty frames per second or less (most often resorting to the latter). When moving at full speed Musashi looks great, though this is rarely the case as the complexity of the game world and its inhabitants grinds the frame rate down with disappointing results.
The characters themselves also prove to be a disappointment: pretty as they are to look at, when they open their mouths (or rather, if they were able to as the character models don’t allow them to), the mood is somewhat soured. The game’s script is poor, each line offering little to the character that is speaking it, and little to the all-too-straightforward plot that ties the game together. The game pulls no real punches in its predictable plot and the voice-acting is presented with all the over-acting of a cheap Saturday morning cartoon.
The only gem left to shine through the rubble of this collapsed concept is the character Clochette. The desperate melodrama in her voice fits this prissy madam perfectly and she, along with the plot-twist that her arc of the story entails, provides the only real highlight of the story.
It’s by no means enough to save Musashi Samurai Legend from being a very basic experience. Designed with the greatest intents, there just isn't enough substance to the game in terms of its execution. The basics of combat are competently constructed but that’s all there is; without sufficient variation in enemies or how Musashi’s swordplay can be controlled, the game offers very little as an action game. And without anything resembling a gripping storyline, engaging characters or constructive growth, Musashi offers little as an RPG. So as an action-RPG hybrid Musashi Samurai Legend can only present a very simple experience beyond its attractive designs. |
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System: Sony PlayStation 2
Genre: Action
Developer: Square-Enix
Publisher: Square-Enix
Players: 1
Version: United States
Reviewed: May 2005
Writer: Edd Hewett
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Pros:
- Bright, attractive Nomura designs
- Simple combat accessible to all
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Cons:
- Lack of depth leads to monotony
- Poorly indicated, linear progression
- Weak plot and characterisation
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