Sunday 24 August 2014

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae

I don't even know where to begin with this one.

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae is a game that was released this year on Steam developed by Zenith Blue.  It's one of those games that could be compared to something like Devil May Cry but stripped of almost all it's quality.

You play as a school girl with a katana who is some kind of demon slaying warrior.  A classmate of yours has made off with some evil sword of legend that has possessed her and now it's up to you to take her down before she destroys the world or something, I don't know.

You are given a number of attacks such as a slash which drains a sword meter, a punch to recover the meter and a charge attack for a sort of AOE.  As you play you obtain little red balls which are used to buy upgrades such as longer/stronger combos, air attacks, gap closers and so on.   It's quite clear to see why so many people make the connection with a game like Devil May Cry with this title but this game doesn't even come close.

Each level is just one big circular room and enemies are teleported in for you to slaughter.  Considering that this is only a small game there is actually quite a surprising number of different enemy types and they all behave differently and there is actually quite a bit of strategy when it comes to adapting to different combinations.  After a certain number of enemies a boss shows up and these fights range from being stupidly easy to crazy nuts hard.  Maybe I'm just bad but there were parts of the game that I would just breeze though and then my progress would come to a screeching halt because the boss was such bullshit.

However once you work out what you are doing and find an attack pattern that works you can kill the bosses no problem.  But that's one of my complaints with this game since this is a genre where mixing things up and creating combos is part of the fun but here I was just finding a chain of moves that worked and spamming that until the bad thing fell down.

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae is not a bad game by any stretch but it's extremely unpolished.  The problem is that there are so many games like this that are WAY better that it becomes hard to recommend.  It's not good enough on it's own and there is nothing really unique about it that makes it stand out.  However if you like schoolgirls cutting things then maybe you might get a kick out of it for an afternoon.

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