Easy to pick up and learn, yet still packs some challenging punch.
Gameplay: 8/10
While the controls may seem button mashy at first, they are really not. They require knowing all of your enemies attacks, when to stop your own, and when to play defensive. You can not just go in mashing the Square button and beat the bosses, this may hold true with the regular goons though. You have three basic attacks, your regular attacks, a spin attack, and a magic attack… this gets more complicated as after you start a regular combo, you can hit triangle and then one of the four primary buttons again, to change the combo... both on the ground and in mid-air. There is a lot of wall running in Bujingai, and you can pretty much stay on the walls for as long as you want, though the controls and movements can be clunky and unwanted. The boss battles are really, really fun as they bring about constant sword clashing, until one of you breaks the others guard. With the monstrous bosses, you usually have to wait for them to attack first and counter them, using their attacks against them. All-in-all the boss battles are easily the highlight of the game, and envelope you more than anything else.
Graphics: 9/10
Bujingai offers some of the best graphics to be seen on the PS2, the character designs are straight up awesome, and while you’re fighting there is color bursting all over the screen. The only flaw within the graphics that I came across, is that some of the level design is pretty dull and boring, and the buildings are pretty generic. Sometimes it feels like you’re playing the same level a vaious times, even though there are only seven levels. The cinematic events look pretty nice, except for some cheesy movements, and other than that the game looks just great.
Sound: 8/10
At first the music doesn’t seem very promising, but after a while it starts to grow on you. Needless to say the voice acting is pretty underused, which isn’t helped by the fact that the dialogue is borderline lame. The music is primarily made up of Asian and Techno beats, and I usually find myself humming or tapping my finger to them while playing or after I’ve finished playing.
Value: 7/10
The game is not very long, the game takes roughly 7-10 hours your first time through, maybe even less for some people. There are 4 different difficulties: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Extreme, and quite a bit of unlockables you get by finding coins in the game, although none of them are really interesting or deserve to be mentioned.
Tilt: 9/10
I will always be a little biased towards the Hack-N-Slash genre, because like I said before I just love all the games that come out. Bujingai offers a unique experience that really shouldn’t be missed, but really doesn’t deserve that much glorification. Either way it should still be more popular than it is right now. Bujingai is definitely worth playing though.