Genji: Days of the Blade Hands-On - Fourth Character Revealed

While a number of the PlayStation 3 games present at today's Sony Gamers' Day in San Francisco were there as demos that we recognized from last month's Tokyo Game Show, others were available to play as near-finished builds. One such game was Genji: Days of the Blade, which we were told has already been submitted to Sony Computer Entertainment America for final approval using the same version of the game on display. We were only permitted to play the game starting from a specific save point, unfortunately, but the relatively short time that we spent battling demons and such still afforded us plenty of new information.

The first detail we noticed was that, right from the outset, we were able to switch between all four of the game's playable characters on the fly. When we last played Genji: Days of the Blade at September's Tokyo Game Show, one of the characters was still being kept under wraps. The character in question turned out to be a stave-wielding guy who fans of Genji: Dawn of the Samurai will recognize as its endgame boss, Buson. Quite how Buson has come back from the dead after the ending of the previous game is unclear, but his demise clearly hasn't been forgotten about because his chest is still covered with scars from the battle.

In addition to seeing Buson for the first time, we noted that all four of the playable characters had at least two of their five different weapons unlocked. The weapons looked very different from one another, and they had different attack speeds and strengths that afforded the fighters quite different moves. When using his first stave, for example, Buson twirled it around like a particularly lethal cheerleader's baton, but his moves with the second stave were much slower and more damaging. The new weapon that we got to try out with the giant monk Benkei, on the other hand, was much quicker than his default one but didn't do nearly as much damage.

Perhaps the most significant new feature of Genji: Days of the Blade that we saw today was the game's Kamui system, which lets you charge up powerful attacks that are most effective when used against multiple enemies. You'll gain Kamui every time you strike an opponent, and when the meter is full you can hold down a shoulder button to activate your special attack. At that point, the game will freeze for a second and you'll be treated to a slow-motion, over-the-top battle sequence that you control simply by pressing the attack buttons as they appear on the screen--much as you would in a rhythm game. The Kamui system proved to be very useful on numerous occasions, though we can't help but wonder if we'd have found ourselves surrounded by enemies nearly as often if the game's camera wasn't next to useless.

The first thing you'll want to do when you start playing Genji: Days of the Blade, we guarantee it, is to move the camera around manually using the right analog stick. The right analog stick is reserved for performing evasive maneuvers, though, so the camera is not only fixed but also invariably positioned far closer to the action than it feels it should be. The character models look great and all, but the price that you appear to pay for getting to see them up close is that it's very difficult to get a feeling for the environment that you're in or for the positioning of the numerous enemies that are waiting for you there. While playing today, we found a small map in one corner of the screen highlighting the locations of enemies in our immediate area far more useful than it really ought to be, and on more than one occasion we were forced to attack enemies (or were attacked by enemies) that were offscreen as a result of the camera's awkward positioning.

Another questionable feature of Genji: Days of the Blade, which we're assuming has only been implemented (read: shoehorned into the game unnecessarily) quite recently, is the option to use the PS3 controller's tilt functionality rather than the right analog stick to perform the aforementioned evasive moves. Using the controller to dodge enemy attacks in this way required some quite violent movements, and while it's conceivable that we're just not used to playing games with tilt functionality yet, we found that using the right analog stick was much better.

Genji: Days of the Blade is currently scheduled for release alongside the PlayStation 3 hardware on November 17. We look forward to bringing you more information on the game as soon as it becomes available.