Could've been, but isn't
User Rating: 5 | Inuyasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask PS2
When it comes to licensed game, you can always bet your @$$ that it will end up as a budget game. Inuyasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask is no different, except this time it is worse, because it actually has potential to be a good game. As a gamer, nothing is more frustrating than a budget game that has high potential. If a game is bad, you can just ignore it and move on, but sometimes there are those games that actually has enough positives to get your attention, but too much negatives to really become worthy of your time. It's a shame really, because it could've really been something special for the fans. Graphically, the game is easily considered horrible. The character model looks like it belongs to PS1 era and some of 3D dungeons and battle's look so terrible it makes you want to close your eyes. However, the 2D hand drawn background look so darn great and matches the anime style so well. You can't help but to wonder why the company didn't go for sprite based characters or at least cell-shaded characters and why there are 3D dungeons when 2D background works so much better. The visuals of the game is largely terrible except for nice drawn characters during conversation. It is simple but it captures the essence of characters very well. However, it suffers from very inconsistent voice acting. Inuyasha voice acting is top notch, but other characters like Kagome is so lifeless it's annoying. Not only that, the conversations tends to have the usual quarrels of our popular couple, but it doesn't come to life because of terrible voice acting of Kagome. This is beyond a great shame because to most anime fans, English dub is considered like a crime and this game is obviously geared towards anime fans and almost no one else. Not having Japanese voice acting option hurts more than anything here especially due to lack of effort put in by some of the voice actor/actress in the game. Great shame indeed and that alone sucks all the beauty of Inuyasha out of the game, making it quite a bit of failure as fan service which this game should be all about. Then there is the story. It is actually not that bad and the way it is told is done fairly well. Also it does decent job of staying true to the nature of Inuyasha series. However, you can't help but to feel the game lacks details. Rumiko Takahashi's work is always about small details. The minor actions and conversation between characters that shows their personalities and relationship between those two characters. Her stories are almost never about the large overall story that builds from beginning to the end, but almost always about that small details, and that's why she is so popular. To not show that kind of details means we aren't getting the essence of Inuyasha, and because of this the game again fails to deliver what fans want. As a huge fan of Rumiko Takahashi, this is beyond disappointing. And then there is the actual gameplay. The dungeons aren't that small, nor that big. It actually feels like it is good size, but the encounter rate is fairly high despite most enemies are being visible on the field. Enemy encounter is another part where the game feels like it missed a chance to be special. The enemies are represented as purple fog on the field, which indicates the smell of demon Inuyasha is able to pick up. It feels like a missed opportunities because it is good idea that could've been used to do something unique with it. It matches the materials of the anime because Inuyasha does indeed often find locations of demons using his skills, but in actual gameplay practice it is just nothing but showing locations of the enemy encounters, while having some randomly generated battles as well. Very disappointing they could've extend that idea to something more and really reduce the random encounters that feels like it does nothing but to forcefully extend playing time without any good reason and sucks the fun out of the game by making you do very repetitive actions and hinder the progression of the story. The when it comes to actual battle, nothing can be worse. The animation is basic as it can be, and not just basic but slow as hell. Also it's not just slow, but there is long pause between animation so the battle always feels like it is dragging it. Not only that, the menus are very unresponsive. After you pick anything, you have to watch for a while to pick from the list again. Add them all up, it will end up feeling like the game is wasting your time on purpose and it will easily frustrate you. Also the battle is ugly as hell. At least the battle system is half-decent. It uses simplified Grandia battle system. It has that circular ATB system where you can see both your character and enemies turn. What it doesn't have is positioning strategies of Grandia and abilities of knocking enemy gauges back to add depth to battle system. Very basic and stripped down battle system the game has.
The music is fairly good, but again this feels like missed opportunities. It would've really helped if the game used many of great soundtracks and music from the anime series itself, but it doesn't
In the end, Inuyasha: The Secrets of the Curse Mask fails to be good RPG, and fails to satisfy fans as being fan service. It does certainly have enough positives and potential to be both good RPG and great fan service, but the negatives and missed opportunities leaves this game below average at both. Truly unfortunate, and it is a great shame. This kind of game hurts gamers the most. You see so much great things in the game so you want to love it, but in the end you can't and shouldn't. Perhaps in the future, game developers can finally learn from their mistakes and learn to put more effort and budget into their licensed games and really try to make quality product, instead of quick road to small quick cash.
