It certainly doesn't rank with the very best games in its genre, but fans of action RPGs may still have some fun with it
User Rating: 7.1 | Musashi: Samurai Legend PS2
Way back in 1998, Square released Brave Fencer Musashi, an action-adventure game for the Playstation that didn't quite live up to the lofty title of Zelda-killer like some hoped it would but was nonetheless enjoyable. Now, six years later, the character of Musashi returns in Square Enix's Samurai Legend Musashi for the PS2, and the same can be said of this title: it certainly doesn't rank with the very best games in its genre, but fans of action RPGs may still have some fun with it. When the game begins, things are looking pretty bleak for Princess Mycella and her fellow Mystics. A man named Gandrake, CEO of the sinister Gandrake Enterprises, wants what all CEOs of sinister corporations want: to take over the world. To help him do this, he sets out to kidnap the Mystics and harness their magical energy. Just before Gandrake snares her, Mycella casts a spell to summon a great warrior from a faraway land, and out of the sky falls the valiant Musashi, master of the katana and carrier of pathetic women everywhere! Soon he sets out to rescue the Mystics, gather the five magical swords he'll need to defeat Gandrake once and for all, and save the world! Yep, it's your typical adventure game storyline, all right. It's also, for the most part, your typical adventure game gameplay. You're given various quests throughout the game, most of them involving rescuing a maiden or defeating a powerful monster to claim one of the five swords you'll need to collect. When you begin a quest, you're dropped into one of the game's colorful settings, where you'll have to hack your way through countless enemies and maybe solve a pretty basic puzzle or two in order to reach your goal. Many of the elements of an engaging combat system are here. You have quick katana attacks and slower, more powerful sword attacks at your disposal; you can lock onto enemies with R1 and block their attacks with L1. There's also an interesting system in the game called duplication, which allows you to learn new attack techniques by locking onto an enemy for a certain length of time and then successfully inputting the commands that appear onscreen when the enemy attacks you. You can also pick up and carry certain objects and people. Most often, you'll find yourself carrying some damsel so distressed by what she's been through that she can't even stand on her own two feet! It can be amusing watching Musashi toss whatever (or whomever) he's carrying in the air, perform an attack, and then catch it again, but having people walk or fight alongside you once in a while instead of always needing to be carried would have made things more interesting. Sometimes, the combat is pretty engaging. Too often, however, it isn't. Things are hampered a bit by the fact that the camera doesn't always succeed at keeping you and whatever you're fighting clearly visible onscreen, but its's manageable. A more significant issue is that, even as you acquire numerous techniques and abilities over the course of the game, many of the enemies you'll encounter can easily be defeated with the most basic of combo attacks that you learn very early on in the game. As a result, the hack-and-slash action can sometimes feel rather mindless and a bit tedious. Still, there are times where you'll have to resort to more than just wailing on the square button to defeat your foes, and the battles against the game's memorable boss monsters (and machines) can be rather involving. Musashi will occasionally need to hop on a vehicle to reach his destination. These sections can be a nice change of pace from the typical gameplay, but the control schemes don't really bring out all the potential fun of the underlying concepts. For instance, at one point you'll hop aboard a flying machine and make your way through a series of tunnels while trying to knock your enemies' machines into the wall. This sounds like it should be a blast, but the rather awkward controls prevent it from being as much fun as it should be. In typical action-RPG fashion, you'll earn experience points for defeating enemies and every so often, you'll level up. When that happens, the game gives you the option of focusing primarily on improving Musashi in offense, defense, or duplicating, or to develop all areas evenly. You can also find and buy equipment that improves Musashi's stats, and you'll occasionally discover artifacts that will grant him new abilities. These elements aren't very deep at all; they're just enough to put the RPG in action-RPG. When you're not off on a quest, you'll typically be in the game's one and only town, Antheum, so-called because it rests on the back of the Anthedon, a gigantic flying whale-like creature thing that serves as your means of transportation from one part of the world to another. When you first arrive in Antheum, many of the shops will be closed. As you progress through the game, though, you'll find and rescue Mystics, who will then return to their proper place in the town and make more services available to you. Eventually, you'll be able to buy bread and sushi to restore health, ice cream to restore magic (which is used up by the powers of the five swords and some of the attack techniques you learn from enemies), have the blacksmith strengthen your katana, and fight for prizes in the arena, among other things. Antheum is also the only place where you can save your game, which is unfortunate, since some of the quests can take a little while to complete. Within the quest areas, you'll occasionally come across a checkpoint so that if you die, at least you don't have to go back to the very beginning. However, these can be few and far between, and you may still sometimes find yourself having to replay rather lengthy sections of the game. Samurai Legend Musashi is a pretty attractive game. Although technically the graphics aren't cel-shaded but "manga-shaded," the end result is pretty much the same: they look like something out of a cartoon. The environments aren't terribly detailed but they make up for it by being extremely sharp, vibrant and colorful, and there's a diverse range of areas in the game, from the shimmering town square of Antheum to the shadowy forest paths of Wellspring Woods to the bleak volcanic landscape of Mt. Terroir. The character design, by noted artist Tetsuya Nomura, is top-notch, with Musashi and his outrageously long, bouncy tendril of hair being the stand-out of the bunch. You'll aslo encounter some pretty nifty mechanical monstrosities on your quests, and there are a number of very cool destruction animations for each one that correspond to your attacks. For instance, if you finish off an enemy using a technique that cuts them squarely into four pieces, you'll see precisely that happen. Unfortunately, the sound in the game is not so deserving of praise. For the most part, the music is fine. There's a bit of surf rock by the Japanese band The Surf Coasters, which seems like a strange choice but works well enough on the rare occasions when it's used. The rest of the music is appropriate, if a bit repetitive. But where the sound truly fails is in the voice acting department. The voice acting is lousy across the board. All the characterizations are broad and flat--the villains sound extremely villainous, while the damsels in distress sound extremely distressed (not to mention stupid). But by far the worst thing about the voice acting is Musashi himself. It's difficult to convey in words just how bratty and arrogant and obnoxious Musashi sounds. One can't place all the blame on the voice actors, as they're not exactly given great material to work with. Musashi's dialogue is the worst, as he tends to say things like, "Don't cop a 'tude!" and "Gandrake will own you!" Still, the voice acting doesn't help matters at all. It's simply atrocious, which makes it almost something of a relief that much of the dialogue in the game isn't recorded. Samurai Legend Musashi should take most players somewhere around 20 hours to complete. There's nothing stellar about it, but it's fundamentally solid and pretty cool to look at. Fans of the genre might find that it's a welcome diversion until the next great action-RPG comes along.
