Brave Fencer Musashi was a decent Action / RPG, but not even in the same league as Zelda.
There's quite a few collectibles in the game, for example after a chapter is finished you can go to the Toy store and buy action figures of each enemy and boss of that chapter. You can try to find all the Bincho Fields or find all the Longevity Berries. There was even one hidden boss I found, not sure if there was others. Even with all of that, the game was pretty short, compact inside a small world. ----------Battle System----------
Brave Fencer Musashi is an action / platformer / RPG game, pretty similar to Zelda. The game doesn't have any standard camera angles. At some points it might be a side scroller view, or 3rd person or overhead view like in a dungeon crawler. The biggest draw to Musashi is the ability to learn the enemies moves. Musashi has to charge up his Fusion sword and throw it at the enemy. If you hit, then you have to tap the square button until you gain the ability. The biggest draw back about this though is you can only hold one ability at a time. Musashi will learn various fighting techniques after saving certain characters in the game after you visit them again. Each time Musashi free's a scroll he will gain a new elemental ability with his Lumina sword. You can perform this ability by charging up their Fusion sword and taping the triangle button. The Earth scroll will cause a small quake and stun enemies. The Fire scroll spits fire, lights torches, and melts ice. The Water scroll spits water that puts out flames and helps Musashi walk over water hazards. The Wind scroll will help Musashi walk through wind bursts and dig through the ground. The Sky scroll makes Musashi hover through the air. You use these abilities to get to the next area, and you always have to use them to defeat the Crest Guardians. Musashi gains experience and levels, but I still haven't figured how the leveling up system works other than he gets a new title. Musashi has 4 level meters, Mind, Body, Fusion and Lumina. The more often you use Lumina in battle, the more experience it gains and the stronger it gets. The more you use fusion attacks the same happens. You gain Hit Points (HP) and Bincho Points (BP) quite differently from a standard RPG, maybe more similar to Zelda. To gain HP you have to find poop.. yes you have to find poop. When you find the poop, you wait at night for a rare sheep like creature to come out, so you have to chase it around and grab it until it coughs up some Longevity Berries and that will raise your HP by 25 points. Bincho Points are similar to Magic Points, the way you raise your max BP is by defeating a Scroll Guardian, they will give Musashi a 25 max points. You can also find Bincho Fields that trapped the castle servants, and it will give you 5 max points.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Musashi, who is summoned by the Princess to save their Kingdom from the evil Thirstquencher Empire. You must go on a quest to retrieve the Lumina sword, and break the seals of the Five scrolls to save the world. While the Thirstquencher Empire is trying to get the Lumina sword to rule the world. The dialog can be pretty cheesy but it's atleast humorous at times. There's nothing to exciting about the story until the last hour of the game. The ending had plenty of twists I wasn't expecting and I played this before 8 years ago. The rest of the game is just a bunch of small side quests until you find the Crest Guardian. The game goes through chapters, but there was no real pattern that got old or stale like in most games, but each chapter always ended with the defeat of a Crest Guardian. ----------Graphics----------
The graphics are ok, but there isn't much to the game. The game revolves around a single town with a couple dungeons around it. No other towns, you can't even walk houses or shops in the one town and explore for yourself. They stop you with a bunch of menus that are slow to navigate. The character models are good looking and there's really no repeating characters within the town or castle, so I can't complain to much. The only time you get control of the camera is within the town, the rest of the game has a pre-determined camera angle that will change with your movements. Sometimes the graphics will fluctuate off and on, other times you can't tell if something is close or far away. Sometimes Musashi will fall through stuff that should be soiled (the bones on Twin Peak Mountain for example). ----------Sound----------
The music is great, it's a Squaresoft game after all. I especially loved the chapter 3 music during the Vampee attack. This game is probably the first Squaresoft game to feature a full voice cast, if not then it's still a very early one. There's alot of voice work in the game, and it all fit on one CD, so that's pretty impressive in that sense, but it gives you a sense how small the game is. The voice work is totally over the top typical wacky anime stuff directed towards kids and pre-teens. That doesn't stop the voice work from being pretty damn good though. There's really nothing bad about the sound, just having that much voice work on a PS1 game was enough to blow me away back when this was released.
----------World Map----------
There's no world map, but the world takes place inside of a small village that connects through various exits into different areas. The world is not huge at all, but it's always interesting to find the new dungeon within the town or just outside of it. Like a Metroid or Zelda game, the more scrolls and pieces of Legendary Armor you get helps you advance through the game by moving rocks, draining water, etc (scrolls) or giving you abilities to double jump (Legendary Armor). Just inside of town there's dungeons waiting you like the Mine, the basement of the Restaurant, or even the Well. You can walk outside of town to travel through a woods or climb a mountain. Not much to the game, but it's still pretty fun.
The town has a day / night system, similar to Radiata Stories, Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing. The people within town will walk around and do their business. Shops will only open on certain times and days. Musashi gets tired, so he has to sleep. If you meter reaches around 70% Musashi will start to slow down. Once he reaches 100% he will just fall asleep on the ground any where in the game. The game will go in fast forward for a while until he has had plenty of sleep, but it will also stop at the 20% marker. You can wake him up at any time, but it's best to let him sleep. While this is a creative idea for the game, it doesn't make it harder or more challenging, it just makes it freaking annoying. I was doing one of the longer missions and was running back to the exit where I got trapped on a platformer with a conveyer belt in front of me. I had enough strength to jump to it, but since he was tired he could run those few steps to gain another jump on the belt, so I had to wait there on this small platform for about 4 minutes until he feel asleep.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
11:39
The stuff leading up to the final boss was great storytelling, but after you beat the boss, the ending is pretty lame. You save afterwards, I hear there's a 2nd ending to the game, but if you beat the game a certain way, but it doesn't seem worth it.