Genji gives you a great taste of ancient China, plus it adds solid hack-n-slash to beginners as well as hardcore gamers!
Genji tells the story of an ancient Chinese legend. The Heishi-clan has taken over the land by defeating the Genji-clan, ruling over China with an iron hand. **** a young samurai and the son of the Genji-lord, stands up to the Heishi-clan. Together with Benkei, also a Genji, he starts is journey to finally defeat the Heishi for good and free China for good.
The game starts out very strong with a good looking CGI-movie followed by you controlling Yoshitsune. Immediately you get thrown into battle with some ninja’s and all hell breaks lose. You get to experience the battle-system, which is very simple but effective. There’s a button for normal attack, heavy attack and jump. If you just the normal attack button then you will get a nice looking combo, so imagine what happens when you use the other buttons too! Another notable aspect is the use of Kamui. This is a special power used to defeat a lot of enemies at once. When you use the L1-button to unleash this power, the environment becomes a little foggy and all enemies come marching at you. The trick is to push the attack-button at the right so you can kill any enemy with just one strike. Very effective when you encounter a large amount of enemies!
In the very beginning of the game you get to meet Benkei. This big guy is a warrior monk and has a huge pole as a weapon. This adds a new perspective to the game and gives you the opportunity to play how you want. If you want to play fast and evading, then you should choose Yoshitsune. If you want to barge right through any enemy, then Benkei is your way to go!
When you start playing the game you almost immediately notice the very colorful and detailed environments. It really sets a great atmosphere in the style of ancient China. So the graphics really look great and there is nothing to complain about there. The same goes for the sound in the game. The Chinese music sounds good, but eventually becomes a little repetitive. Besides that, there’s really nothing wrong with it.
The downside of the game is that it’s a little short. You can play it through in less than 6 hours. There are several things to collect, which adds a small amount of playtime, but this is not included in the hard mode. So when you finish the game first, you can choose to either use the same character-stats or begin a new game in hard mode.
Genji: Dawn of the Samurai may be a little short, it’s definitely worth playing. We hope to see this downside fixed in the sequel, which will be released for the PlayStation 3, cause other than the length, there really isn’t anything else that isn’t good in this game!