A fun side scrolling action RPG set in old Japan and beautifully presented with a nice use of Japanese mythology.
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Story
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The story for MTDB is set during the Genroku period in Japan(1688 to 1704)and a power hungry-shogun(military commander)began a conflict in an attempt to gain possesion of some swords named 'Demon Blades' which can be used to summon demons.
You can play through the story as 2 characters.
One of the characters is a princess named 'Momohime' and she is possessed by the soul of a man and he won't free her until she assists him with his own evil ambitions.
You can also play through the story as a fugitive named Kisuke who cannot remember much about his past and is being chased for crimes he can't even remember commiting.
The story will also involve mythical creatures,Gods,demons,Buddha.The story can lighten up the mood a bit by have situations where Kisuke will encounter Momohime when she's naked and the Gods/mythical beings have good distinctive personalities and some can be quite funny.
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Gameplay
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Like I've mentioned before,MTDB is a side scrolling action RPG and you can easily hack n slash some long combo attacks.The gameplay has 2 modes(I forget their names)but one of them has an auto block feature(making the battles much easier)and the other mode makes you block manually.However,even when you select the mode that has the auto block option,it means your character will automatically block most attacks when he/she swings their sword,so you'll have to be making your character swing their sword to block,otherwise enemy attacks will still hit them.
The gameplay feels fun,it's easy to pick up and play.The exploration in this game doesn't have as much depth as other RPGs,because you'll be moving through 2D environments,however you can still enter some buildings and try alternative paths when you're travelling through places and you can find hidden goodies.Just like with other RPGs,you can also listen to what NPCs have to say.
An interesting feature the game has is that your weapons will constantly break and you'll be forced to switch weapons and your broken weapons will automatically get repaired when you switch them out(they'll take a mintue or so to repair).This feature means that your older weapons won't neccessarily become redudant because you'll still want to use some of your older weapons when you're waiting for your more powerful weapons to get repaired.Also,different weapons have different abilities to use to your advantage,for example,some swords will heal your character a bit when you land successful attacks on your enemies with it.Some swords do a lot of damage to enemies but their blocking abilities are not as good because they're heavier and slower to swing(the auto block feature will block most attacks from most enemies but some bosses can perform fast and rapid attacks and you'll need a lighter sword if you want to succesfully block those attacks).
Also,sometimes excessive blocking can be a bad thing because it will cause your swords to break more quicly and it's possible for all your swords to be broken and you won't be able to block enemy attacks for a while.So sometimes you'll need to use skillful dodging.
The gameplay allows your character to perform double air jumps(to get to higher areas and to gain a height advantage during boss battles)and you can glide(slowly fall to the ground or glide across areas)so you can avoid falling to the ground too quickly if the enemies are exploding bombs around you and so you can make certain platform jumps.Yes,the game does have platforming,quite a lot of platforming actually,and most of it is basic,but there's times you'll need to use precision with you're platform jumping(using the glide feature)and against some bosses you'll need to be precise with your platform jumping/gliding,and there's even a boss battles where you'll need to jump on parts of the boss's body so you can actually attack them(and it's not as easy as it sounds).
Like with all RPGs,there's levelling up and items for healing and stat boosts.
It took me 10 hours to beat the stories for both characters,but you can unlock different endings for the characters by doing certain stuff after you beat the game with both characters.
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Graphics
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The graphics have a lovely,handdrawn style,they remind me somewhat of Okami.There's beautiful forest,rainfall,countryside,villages that are lite up and surrounded by trees with the purple leaves and the environments have details such as bridges and rivers besides the village and ricefields in the countryside and the interior of some buildings have things such as Japanese screens and people sitting and eating on the floor(in the Japanese style).There's also an environment set in Hell,there's lovely waterfalls,sunsets,and a variety of forest vegetation,caves etc.
The enemies can range from ninja,samurai,demonic entities(including some very huge demonic creatures)and wild animals.There's also mythical creatures such as fox spirits and gods and the style of the demons and mythical beings has a nice eastern flavor to it.
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Sound
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The VA's are in Japanese(with English subtitles)and I'm not sure what bad Japanese VA's are supposed to sound like,but I'm glad they didn't replace the Japanese VA's with English VA's like most Japanese games do,because often English VA's sound horrible.The music in this game suits the mystical feel of the game and the feeling you're in 15th century Japan.
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Overall
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The game is very fun and playable and nicely presented and it's different but in a good way and it's a great exclusive game for the Wii.