Written by: Mark

 

 

 

Before this review gets under way I will make a confession that I am a massive ninja fan, whether this being ninjas in video games or more importantly ninja movies.

With this in mind I was quite excited to play the side scrolling ninja platform fighter "Muramasa: The Demon Blade" on the Nintendo Wii. I will hold my hands up and admit that before I was asked to review the game I had not heard too much about it and with the Wii throwing up only a handful of classics the main question would be if the game offer enough in terms of gameplay to avoid being yet another Wii title that proves to be nothing more than average?

 

Read on to find out more.

 

Gamers everywhere will appreciate that the majority of Nintendo Wii games are nothing more than average in terms of their graphics as the console is really only next gen thanks to it’s unique controls. 'Muramasa The Demon Blade' seems to turn this theory on it’s head as the first noticeable thing is how artistically nice the game looks with each level having a nice Oriental look to them which sets the scene for a very pleasurable looking game.

 

In addition the game has a very nice musical score which truly gives the feel of ancient Japan as portrayed in many of the 1980’s classic ninja movies and on a personal level this drew me in and proves better than a considerable amount of the games currently available on the console.

 

 

Character design is far from flawed however and the player will often encounter multiple similar enemies throughout. Exceptions to this are the variety of boss characters you meet throughout the game and whilst these offer quite a nice amount of variety never really prove anything more than average in their appearance.

 

It seems that most of the effort put into the game has gone on providing the backdrops and sound and due to this the actual character design does seem somewhat lacking and left me feeling a little let down if truth be known.

 

The danger of games in the style of this, is that they soon become very repetitive so I approached the game with an open mind and hoped that it would offer enough variety in it’s gameplay.

 

Instantly I found that the tutorial offered a nice taster and gave me belief that the game would provide a nice tactical aspect in it’s variety of moves and strategic use of the huge amount of swords which can be used however when I got into the main game this never quite panned out as well as I had hoped.

 

Admittedly the player has a large amount of moves at their disposal although once into the story you may find that only a few moves are needed in order to progress. One exception to this is the boss battles which do require a more tactical use of weapons and moves.

 

The game itself gives the player the opportunity to choose wither a male or female character although there are only minor differences between the two with the only thing of notice being that the female is a faster and more agile character whilst the male is stronger. Both characters have the same range of moves which is although impressive soon gets lost in the actual shallowness of each battle.

 

 

The main key point which sets the gameplay aside from other similar titles is the incredible amount of swords found throughout the game and at any point the player has three at their disposal each of which has a set amount of power which can be drained in battle.