Review: Musashi: Samurai Legend (PS2)

Fisher Price: My First RPG - sorry, Musashi: Samurai Legend - starts off quite well (note the 'quite'), but then it becomes clear very quickly that it isn't going to get any better. Gamestyle was quite disappointed to realise that this game has crikey-all to do with the real Miyamoto Musashi, who was one of the greatest swordsmen of all time. He was most famous for his fighting style utilising both daisho blades (the katana and wakizachi, or backup sword) simultaneously and worthy if anyone ever was of the title "samurai legend" (look ma, we can do history as well as videogames!). The Musashi in this game is, instead, an unfeasibly-haired person of no obvious age or gender whose sensei is a talking cat.

So far, so by-the-numbers Japanese RPG, you may be thinking. Sadly, you'd be right; every box on the publisher's safe list of requirements appears to have been ticked: Cel-shading? Check. Steam-powered robots? Check. Steam-powered robot ninjas? Double-check. Gravity-defying hair? Oh very yes. Mission to save the princess? Check. Five elemental powers? Present and correct. Musashi is certainly not a bad game - it's cute, pretty and polished-looking, and there's no pop-up or distance fog, mainly because you can only ever see a tiny area of world at once. But even then, there's a brief loading screen in between each and every room, and invisible walls block paths that you could easily traverse in real life. The only reason why Musashi can't is that the storyline depends on it. As an example, there's a huge boulder in Wellspring Woods you can't bypass until you have the Sword of Earth, even though there's an ample amount of space on either side of it.

The thread of this game is to recover all the elemental swords (Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Void) and thus be able to defeat Gandrake, the baddie threatening the peaceful town of Antheum, whose inhabitants have summoned Musashi in their hour of need. Recovering a sword also strengthens the Anthedon (a flying whale who bears Antheum aloft) who can ferry you ever-further afield as it regains its lost powers. Recovering an elemental sword is preceded by having to rescue its corresponding Maiden, and all of this is punctuated by having to rescue Princess Mycella, the chief's daughter (who frequently manages to get herself re-captured), plus a few minor variants on the basic quest, such as finding fuel for the blacksmith's forge or a rare species of fish for the barbecue chef.

On your travels you'll come across Antheans who have encapsulated themselves in glowing spheres to protect themselves from Gandrake's ninjaroids. Bashing their spheres releases them and sends them home so they can go back to plying their various trades (cue déjà vu for anyone who's played Dark Cloud). The more pathetically-grateful people you rescue, the more shops will open, from which you can stock up on healing items and accessories that modify your base stats. Later on you'll also be able to buy upgrades for your katana and turn pieces of scrap metal you find into useful objects.

When you're out in the field, it's mostly a matter of getting to the end of the area (with the help of a very useful map system), platform-hopping and slaughtering wave after wave of robotic goons on the way. Interestingly, you can learn some baddies' moves by locking onto them for long enough and then pressing Square just as their next attack hits you. Some of these moves cost no mana and are executed with a particular gesture of the left analogue stick, whereas others drain mana and can be assigned to the Circle button. 'Shooting Star' is a particularly good one, learned via some acorn/crow beasties in Picodon Jungle; it costs a measly 15 mana and sends a punching flurry of katana slices through an enemy, eventually levelling up to be powerful enough to kill many enemies in one go.

There are some boss battles to ramp up the action, but few of these are memorable. Most of them simply take longer to defeat than the grunt enemies. Gamestyle did like the battle against the flying Crimson Gulper, which sees the player hurtling through a giant cavern frantically hopping across the backs of obliging beetles to dodge the fish's attacks. Just when you think it's over, along comes an even bigger fish, which devours the first one and then starts pursuing you: a moment that's both laugh-out-loud and panic-inducing.

The aforementioned levelling-up is a smart affair. Each time you gain a level, all your stats will increase, but you can choose whether to distribute them evenly or give the most to one stat. This is much quicker than fiddling around distributing them all by hand, and better than agonising over whether to increase attack at the expense of not increasing defence.

Musashi: Samurai Legend is a well-made little game. It has good handling and controls and is nice to look at, and has little to berate besides the fact that, for all its sparkliness, it's ever so bland. It has a trading card-collecting subgame in an attempt to extend its lifespan, but you won't be bothered. If you're 11 or under, or you've never played games before, you'll probably enjoy Musashi - otherwise, it's not worth your time. Anything it can do, the criminally under-rated Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle can do better, so put your business in their direction instead.

Rating: 5 / 10

Words by Anna Ghislaine