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Musashi: Samurai Legend
PlayStation 2
A Legend of Obscurity
3/5 stars
“Musashi: Samurai Legend” (“MSL”) is the next-generation sequel to “Brave Fencer Musashi,” which originally appeared as a new IP on the PlayStation 1. While “Brave Fencer Musashi” was a Squaresoft effort (and complete piece of garbage), “MSL” came after the merger of Squaresoft and Enix into Square Enix. As a PlayStation 2 sequel to a game that largely fell flat due to the technological limitations and lack of 3D design knowledge of the 5th Generation, “MSL” had the opportunity to reboot the ‘Musashi’ franchise into something worth getting excited about. However, the obscurity of “MSL” today means that didn’t happen. Is “MSL” a sleeper reboot/sequel that has been left unappreciated despite its greatness? Or is it just another dud like its predecessor?
Presentation
“MSL” improves over its predecessor’s presentation simply by virtue of being a PlayStation 2 game instead of a PlayStation 1 game. 3D polygonal graphics underwent a miraculous jump in quality between the 5th and 6th Generations, and “MSL” stands as a shining example of that improvement. Even played a generation later using the upscaling capabilities of a backward compatible Phat PlayStation 3, “MSL” looks great. Instead of going for hyper-realism, “MSL” uses a super-stylized anime style along with thick-lined cell shading. The characters and environments look sharp, clean, and colorful. The only real problem with the graphical design is that the characters all have freakishly enormous hands and feet that sometimes end up making perfectly good motion-captured animation look strange.
Outside of the game engine, “MSL” features a single piece of eye-catching pre-rendered animation at the beginning. Like the rest of the game’s graphics, the intro movie is stylized anime, only this time in 2D. If I had to compare the animation style of the intro movie to anything, I’d say is reminds me of “FlCl,” an anime I don’t particularly care for (but not due to the animation quality).
The sound department is where “MSL” falls apart. While the soundtrack in “Brave Fencer Musashi” was the best (read: only good) part of the game, the soundtrack in “MSL” is entirely forgettable and drab. Even worse than the soundtrack is the horrendous voiceacting, which makes Musashi sound like a moron and everyone else sound like the localization team just grabbed random interns out of their cubicles and forced them to read all of the game’s dialog in a single take… it’s really, REALLY bad… and there’s no way to turn it off in the game’s options!
Story
Following in the footsteps of “Brave Fencer Musashi,” “MSL” is a story about a young man summoned from another dimension by a princess with special summoning powers in order to help her people defeat an evil organization. This time around, however, Musashi doesn’t appear to be an actual samurai from the get-go, but some sort of feudal Japanese boatman who, under the tutelage of a talking cat (with an awesome Chinese accent) named Mew, learns the ways of Eastern swordsmanship… and, unfortunately, the ways of J-pop fashion statements.
Unlike the original “Brave Fencer Musashi,” “MSL” ditches a lot of the un-funny forced comedy. Musashi is no longer helping a pun-ishingly named kingdom filled with people named after food against an evil empire named after beverages. Now Musashi must help a village of mystics living atop a giant, flying whale in their struggles against the evil Gandrake corporation and its evil board of directors. President Gandrake himself is a badass samurai in his own right and is working toward the completion of a mysterious master plan that involves kidnapping young maidens from the mystic’s village.
In order to restore power to the flying whale, Musashi must retrieve and release the powers of 5 elemental swords (instead of 5 elemental scrolls, like in the original game). Doing this means rescuing the corresponding elemental maidens in the process. Only after jumping though these hoops is Musashi able to take the fight to Gandrake and his henchmen.
“MSL” has an incredibly simplistic narrative. It’s linear, straight-forward, and relatively short at about 17 hours. Few of the supporting characters have any kind of interesting development, and the villains remain almost complete mysteries in their motivations and backstories. With a narrative this lacking in detail, the fact that the game is so short is practically a requirement, as there just isn’t enough engaging narrative presented to stretch the game anymore.
Gameplay
Both “MSL” and “Brave Fencer Musashi” purport to be Action-RPGs. When I played “Brave Fencer Musashi,” I got much more of a bad ‘Zelda’ clone Action/Adventure. Playing “MSL” didn’t give me a strong RPG vibe either, as it feels much more like a Beat ‘em Up.
Like the original game, in “MSL” Musashi can swing a fast katana or a slower large sword. While he starts with a Great Oar as his large sword, each of the elemental swords that serve as the story’s McGuffins can also be equipped in the large sword slot. Fortunately, the transition from 5th Generation to 6th Generation got rid of all of the poor controls, spotty hit detection, and terrible camera issues that plagued “Brave Fencer Musashi.” Musashi can also equip a single accessory to provide a stat boost or decrease the amount of MP required to use his current large sword’s ability.
Each large sword has a unique special attack that is frequently required to solve puzzles in the game’s dungeons, ranging from an earthquake all the way to invisibility. Unlike the original “Brave Fencer Musashi,” “MSL” no longer has all of the annoying micromanagement features, so Musashi doesn’t continually lose MP (which replaces BP from the older game) and he no longer needs to worry about randomly falling asleep while adventuring. To counter this, the special sword abilities now all require MP to use and Musashi no longer auto-regenerates health. He can still buy varieties of food in the mystics’ village, with meals restoring either health or health & MP, ice cream restoring MP, and beverages providing temporary (worthless) stat boosts. In another massive improvement over the previous game, Musashi is no longer subject to status ailments like poison. Perhaps the best improvement to the fighting engine in “MSL” over the original game is that Musashi can now assimilate and KEEP all the abilities of enemies he encounters, selecting the right ability for the situation from a menu.
However, despite all the improvements over “Brave Fencer Musashi,” “MSL” still isn’t a very interesting game. While some of the dungeons are pretty interesting, they are all quite lacking puzzles. Most of the gameplay revolves around killing enemies, which come in a tiny variety of ninjaroid robots and barrel-shaped robots, with a scant few unique enemies. Most boss battles revolve around pattern memorization and figuring out how Musashi’s most-recently-acquired elemental large sword can be used to reveal a weak point… or failing that just dealing as much damage as quickly as possible. Musashi can assimilate basic swordfighting skills from enemies that don’t cost MP to use, and most players will use these ‘free’ abilities for the vast majority of combat situations.
“MSL” does still feature some of the mini-games that found their way into the original “Brave Fencer Musashi.” However, there are only three of them, and none are anywhere near as annoying as the ones in the original game. “MSL” also features occasional checkpoints in dungeons and an invisible checkpoint at the start of each boss battle, which help to take away a lot of the annoyance by surprise deaths that had me gnashing my teeth with “Brave Fencer Musashi.”
One new annoyance, and major gimmick, introduced in “MSL” is the ability for Musashi to carry people. Thus every elemental maiden he rescues throughout the course of the game NEEDS him to carry her around for a bit before she recovers her ability to walk. Of course, enemies still try to kill Musashi while he has his hands full, so he must either set the girl down or try to do some fancy swordwork by tossing her into the air and whipping his sword around before catching her. I found these segments unnecessarily frustrating.
Overall
“Musashi: Samurai Legend,” while a drastic improvement over the original “Brave Fencer Musashi,” is still nothing to get terribly excited about. With a marked improvement in graphics comes an equal and opposite drop in audio quality. The story, while 100% less punny, is still pretty minimal and cheesy. The gameplay, while drastically improved in almost every way, still doesn’t offer a compelling experience. It’s no wonder Square Enix has let this franchise wither away to nothing.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 2.5/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
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