Square-Enix seems to enjoy alienating their fans in regards to how they handle their IP’s, with games like Valkyrie Elysium and the 3rd Birthday both managing to upset long term fans of both series, it’s no surprise that Musashi Samurai Legend, the sequel to Brave Fencer Musashi would also upset a lot of people for the same reason. Now I feel that I need to address this first because I spent a lot of time criticizing Valkyrie Elysium for being a bad Valkyrie Profile game and for this reason, I can truly relate to fans of Brave Fencer Musashi who hated this entry. However I want to point out that there is a huge difference between Musashi Samurai Legend and Valkyrie Elysium and that is the fact that Square-Enix developed Musashi Samurai Legend in house and the game was made by the same guy who made Brave Fencer Musashi, Yoichi Yoshimoto. Valkyrie Elysium on the other hand was outsourced to a company named Soleil despite all of the previous entries of the franchise being developed by tri-Ace. With a completely different company working on a game, it’s expected that the experience will be completely different as each developer has their own approach to game design. With the same guy working on Musashi 2 however, it’s strange to see such a drastic redesign of a concept that people already loved.
On the surface, Musashi Samurai Legend appears to be a clone of Kingdom Hearts but that’s mainly due to its aesthetic style as opposed to the actual gameplay mechanics besides the ability to pick up green orbs to restore health which just happened to make a reappearance here. While the gameplay may appear comparable at first with them both revolving around real time action with a leveling system slapped onto it, they aren’t really all that similar in terms of mechanics. Musashi 2’s gameplay is peculiar to say the least. The controls for this game are truly puzzling as your main attack button, square performs a fixed combo while triangle just swings whatever secondary weapon you have equipped in a slow vertical swipe that is completely useless in battle but is mainly used to open up these circular prison things. You would think that they would utilize the triangle button for something more important like additional moves to mix up your combo or some sort of defensive mechanism but no, the triangle button is completely wasted on some arbitrary move. Thankfully, the game does utilize both L2 and triangle for special moves, giving it some purpose but why do we have to press both buttons to use them? These attacks in particular are connected to your secondary weapon and are used to gain access to certain locations or operate contraptions located in the world, though they can still be used in battle, to varying results. These attacks also consume MP so you won’t be using them too often, which means that you’ll spend most of your time pressing square.
Musashi’s katana can cut through metal
That’s not to say that Musashi Samurai Legend doesn’t have any technicalities of its own as contrary to what one may think, Musashi Samurai Legend does have some mechanical nuance thrown in to keep its combat interesting. The downside however is that the game doesn’t execute them in a way that brings about any real challenge and the awkward controls bring about messy inputs. For example, players can cancel the downtime of their basic 5 hit combo into other attacks such as a stab or a spin attack, unlike Dynasty Warriors however, you don’t cancel into moves with triangle, instead you have to input a command via the game’s analog stick. What this means is that to perform a spin attack you have to spin the analog stick around which can be tricky to pull off when in a pinch. This sort of input complexity could have easily been avoided had the developers allowed the use of triangle for cancel moves but sadly this isn’t the case. There is also a timed counter mechanic similar to Onimusha’s criticals that allows you to counter attacks when pressing the attack button just as you are about to be hit. Unlike Onimusha however, the timing for these attacks is extremely generous, making them so easy to pull off that it’s barely a challenge. These attacks are also not instant death moves either so you won’t get that same satisfaction that you would get in Onimusha but since the timing isn’t half as difficult, it makes sense that you won’t deal as much damage.
On top of this the game also features the ability steal system that first appeared in Brave Fencer Musashi but Musashi Samurai Legend does things a little differently as it functions closer to that of Castlevania Curse Of Darkness’ steal system or Swords Of Destiny’s sword time in the sense that you must lock on to an enemy, bait them into attacking you, then press the button at the right time to bring results. The same is true for the counter system as well but enemies that have moves will have a blue light inside the lock on cursor to indicate that there is something to be learned from them. It should also be noted that to do any of this you must fill up a focus gauge. I cannot understand the necessity for such a gauge but it exists and you need to be mindful of it should you wish to perform any of these maneuvers. Regardless the mechanic is at least interesting and is kind of what sets this game apart from other beat em ups out there. The issue with the combat system is simply the fact that it just does not work as well as you would expect as I spent most of my time cancelling the first combo strike into itself because if your attack is delayed for a second, you are able to strike again with minimal animation frame use which allows for more consistency in terms of damage dealing as the first hit of the combo is noticeably quicker than the last. With that in mind, most of the combat pretty much comes down to just pressing square with a few cancels via complex inputs. This is hardly ideal for a beat em up but the flexibility brought by the ability system does add some more utilities to make the combat a bit more interesting outside of just performing square combos. In a way though, the combat feels more comparable to the combat found in action platformers or action puzzle games along the lines of Legacy Of Kain and Zelda than it does a beat em up, which begs the question of is Musashi Samurai Legend really a beat em up?
You cannot steal moves or counter until the exclamation mark appears.
At its core, it pretty much is a beat em up as you’re mostly going to spend your time slashing enemies with your sword but there are a few puzzles and platforming bits here and there, though the same could be said for the Devil May Cry games, except those games generally have a more technical combat system than Musashi Samurai Legend. Some of Musashi’s abilities do play a part in puzzle solving and getting around the levels which does give them that additional utility but the game clearly doesn’t revolve around this aspect, which to me is a good thing because I’m not a huge fan of puzzles in videogames but this, combined with the lackluster combat mechanics makes the overall gameplay feel rather shallow. One might assume that the game has metroidvania elements with the addition of items and weapons that allow you to access new areas but I found those areas to be few and far between. Musashi 2’s levels are rather linear and tight with the odd side path to find treasure which is ideal for someone like me but isn’t what many people look for in a metroidvania. So the result of this is a beat em up with a messy combat system. Like I said before, Musashi 2 has a leveling system as well as the ability to buy items and equipment but so does Onimusha Dawn Of Dreams and if I was to compare the two, I’d say that Onimusha Dawn Of Dreams is the better game, granted Musashi does let you choose which stats to focus on when leveling up to allow for a bit more freedom but this does very little to make up for the game’s failings in the combat department.
Musashi Samurai Legend strikes me as a game that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be and feels like a mishmash of different genres despite leaning closest to that of being a beat em up. To make matters worse, the lock on, which doubles as the focus ability is very short in range and does not focus the camera. To focus the camera you have to press R3 which as I’ve mentioned before, isn’t ideal. I found myself rarely using the evasive moves for this reason as to use it, you need to be locked on but some enemies have long ranged attacks which you cannot evade from a distance. So much like in Chaos Legion, I spent most of my time jumping to avoid attacks as opposed to actually evading, almost as if I was playing a Napishtim engine YS game. The bosses of Musashi feel like they were ripped straight out of Zelda and function in the same way. They have patterns and a weakpoint to locate. Once you find that weak point, it’s just a case of rinse and repeat till you win. The latter section of the game does mitigate this a little as you fight mostly humanoid enemies but for the majority of the game, this is how many of the boss fights go down. I’m not a fan of this style of boss fight as it feels less about understanding the combat mechanics and more about trying to figure out how to actually deal damage. This once again begs the question of whether or not Musashi 2 is in fact a beat em up because it doesn’t feel like one at all. If anything, Musashi 2 is best described as being a Zelda game but with greater emphasis on combat than puzzle solving. At some point though, you have to draw the line as to what is and what isn’t a beat em up and Musashi 2 goes beyond that line I’d argue. Hopefully this paints a clear picture on the type of game Musashi 2 is.
Musashi 2’s story In a nutshell
The storyline is whimsical and silly throughout. There’s nothing really all that special about it but its quirkiness kept me mildly amused throughout so it did its job well enough. The plot is pretty much the same as The Bouncer, minus the bar and fist fighting of course. An evil corporation deploys ninjas to kill everyone and they steal the tits, you know the usual shit. So like every hero you gotta go and get em back. You’ve seen it all before, but you gotta love how tongue in cheek the game is about it all. Comfort food never tasted sweeter. You have the secret meetings where everybody sits atop a seemingly bottomless pit on an elevated chair to discuss evil matters, you know, like every videogame. On top of this you have a huge whale that just happens to embody a shopping mall that apparently every sane being in the universe lives in with giant robots, ninjas on motorcycles and jet powered surf boards you know, all the stuff every adolescent dreams about. On top of all this you have what is without a doubt the most dangerously based gameplay mechanic known to man, the ability to pick up women and use them as melee weapons. I kid you not this is a thing and you’ll be doing it a lot because apparently the women in this game are insufferably accident prone, either that or they’re just looking for an excuse to be carried by their samurai gigalo, which is arguably more likely given the fact that one of them just happens to be a powerful sword fighter, seriously Musashi even considers charging for this at one point, he be opening up an escort service one of these days I swear.
Musashi 2 brings the best out of Tetsuya Nomura’s art style by opting for cel-shaded character models as opposed to the more realistic looking characters that most of the games he works on tend to have. I think this is the best decision they could have possibly made because the characters look more-or-less the same as their artwork and this allows them to blend in perfectly with the vibrant, colourful levels you explore throughout. I think that Kingdom Hearts would have looked so much better had it opted for this art style choice. The death animations for enemies is also rather neat as they will split into pieces when you hit them with a killing blow and your choice of attack for the killing blow will alter how the enemies are split when defeated, which is a nice touch. The soundtrack has a good mix of intense and relaxing tracks. While not all of the tracks are great, the ones that are more than make up for the ones that aren’t. I’d say that the soundtrack is equally as impressive as the visuals with all things considered, it’s definitely one of the things that gives the game its appeal.
So as you can see, Musashi Samurai Legend doesn’t really have all that much going for on paper in the gameplay department and while it may seem like I’m trashing the game, I actually enjoyed playing through this game a lot. The thing is though, Musashi 2 is such a mess of a game that has a lot of potential to be good. Sadly though the game falls flat on its ass and this frustrates me to no end because I really want to express my adoration for this game but I just can’t, there’s no way I can defend a combat system that is this badly executed regardless of how interesting the mechanical nuances are as I’d just be lying to you. Musashi 2 is a mediocre game that shows promise but fails to deliver the goods, there’s just no getting around that fact. In a way though, the result of this leads it to feel like one of the most definitive 2000’s games out there. The 2000’s was a time of discovery and experimentation. Musashi Samurai Legend finds itself in the midst of all this and this is likely what lead to the game’s negative reception as it really did not stand out at the time but going back to it in the year 2023 has been a trip down memory lane.
Musashi Samurai Legend took me back to a time where I was innocent, a time where games brought excitement to my 12 year old mind, a time where the vast majority of games strived to be edgy and cool to cash in on the counter culture that was prevalent at the time. At the same time, Musashi Samurai Legend presents you with the familiar concept of dumping players into vibrant and colorful worlds to do stuff in, that are considerably more tighter in level design as opposed to the games you see today. Once again, the first Kingdom Hearts comes to mind here. The whole game feels like that raw nostalgic 2000’s experience in its purest form but with absolutely nothing else going for it. Whether you should play it or not ultimately depends on whether or not you enjoyed playing games in the 2000’s, I mean who didn’t? Let’s be honest, it was the best time to be a gamer, the golden age of gaming. How can you not love the 2000’s? There are better games out there but Musashi 2 does have some cool ideas and concepts that makes it worth trying at the very least, if you’re looking for some comfort food. For everyone else, you’re probably not going to care about this game much at all.
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