The creators of the acclaimed PlayStation 2 hit, Odin Sphere, return with the single player, action RPG, Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Steeped in the ancient mythology of Japan, Muramasa: The Demon Blade tells a tale of possessed souls, forgotten pasts and unimaginable destinies. A Wii exclusive, filled with expertly hand animated graphics and gameplay that transitions seamlessly between player-controlled elements and story sequences it is an adventure only to be experienced on the Wii.
Story In Muramasa: The Demon Blade players have their choice of two playable characters: the renegade ninja, Kisuke, and the princess turned kunoichi, Momohine. These are their stories.
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User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Finally, a game for gamers who own a Wii
Let’s get it out of the way; Muramasa: The Demon Blade is the game that finally made my purchase of the Wii worthwhile.
Muramasa is in some ways similar to Super Metroid in that you progress around the game by moving from screen to screen, with enemy battles occuring randomly, as you move towards the act’s boss. Many paths are locked, only becoming accessible after you defeated set bosses, leading to some level of back-and-forth (especially for the male character Kisuke). Enemy lairs can also be unlocked in the same way, allowing your character to fight in multi-stage battles against set enemies.
All-in-all, this results in an linear path from boss to boss, as each act takes place, with the random battles and (typically) multiple paths to objectives adding in a good level of diversity. Normal enemies level with you, so outside of mastering combat, no battle will seem boring.
Featuring two characters, each with their own story line and bosses, you can play the game from each character’s perspective in any way you want, adding another layer of diversity to the game.
The game also features a robust weapon crafting system, with a total of 108 weapons (all swords) that can be unlocked, but which feature level-based requirements. For those that don’t want this experience, however, each boss unlocks a weapon (again, unique for each character), allowing players to switch to these new weapons as the game progresses.
Typical to games of this genre, a leveling component increases character health, strength, and vitality, which impacts what blades you can equip.
Based solely on my own gameplay, each character’s story lasts around 9 hours, allowing for a fair amount of exploration and forging of new blades. For the most part, grinding for levels is unnecessary, especially considering that dying carries almost no penalty at all, during boss and lair fights.
The post-game allows you to unlock the remaining blades, as a handful of these can only be acquired after you have beaten the game with each character. Additional, alternate, endings are also available, again for each character. In total, this resulted in over 25 hours of gameplay.
The biggest draw of the game, coming up in almost any discussion, and which I’ve therefore left for the last, is the art and story style. The art of the game is simply beautiful, with the power of the Wii stretch to the breaking point. It would have been something to see this game on the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, where areas would have loaded faster the pixel borders would have been near-invisible.
The spoken language throughout the game is Japanese, with English subtitles, and no way to each either of these. While this may distract some, it leads to a much more ‘real’ experience.
Overall, I must give this game a full 5 stars. There are few drawbacks to the game, with the only semi-semi-major ones being from what I believe to be hardware-related issues (the few second loading from screen to screen and the visibly square pixels), and the art, music, and forging element adding considerable value.
I believe that the fast nature of battles (many standard battles will last seconds, while some boss battles may last dozens of minutes or more) allows for a very high level of replayability.
If you consider yourself a gamer and your Wii has a coat of dust, go check out some gameplay videos. If it looks good, go buy this game.
5 Stars Beautiful game!
Even for a Wii game, this is a beautiful game with gorgeous 2D hand drawn visuals. The game stick to traditional Japanese culture and even has Japanese voice acting(with English subtitles), this really isn’t a turn-off though since it only adds to the atmosphere. The game also plays very well and fluidly with traditional controls. Not every Wii needs to be motion controlled to be fun.
The difficulty level, even in the easiest mode expect to be defeated every once in a while. This game is challenging indeed.
Though the game sometimes feels too linear, and you may feel like all you need to do to progress is to go from point A to B.
But with 20+ hours of main story gameplay and 30+ hour for full completion, this game is worth it.
5 Stars Beautiful, cathartic hack’n’slash
Forget about getting an engaging storyline (or even just a storyline you could follow); unless you are knowledgeable in Japanese legends, Muramasa will only fall flat. Instead, you buy this game for its beautiful 2D graphics and fast-paced game play. Check out a trailer for the game [...] and if you are pumped at what you see, then you’ll most likely enjoy the rest of the 10-20 hours of the game.
Side notes:
Like other hack’n’slash games, there’s a good deal of mashing the A button here. I’d suggest non-casual players to immediately switch to shura (hard) mode because there is a layer of complexity added in, but it will only shine when the enemies can actually kill you.
For people who have played Odin Sphere (Muramasa’s older, Nordic sister) and want a comparison: I’m in the camp that found Odin Sphere beautiful but too slow (in both combat and game progression) and needlessly aggravating (I’m looking at you, item wheel). I think Vannilaware felt the same way coz they fixed all that in Muramasa. 
1 Star fun game, but does not deserve the 5 stars it has been receiving
Don’t get my wrong by my rating as this game is by no means a 1 star, but since everyone is saying it is the greatest game ever I feel I have to give it a 1 star to get the rating down to 3 to 4 range which is should be. Let me tell you this game is absolutely beautiful and I love the fighting, but the repetitiveness of the art design can get annoying as well as walking around at some times it seems like forever. though these 2 things do not kill the game it does turn it from a 4 or 5 star game to a 3 star game as it will get quite annoying for the average gamer walking around forever doing basically nothing. Anyways this is definitely worth a purchase, but don’t expect a perfect game as it is not one and should be considered a 3 or 4 star game.
5 Stars What are you waiting for? Pick this up now!
Muramasa: The Demon Blade is one of the rare games that actually lives up the tremendous hype which was unfortunately/fortunate bestowed on it by the gaming media and gamers alike. The gameplay is simple, addictive, fluid, gorgeous and with 3 difficulty levels(2 available from the start and 1 more unlocked after beating the game on either difficulty) it’s accessible to any level of gamer. The replay value is high with 3 different endings for each character(Kisuke and Momohime) and a sort of boss rush mode where you battle waves after waves of enemies which is very fun. The graphics are beautifully hand drawn and reminds me of the SNES days. Music is not the best I’ve heard but does the game justice. My only gripe with the game is the translation done by Ignition(I know they hired an outside company for the translation) which you can tell was done on a sub par level. But overall, Muramasa will satisfy any type of gamer. Do yourself a favor and pick this up now!
