PAX 2009: Hands on Muramasa

I had the chance to spend about 15 minutes with Muramasa, and have confirmed my suspicions. The game is going to rock, and it will probably be passed up by quite a few gamers out there. The demo ran through a very beautiful forest scene, and culminated in an boss battle against an extra large cyclops monk. Weird, sure, but also awesome. Click over for what makes this a potential sleeper hit when it launches in a couple days.

On the surface, the gameplay seemed a bit shallow. With a very basic attack set up, with one button to attack and one button to use magic, there didn’t seem many places to go. After a few minutes, however, I began to see the potential. Each sword (of which there were a handful in the demo) has different magic attacks, which work better for different situations. One launched any unfortunate enemies caught by the blast toward the heavens, where they could be juggled and pummeled into submission. Worked great on the oversized monk, who soon fell to my flailing samurai sword after a couple solid 40+ hit combos. Score. Other abilities varied from a dash move that zipped me across the screen, to a whirling fireball about a character tall that took out anything in it’s path. To switch swords you just tap (with the setup I used) a shoulder button. It was fun. And pretty. Looking forward to getting some more time with the game tomorrow.

The sad part, was that of the 6 (or so) Wii’s set up I rarely saw a line more than 3 or 4 people long to test out the game. In comparison to the half hour minimum to get hands on with one of the big names in the building, there wasn’t much hubbub around the game. And by not much I mean none (although I did see a fair bit of Demon Blade backpacks floating around). That doesn’t take away from the game’s quality.Long story short, if you are at all a fan of the genre, or beautiful hand drawn visuals, I suggest checking this one out.