Inuyasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask

"An honest review from an InuYasha fan"

When I found out about an InuYasha PS2 game, I was ecstatic. The first game was fun for what it was, a simple side-scrolling fight game, but an InuYasha RPG was truly needed. Anyone who knows the anime/manga can agree that if they had made an RPG surrounding the show that was of the same quality as Kingdom Hearts, it might possibly be the best game ever created for anyone with any knowledge of the show/manga whatsoever. In other words, I was... moronically (anime games are never good, darnit!)... trying to believe that I would get to see a fighting and graphics engine that would have InuYasha tearing through hundreds of demons with blood, roaring, and all that good stuff. But, no, unfortunately, Bandai dropped the ball and then stabbed it a couple of times. I wish I hadn't payed 40 dollars for this game...

Story: 7/10-
Well, not so bad. Somewhat reminiscent of the anime, which, really, doesn't have a very strong common storyline either. Basically, there's a boy (girl, whatever you wanted) that is helping with some sort of festival, and they find some strange symbol in their shrine. (I only played as the boy, and I'll be darned if I'll play it again, so bear with me if the girl's storyline is somewhat different.) Then, there's a demon, and InuYasha, the dude with the parachute pants (heh), helps you out. You find out you have the power of the Shikigami somewhere along the line, which is weird... aren't the Shikigami paper puppets that are controlled by their masters in the anime? But, this is light, fire, a fish, just a general magic power. You use this to whoop some demon butt, basically. You try to find Naraku, an evil demon who's messed with tons of people's lives. All in all, the storyline is simple, but there are several things that happen during the game that needlessly stretch it out, making this a surprisingly long game. Maybe the best part in the game, though. Like I said, reminiscent of the show.

Graphics: 4/10-
I do NOT like chibi InuYasha characters. Just wanna get that out of the way. It's painful for me to look at. Besides that, though, the graphics are really sub-par for the PS2. This looks like a Playstation game. The characters all look really bland and boring, and their body parts are all stretched out. Remember Final Fantasy 7? This is it without the... greatness. The saddest thing is the enemies. They have maybe 10 different extremely crappy enemy layouts that don't look like they could hurt a fly... in fact, some of them DO look like flies. They just switch the names of them and recycle the pattern over and over. Lazy, that's what it is. The attacks look horrible. The only reason this doesn't get a 2 is because they do have some pretty cool anime cutscenes when you attack, and one in the beginning. These are few and far-between, and not worth playing the game for.

Sound: 5/10
I LOVE the InuYasha music. Kaoru Wada is one of the best composers I've ever heard (he did the Kingdom Hearts music, too), and he writes for the show. Great, great music. Unfortunately, besides the stirring clip from the song Hanyou InuYasha in the beginning, this is really sub-par music. They can have orchestras and full bands playing on a PS2, people! A few cheap midi tracks don't qualify as video game music on a PS2. Pure and simple. The worst thing about this is the voiceover job. Japanese InuYasha is awesome, nobody can disagree, and English is... not so much. Just a fact. But my problem's not with the English InuYasha character voiceovers. It's with the other voiceovers they got, like for the main character (the boy, don't know about the girl, like I said), and the villagers, and some of the demons. They are the worst voiceovers I've ever heard. Honestly. These people need to get a new dayjob. It's just terrible.

Gameplay: 5/10
Eh... like I said, this is basically Final Fantasy 7 years too late. You have a party with all the people in your group, you can equip them with items, they gain experience by beating enemies, and they gain levels after you get enough experience. You know the drill. The type of battle is basically the same as Final Fantasy 7, too. You get a turn every once in a while, and your guys attack the enemy; turn-based fighting. It gets pretty gosh-darn monotonous after a while. The comic-book "THWAK!" when you hit an enemy is just degrading for the InuYasha group. You can get co-op attacks, which allow you to attack with more than one person, causing more damage with your attacks combined. These are cool because they're the ones that play the anime cutscene when you use them. Anyway, not bad gameplay at heart, but the way it's presented, with boring enemies, childish attacks, and way too many random battles at times, makes it pale in comparison to its predecessors. One of the better parts of the game, though.

Value/Tilt: 4/10
I payed 40 DOLLARS for this game! Did I mention that?! I could have bought a GOOD game, like Farcry or Devil May Cry 3, but NOOO! I had to buy this crap factory! This was 2 weeks of allowance. Gone. I got bored and quit, but I made myself beat it just so that I could never have to think about it again. I wrote this to tell everyone NOT to get this game. Do not be fooled by fans of the anime and manga that give this game a good rating just for the heck of it. I can't blame them, but if the gaming industry thinks it's okay to make crappy anime games for cheap and then charge full-price for them, they'll keep right on doing it. This is a really sub-par game. Bandai... Bandai has no excuses. Listen, watch the anime (or not, whatever), but don't get this game. Please.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/05