Genji: Days of the Blade

"Genji: Days of the Blade is a pitiful sequel to a fairly good PS2 game."

While it is hard to say that Genji: Dawn of the Samurai was a great game, it was certainly a memorable enough game. It had an almost surreal feel, as it seemed to try to blend an actual Japanese setting with just enough mystic mumbo jumbo to make it interesting. You would think that a PS 3 game should be revolutionary, at least graphically. Sadly that's all this game has going for it.

Days of the Blade brings us to a time that takes place shortly after the first game. After the defeat of their generals, as well as their leader, the Heishi forces are left in ruin. There is only a small group of rebels left to be wiped out and then the Genji forces will have secured victory for themselves. But as bad guys are wont to do, the tattered Heishi finds a new source of dark power to use against the Genji forces. Yoshitsune, your main character, is going to have to assist his brother Yoritomo, leader of the Genji forces, in doing this dirty task. As usual, things spiral out of control and next thing you know, you're having to single handedly carve your way through the armies of the Heishi to figure out what the source of their dark power is and how to stop them.

The original Genji was a short but sweet game, with an interesting storyline and some cool twists on the hack and slash genre. It was hoped that the sequel would remedy the problems of the game and thusly propel the second game in the series to the level of games like Devil May Cry. This is not the case, unfortunately. There have been several good improvements over the last game, such as letting you switch your characters on the fly using the D-Pad, much like in the X-Men Legends series of games. When you do this, there is a delay where the enemies are slowed, but you can move at full speed. Using this strategically lets you evade enemy attacks and set up character switch combos, which is a lot of fun. However, take note that the major purpose of this is that there will be points in each level where you need a characters special skills, like Yoshitsune's ability to run on walls or Benkei's immense strength to break barriers.

The controls for this game are very simple and easy to learn, but it takes quite some time to master it. You have two attack buttons, a jump button, a special action button and the right analog stick allows you to evade enemy attacks. Mastering what combo's are best for each situation as well as learning when to dodge and how to fight each individual enemy is key to survival in this game. This adds an element of strategy to an otherwise dull action game.

The key difference between the action in this game and in others is the Kamui attacks. These are initiated by tapping the L1 button when your Kamui gauge is full. You, and a number of your foes that are nearby, are teleported to an alternate plane where you can do powerful attacks to these unfortunates. You will be prompted by button presses, shown onscreen much like in God of War, and by tapping them in rapid succession you can kill the enemies without giving them a chance to fight back. If you hit the wrong button, the enemy blocks your attack and you move on to the next one, do it successfully and the enemy will be killed, unless it is a boss.

The graphics are also top notch for this game, especially if you are using the PS3 on a HD-TV like it was meant to be. From the flowing movements of Shizuka's clothing to the roaring flames in the background, everything is animated wonderfully and looks great. The cutscenes are yet more breathtakingly gorgeous, showcasing the PS3's graphical might quite wonderfully. Speaking to the Playstations' credit, even when you are fighting eight or more enemies, with a dozen more fighting in the background, the game will barely even slow down. That my friends, is amazing.

Sound for this game doesn't fare as well. The voice acting is fairly laughable, especially for the characters that have oddly British sounding accents. Some of the main characters, like Benkei, have such a thick Asian accent that it I couldn't help but laugh at them every time they spoke. What wasn't quite as amusing was the background music. It seems as if there are only about four or five actual songs to be played in the background and they all consist of lots of drums and yelling, both male and female. This gets very redundant, very quickly especially if you are using Kamui mode, which has yet more yelling and chanting. It's aggravating as heck to listen to for the fifteen hours this game takes to beat.

While it sounds like this is a great game, barring the background music, don't go and buy this game just yet. I haven't started to complain about the single worst aspect of this game, and this seriously kills it. The camera in this game is so pathetically horrendous that it almost renders portions of this game unplayable. You will find yourself having to fight enemies that have moved to an area where your camera simply refuses to show you where they are. More often than not, you will find yourself needing to use your mini-map more for fighting than for navigating. This is an inexcusable problem, as I cannot see how the developers didn't notice how big of a problem this was. When this happens against bosses, is that it catastrophically bad and will cost you many health restoration items. This makes normally challenging portions of the game unreasonably harder and in a cheap way more so than a hard way.

Were this game not marred by such a horribly bad camera and some very frustrating platforming segments, this game could have been an incredible launch title. As it is, it is simply yet one more sad wretch of a PS3 launch title. This is a mediocre game and I honestly hope this is the last Genji game. I don't know if I could bear to see a game that I liked savaged not once but twice.

Pros: Beautiful graphics especially in cutscenes and the game controls fairly well.

Cons: Disgustingly useless camera, enemies get very repetitive, storyline is not very interesting and Buson, the fourth character, is incredibly useless.

Score: 4/10

Recommendation: Rent this one as it is only about 14 hours long and you can definitely get a feel as for whether or not you actually care for the game. I heavily suggest against simply buying it. If you don't wish to rent it, then I say skip it altogether.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/07