Bushido Blade 2

"A very decent fighter from the people that brought you Final Fantasy"

Bushido Blade 2 is a great fighting game that is like no other (except maybe its prequel). It involves a more raw kind of fighting, were one slip up, and loose. There are no life bars. You pick your character and weapon and then you do battle. You battle in wide-open areas where you can have free movement, you are not confined to just going back or forward. Those are a couple of the things that got me interested in this game.

The Story: C
The story is all right. It is kind of choppy, though. It is hard to understand what each character wants, but the characters are separated into two clans. It is easy to understand what each clan wants, but the individual characters are hard to keep track of and to understand their wants or needs or connection to the story.

Gameplay: B+
The ideas in Bushido Blade 2 are what make it an interesting game. The fact that it is realistic in the sense that you can be dead in one it, or sometimes it takes several (if you are lucky). Also the fact that sometimes it is not what character you are, but the weapon you are using that makes it interesting as well. There are several different matches you can make with different characters holding different weapons. Also there are many different modes of play.

Graphics: B-
As far as the Playstation goes, the graphics are pretty average for the gameplay. The only reason I gave it a B- was because of the FMVs, which are great (Come on, it is SquareSoft, of course they are great FMVs). The FMVs are short, though, and that makes it a little disappointing graphically.

Sound: C
The sounds are great in this game, but the major problem is: Where is the music? There is no music while you are fighting and this forces me to give it a lower score in this department. The sounds of the weapons hitting and of just running around are great. It just would have been better if they let you have music as well.

Replay: D
The reply value for me is very small. I find that after a couple of days or weeks, it just gets boring. There are only so many things you can do. With the one hit death rounds will go quickly and seem repetitive. Sure there are a lot of characters and weapons, but once you have tried them all, they start to feel the same very fast. The story mode is also repetitive and the battles start to feel the same after awhile. Sure this game is great when you first pick it up, but after about a month, I pretty much stopped playing it.

Conclusion
Bushido Blade 2 is a great game when you first pick it up, and maybe it does stay that way for a while, but it does get repetitive. I would suggest you rent the game (I would suggest this with quite a few games) and see if you like it before you spend $20 for it. The biggest things that sell me on a videogame are its gameplay and its replay value. If a game does not give me satisfaction in both of these areas, then I do not find it a great game. Nevertheless I am still going to give it a C+ overall. It does have touches that other fighting games do not have.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/19/01, Updated 12/21/01