I'm quite glad I finally got
Deception IV Vita, thanks to the sale. What a great little game. Just beat Chapter 3, and having fun unlocking new instruments of death and chaos. Getting that feeling as if I were playing Chaos Legion or Godhand...
And then there's
Battle Princess of Arcadias. Ha, playing that Side-by-Side with
Valliant Hearts... I like a lot of Arcadias' animation work better (more unique frames and traditional-style animation, less obvious flash-like animation), but Valiant has the better cinematic direction. They're some of the most polar-opposite games possible, which helps perfect the others shortcomings.
Liking V
andalliant Hearts SO much more than "The Cave", which left me feeling as if it squandered it's potential the deeper I delved into it.
I bought it ages ago and played for about an hour and just got utterly bored. Why does this game get so much love here? Does it get better/deeper/interesting later on? It feels so shallow so far that I can't bring myself to go back to it.
The biggest issues with Muramasa when it first released on Wii:
- Up on the Wiistick to jump made controls crappy to many.
- Lots of Backtracking.
- A crappy translation that would sum whole paragraphs into 3 word sentences. Even those who didn't know Japanese could tell the story seemed shaved down and lacking in detail. This also made many things make less sense than they should.
For the Vita, everything has been addressed in one way or another, and it feels much less like a lazy port (as many on Vita feel), and more like a game made exclusively for the system. The controls were fixed (even made configurable on the Vita Version), and the translation was made "better" (much closer to the JP script, but has usual Aksys moments of dramatic vulgarity). Once those hurdles were surmounted, people could focus on the fact that the combat has a nice flow to it, that's pretty much unlike almost anything else. This is usually enough to let people overlook the reuse of stages and assets, because it's so pretty and unique in this day in age, that we can forgive them for that.
The game is anything but shallow, I'd say. Learning how to move, what skills to use, and getting better and better so that you can take on harder difficulties all can be very rewarding. The boss battles are all fun too, and the game is made in a way where leveling can get you through almost anything, so it's easy to avoid getting stuck at difficult battles. Coupled with the various difficulties, and multiple endings, the base game has some meat, if you wish to perfect it.
And then lastly, the DLCs. They're much better paced than the full game, I'd say, and offer fully unique characters with their own fresh movesets, cinematics, voicework, bosses, and endings. They're a solid value, and there's still 2 more on the way.
Muramasa clicked for me, when I started to try out the challenge areas, which forced me to really learn how to play. Trying to avoid breaking weapons, learning to use each style for it's strengths, getting to know the enemy attack patterns... all served alongside some of the most meticulously draw food every to grace any media.
