Second verse, same as the first, but it's better-translated this time and a little bigger (or, considering the Vita's size, smaller?).
All the high and low points are basically untouched, though the better translation sheds some more light on the story, and it's the same just-short-of-perfect game that I would recommend to all people who love beautiful things. It's been just about 10 years since Rebirth's release at the time of this review, so the ball is in Vanillaware and Aksys's court to bust this one out of Vita jail.
I loved the Wii version so much I'm going through it again on Vita just to see the translation differences. Will update this review once I get to the DLC content.

Muramasa Rebirth is the second Vanillaware game I have ever completed. The first Vanillaware game I have completed was Odin Sphere Leifthrasir and to summarize my final thoughts on that game: It was good game. The combat was fun and the visuals were gorgeous. The story was not that amazing from what I remember and the repetition of visiting the same areas in a different order and fighting similar bosses with 5 different characters was my biggest issue with Odin Sphere. Muramasa only having two characters instead of the five in Odin Sphere gives Muramasa a point in that regard. There is still repetition with the backtracking and exploring the same areas as the two different characters, but it is nowhere near as bad as with Odin Sphere.

For combat, Muramasa is crazy fast. You will be doing crazy aerial combos with Momohime and Kisuke. Couple that with the game encouraging you to forge different swords that have better stats and different Secret Art techniques and you have fun gameplay. I do wish the game describes what a specific Secret Art does. I could be wrong, but to my knowledge, the game does not have a description of the Secret Art’s effects, only the name of said Secret Art. How am I supposed to know that Tempest 1 can let me do a vertical spin slash in the air? I can figure what it does by trying it out, but let me have a description in the equipment menu. Also, have a better way to separate the swords and the long swords. Once you obtain loads of swords and long swords via forging, the equipment menu can become cluttered. I think having different tabs for swords and long swords would have helped. Finally for combat, why is there only one accessory slot? We can have three swords, multiple slots for item shortcuts for healing items, but one accessory slot? I would have love to equip more accessories.

Visually, what can I say? It is a Vanillaware game, so of course the game looks marvelous, no pun intended since this game was published by Marvelous in Japan. Even in 720p with my Vita TV (PlayStation TV), this game still looks pretty. The backgrounds, the character designs, all looks fantastic.

Not much to say about the music. Not many are sticking out in my mind. The soundtrack was not bad, I was more focused on the action, so my concentration drowned out the music.

For the story, I thought it was a standard story. The game is not too heavy on story, more on gameplay, but what we got, I thought it was standard. I preferred Momohime’s story more than Kisuke’s story. Momohime getting possessed by the malicious Jinkuro and seeing their interactions throughout her story was more entertaining than the amnesiac ninja, Kisuke.

Muramasa Rebirth is a good game. The fast combat and gorgeous visuals are the best parts on the game. There could be some improvements with the gameplay like descriptions for the Secret Arts and accessory slots. The story is standard, but I know the gameplay took higher priority for this type of game. Even you never touched a Vanillaware game, I think this a good starting point.