the way this leverages hyakkimaru hunting down 48 demons to recover his 48 body parts to slowly dole out more and more features is so system shock coded. it's soo good. killing a boss in the prologue and seeing the game transition from black&white to full colour cos you reclaimed your eye is absolute tip top stuff. being forced to amble as slowly as possible before you get your leg... yes... yes... I love this. this was made for me. I am the one person on earth who likes that you can't recover from knockdowns without an ear

I'm so on board with everything here that I don't care that the hitboxes largely range from active to lingering to humungous to vertically infinite. don't care that the maps are gigantic and full of nothing but enemies and swords like it's drakengard. you bet your ass I hunted down every last yokai to get my chakra and lymph nodes back even tho I still don't understand what half the stats do. I'm vibing man, who cares

it's cool that the common moral thruline across every story beat is that those who desire disproportionate wealth and power should probably be killed. also cool that one of the major metroidvania upgrades you get half way thru the game is controller vibration. sega was on some astral shit with this one; if someone told me modern camera controls were hidden behind an optional boss I'd nod like it was the most obvious thing I ever heard

as a reimagining of the manga it oscillates between playing stuff 1:1 and riffing on the source material in a way only a 2004 hack-n-slash called BLOOD WILL TELL ever could. the new twist reminds me of the scene in adaptation where the goofy nicolas cage twin describes his screenplay for a film called "The Three" about a killer, victim, and cop who all turn out to be the same person with multiple personality disorder. it's such a dumb ass Whoa Dude way of answering questions that don't matter, and it rules

sick ass game