Bushido Blade 2

Squaresoft is famous, there's no doubt about that. From the Final Fantasy series to even small games like Xenogears, Squaresoft was known as the company with the midas touch for a long time, especially in the era of the Playstation One. Now, more recently, they've been sucking, but I want to return to an era where Nintendo was unique, Squaresoft kicked ass, and Gran Turismo games were unbeatable.



Not many people know of the Bushido Blade series, primarily because it's such an unique series. The original Bushido Blade was literally a samurai fighting game set in the present, where you could employ characters with traditional weapons (the Katana, the Nodachi, the Yari, etc) and kill other people. The game was one of the first fighters to employ 3D fighting correctly, and was revolutionary graphically (at the time..).

Bushido Blade 2 has a lot of upgrades from Bushido blade, and it also refines the famous fighting system. See, in Bushido Blade, you don't have attack-and-block techniques. There are three stances (Upper, Lower, and Middle/Back, if I remember correctly), and all of them have their own counters, attacks, and abilities. For example, if a character is in the Upper stance, he can hit downward, but if another character is in an upper stance, he can block it, or he can switch to a lower stance, preempt the attack, and give him a nicely placed jab in the belly.



So, the game is rather complex. Unfortunately, just as other PS1 fighters, the game is just plain ugly. This was definately a limitation of the PS2 in that it couldn't really generate anything beautiful at all, and because of that, the characters are very grainy and generally ugly. Squaresoft did a good job working around the weak PS1 power, but regardless, the game isn't anything to look at. As well, the sound is pretty bad, as the damage sound seems to be the same crappy .wav file.

Now for the real fun in this game. See, I used to play a lot of multiplayer games with friends like Mike, and after a while, games like Soul Calibur 2 get too fast or something. So, in that respect, games like this come in. It is pretty hardcore to see a little pixellated samurai jab you through the other... er... samurai. Plus, it requires a little more skill than MASHING THAT DAMN X BUTTON WITH RAFAEL IN SOUL CALIBUR.



The only real, substantial problem with the game is the story and single player game. The single player game doesn't really have much of a story, and the story generally sucks when it does try to implement. As well, some "Bosses" (like the enemy you have to hit really fast as it warps all over the d*** place) seem cheap and too annoying for a decent game.

Regardless, Bushido Blade is a refreshing fighter that doesn't involve the typical fast-paced attacks or the cheap shots with Rafael. Regardless, I wouldn't recommend picking this game up unless you absolutely were sure you wanted to play it. It's one of those games you will play with your friends ONCE- and once only. After that, it's old.

3 star(s) out of 5

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