Visuals & Immersion
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
It’s no secret that looks are often the main attraction with Vanillaware; the company knows how to whip up a good game, make no mistake, but in the end there’s something truly unique and eye-grabbing to their games from which people can’t look away. That something is, of course, the gorgeous, painterly 2D graphics and animation that populate the worlds of both Muramasa and Dragon’s Crown.
Now, there’s definitely an argument to be made that the aforementioned visual flair is more crucial to the experience of the former than the latter, and it’s an argument I fall pretty much fully in line with. In Muramasa, the visuals are the game. Not in the sense that gameplay doesn’t stand on its own (it definitely does), but rather that the vast, pervasive world that Muramasa offers feels so incredibly alive as it is, that adorning it with the visual finesse of exquisite art has a way of jolting the entire adventure fully to life. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – Muramasa is the only game I’ve ever played where simply running is one of the most satisfying things the player can do. As in, tilting the joystick left or right. Some reviewers felt the game contained too much backtracking, but for me I threw a little party with each passing fetch quest or tour through the countryside – just watching your characters fly through the game’s lush and varied environment’s is a real sight to behold.
As mentioned, the world itself is pervasive — much like the 2D open worlds of Metroid — and thus even though you can technically only move left or right, and the game tells you which direction you ought to choose, Muramasa possesses an illusion of open-world exploration that is thoroughly convincing. Whether I’m simply tilting a stick in a direction is irrelevant – as long as it feels as though I’m scampering down the countryside, infiltrating a ninja hideout, or even just stopping roadside for some dumplings, then that’s all the convincing I need. Bliss is bliss, and with videogames I don’t care how it’s delivered to me.
Dragon’s Crown
That’s a tough act to follow… and the fact is, though Dragon’s Crown is a gorgeous game, the visuals don’t quite enhance the experience in such drastic fashion as they do in Muramasa. This could certainly be seen as a positive depending on your perspective — a game with mechanics this rock-solid could have stick-figure graphics and still be fun — but all said and done the visuals in Dragon’s Crown are just a stylized and highly elaborate bonus. This in no way means I don’t appreciate them, though.
The art style in Dragon’s Crown has garnered a lot of flac (or praise, depending who you ask) for its generously-endowed Sorceress avatar, but the fact is that if you take the time to look around the game as a whole, almost every character you meet has some feature taken to an exaggerated or almost grotesque extreme. Once you wrap your mind around this, it’s not difficult to appreciate what Vanillaware had in mind, and you’ll even find yourself getting a sort of curious, unusual pleasure from eyeballing many of the characters in the game. It’s not a perverted pleasure, either – the effect ranges from the scantily-clad to the ancient and imposing, and the game’s characters feel so much larger than life that it’s almost overwhelming. Odds are it’s unlike anything you’ve seen before.
The visuals are nice out in the field as well, though they don’t necessarily grant as much enhancement to dungeon crawling as they do to plot segments. This is partly because of the multiplayer nature of the game – as good as the story is, you’re either playing with your friend sitting next to you or with somebody online, and in either case you’re making real-world interactions every minute. I’m not about to start promoting Dragon’s Crown PVE role-playing parties or anything, but these are the facts all the same. Though dungeons themselves look nice, and come off as mysterious and foreboding when they need to be, there are less moments that are truly beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in Muramasa you get the sense that what the game achieves could not have been done any other way. With Dragon’s Crown, you ogle at the awesomely grotesque characters and dark, whimsical world, but once you’re finally treasure hunting it’s easy to imagine a more conventional presentation style being just as effective.
Advantage: Muramasa: The Demon Blade
What else can I say? I left it all on the table in the above descriptions. Muramasa absolutely nails its visual style, and this leads directly into the enhancement of an already-immersive world, bringing it to dream-like levels. If you zone out at your TV to this game, the rest of your surroundings just melt away. Dragon’s Crown has its truly gorgeous moments, such as the pop-up-book map screen and spookily divine music that comes with it, but in the end Muramasa does something quite special that is hard to top or match.
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