Review of Full Metal Daemon Muramasa
Alternative Titles: Soukou Akki Muramasa
Rating: 8/10 (Good)
One-liner: A very solid steampunk-alternate history fantasy-mecha action.
HOT
- A cast of colourful characters that stray beyond their established archetype
- A powerfully moving story
- Choices actually matter, and are not obvious. Some places may even require a walkthrough if you're not a fan of repeating events until you finally pick the right choice
NOT
- There is no romantic development. Zilch. Nada. Zero. End of Story.
- The H-scenes are all disturbing, even the "supposedly vanilla" pure love ones.
- There is just way too much self-pity
VERDICT: PLAY IT!
Synopsis
This is not a story of heroes.
Minato Kageaki is a musha, a warrior who wields a tsurugi - an enchanted, sentient armour that grants one supernatural powers. For centuries, mushas have ruled the battlefield, and they are known to crush armies and entire nation. Minato dons the legendary, crimson armour Muramasa, who plunged the world into ruin 500 years ago. Minato is driven only by one thing - to destroy the Ginseigo, the Silver Star, whose power is able to warp people's minds and leaves nothing but absolute destruction in its wake. But using Muramasa has a terrible cost, and Minato Kageaki is not prepared to shoulder the burden.
Review
Disclaimer: This is a review of the English version of Souki Akki Muramasa, localised by JAST as Full Metal Daemon Muramasa. Because of localisation, the Japanese text which was displayed vertically was replaced with regular horizontal English text and the fancy old Japanese has been translated into modern English. There may be other changes, so the experience playing the Japanese version and English version will vary.
Muramasa. Every review I've seen so far has either lauded it as one of the greatest literary masterpiece of its generation, or has dismissed it as too long and too meandering for its own good. My opinion, is that it is good, but nowhere as good as some people have made it out to be.
This may be in part due to the fact that the English version is markedly different that the Japanese version, but I have not played the Japanese version, and I believe that any literary work must be judged by its own merits.
The story general revolves around the Rokuhara, the ruling shogunate that sold out its country to curry favour with the western powers and retain control of the alternate-history Japan, named Yamato and the GHQ, which as basically the British Empire at its peak and also has annexed the United States. The GHQ wants to use Yamato as a bastion against the possible invasion of Russia, and the Rokuhara is biding its time to consolidate its power and eventually strike back at the GHQ. Therefore, an uneasy peace last between the Rokuhara and the GHQ, but war may spark out at any time. Meanwhile, the Rokuhara is tyrannically ruling the people under an iron fist, and massacring any disruptive elements. The plot is interesting and does feature various machinations but it does drag on at times. Nevertheless, the alternate-history fantasy world is well built and is a fascinating backdrop for the story.
However, the characters are pretty hit and miss for me. Ayane Ichijo is the standard Justice-loving Shirou Emiya of this story. Otori Kanae is the seemingly airheaded GHQ officer that belies impressive abilities and a few tricks up her sleeve. and Chachamaru is a blonde loli who seems to do whatever she wants but hides a dark secret and may have a few skeletons in her closet. There is also a fourth heroine, who I won't spoil but her name is literally in the title, so its not really a spoiler.
Minato Kageaki is an interesting specimen. His backstory and motivations are fully fleshed out but his self-hate and self-pity is too much to read at times. Yes, he does have a reason to hate and wallow in his own pity, but when the story tells you in excruciating detail how much hate and pity he has on himself every single chance it gets - it gets old, repetitive and becomes downright obnoxious after a while.
One interesting thing about this visual novel is the sheer number of choices. Most VNs give you an insignificant number of choices, make the choices to get into whichever girl you choose extremely obvious, ultimately making the "choose you own adventure" system pointless. Muramasa eschews that format and instead provides a multitudinous number of choices, and two gargantuan minigames along with one extremely difficult puzzle. Suffice it to say, if you are playing without a walkthrough, you are going to stumble into bad ends very often. The choices are also very opaque, so even through there is sort of an affection meter, the affection meter can get cancelled without warning, and sometimes they bait you by making you choose the obvious choice only to greet you with a bad end.
I am not an art connoisseur so I can't comment about the art, but its is very beautiful to look at. There are some limited animation and they generally do a good job in the battles between the mushas, giving it a sense of momentum and movement with the limited animation and movement they have.
Overall, Muramasa is definitely a visual novel worth reading. Is it overhyped? Maybe. Is it still a fantastic read and well worth your time. Yes.
