A beautiful port that's unfortunately light on features.
As an avid fan of the Wii, I’ll be the first to tell you that Muramasa: The Demon Blade ranks up there as one of the best games on the system. Unsurprisingly, I’ve also enjoyed the title on the Vita, but my second pass through has laid bare many of the title’s shortcomings.
Ignore the controversy; this game deserves your attention.
They say beauty is only skin deep, but this is just not the case with the latest output from Vanillaware. Beyond the gorgeous visuals, Dragon’s Crown offers layers of complexity on top of what is typically a very simplistic genre. Side-scrolling beat-‘em-ups have largely stagnated since the days of the arcade, but George Kamitani and company have grafted on dungeon crawler attributes as well as the company’s signature deep and fluid combat systems to create something wholly unique. Quests, loot, and frequent leveling make it hard to pull yourself away from this finely crafted adventure.
Such an amazing gaming package that gamers will need a cigarette after experiencing it.
Imagine if you will, that video games never went into the third dimension. Instead of the polygon arms race that began in 1995, game artists and designers simply continued to hone the craft of 2D, hand-drawn sprites. What would the video games industry look like today? With that picture in your head, imagine that character-action games like Devil May Cry and God of War still existed, but were known for their gorgeous animation and parallax scrolling as much for their over-the-top combo systems and precise control schemes. Enter Dust: An Elysian Tale, a game that seems to come from this amazing alternate gaming reality.
The fan favorite publisher steps in to help Vanillaware finish their dream project.
Vanillaware is a company that’s synonymous with lush, 2D graphics and classic gameplay. Best known in the West for Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Vanillaware has been hard at work on their next big title: Dragon’s Crown. This side-scrolling action game—a spiritual successor to the Japan-only Princess Crown for Sega Saturn—has been an idea that director George Kamitani has been shopping around for thirteen years. Rumors began to surface recently that the PS3 and PS Vita title had ceased development and was set to be canceled. Enter Atlus, who will support Vanillaware in their ongoing development, as well as publish the game in North America.
