Story	5/10	Characters	4/10
	Graphics	7/10	Music	5/10
	Gameplay	5/10	Extras	5/10
Reviewer: Chi Phan Final Score: 5.2/10

Samurai Legend Musashi is the sequel to the game Brave Fencer Musashi from the Playstation console. Notice that we didn't say from the hit game Brave Fencer Musashi. Truth be told, Brave Fencer was one of the least successful and least popular SquareEnix games on the Playstation console. So it's very surprising that SquareEnix decided to make a sequel to Brave Fencer. I guess it just shows you that game sales and bad reviews don't always guarantee that a sequel won't be made for a game. But that's all in the past, let's look at the present and the present is Samurai Legend Musashi.

The legendary hero has arrived. The Final Showdown      In a strange world, a princess summons a legendary hero by the name of Musashi to help her people, the Mystics, who are being hunted by a corporate company called Gandrake Enterprise. President Grandrake and his employees manage to capture the princess after she summoned Musashi. However the people of Antheum manage to escape Gandrake's men by sealing themselves in blue capsules and scattering themselves across the world. Master Mew discovered the summon Musashi upon his arrival to this new world and took it upon himself to train Musashi and guide him on his journey. Master Mew informed Musashi that Gandrake and his men are hunting the Mystics so he can use their magic for his own evil purpose. Musashi must help save the princess and find all the Mystics who are trapped inside blue capsules. And on top of all that if Musashi wishes to return home to his world, he has to find the 5 elemental swords because without their power, Musashi won't be able to return home. With his goals in sight, our hero set off on a journey for the five swords and to rescue the princess. This is one of the most senseless stories around. Senseless as in it's so poorly develop that everything seem to be done to the point where the story plot seem to be made around the gameplay as oppose to the gameplay made around the story. It's like they threw the story in there for the sake of having a story in there. Let's give some examples of what I mean when I say they developed the story around the gameplay. First, the Mystics decided to seal themselves in blue capsules and scattered themselves around the world to escape Gandrake. That sure makes a lot of sense. "What's the point of having to trapped yourself in a capsule and scattering yourself out there?" None, other than to have a purpose so that you, the player, will go look for these blue capsules to free each Mystic. The princess didn't need the five swords to summon Musashi but yet for some strange reason Musashi need to find the five swords to go home. This clearly is more of less giving you a purpose to explore each different type of dungeons in the game. There's also a matter of the whole world that this game takes place in not making much sense. Gandrake Enterprise is supposed to be a big corporation but a big corporation of what? All we see if a bunch of sub bosses gathering around in some silly company meeting talking about some stupid event stuff they are planning so Musashi and come there beat them up. Gandrake talks about taking over the world. What world is Gandrake talking about? The world that we are seeing unfold in this game consist of only one small city on the back of a giant flying whale. And even then all the Mystics in that city are scattered around the world trapped in a blue capsules. Gandrake at hand pretty much already dominated the world even before Musashi arrived. This is just one bad cartoon show than a real rpg story. The whole plot and story don't make any sense at all.

We're one big happy family.      Hmm, it's not a far fetch when I say this is one of the most uninspiring and boring cast of characters around. The supporting casts of characters are really nothing more than NPC characters that just stand around or are shopkeepers. What few story characters in this story don't seem to make much sense overall or have any development to them. Even the main character Musashi is so poorly developed that he comes off more annoying than a hero of the story. We know nothing of Musashi. We don't know where he's from, if he has any friends, or even if he has any deep thoughts. The characters around him are not much any better. They just come in for a story cut scene and then leave. We don't know anything about these characters or their emotion. And to top it off, the voice acting for these characters is just plain bad that it's annoying. But to be fair to the voice actors, it's not like they have any good dialogue to work with. These characters really are cardboard characters base on how they talk to one another base on the game script. It's very unusual for an rpg game where we don't know anything about the main hero and his friends. The impressions you get from these characters are one that's more cartoonish for the younger audience under 13 years old then those that are for teens and up. Maybe it was design that way on purpose because I don't see how anyone that is 13 years and up would find these characters appealing.

Do you like manga style?      You are either going to love or hate the artistic anime style of graphics here. This game took the approach of using the cel-shading technique for its graphical engine. The results is a mix bag but one that isn't up to par with other cel-shaded games. The world looks 3-D enough with the cel-shading technique but everything looks like it's been drawn in crayons. The characters and everything else pretty much have big thick size black borders around them that are not very attractive. Add in to the fact that the character designs aren't very good with characters having giant size hands that are bigger than their heads. Some of enemies seem too simple in design as well. Overall you pretty much have a very cartoony like look to the game which you will either hate or love. The bright spot in this game is that the colors used in this game are very good. Mix in with the right blend of softness to the focus of the graphics and the end results are some very nice lighting effects on screen. Too bad it all goes away once the camera zoom in on the characters and you start to notice that this looks like it was drawn with crayons by an amateur artist.

Rock N' Roll, that's what it's about.      There are not a whole lot of musical scores in this game. Most of the themes are base on a rock n' roll theme from the Japanese group, Surf Coasters. The rock n' roll theme is actually quite fitting for this fast pace action rpg gameplay. However you kind of like to have something a bit more than just a couple of rock n' roll surfing theme while you are hacking and slashing at the enemies. Varieties are what we are looking at here. But you can't get that because of the game story and characters are very weak. It's not like there are some good story cut scenes in this game that needs to have some good musical scores playing in the background or any good characters that need to have their own character theme. You're left with some battle scores and mini game scores, hardly something to get excited about. This is one of those game where you won't remember anything about the music in this game after you finish playing it.

I'll hack and slash ya. Feel the power of Maelstrom! Game Information    Genre: Action Rpg    Publisher: SquareEnix    Disc: 1 DVD Discs    Memory: 603 KB    Players: 1 Player Mode    Analog Control: Yes    Vibration Function: Yes    Digital Control: Yes    Rating: Teen    Release: March 2005      Samurai Legend is pretty much a basic beginner's action rpg game. Outside of the usual hack and slash feature seen in all action rpg games, Samurai Legend does carry the tradition of being able to learn special techniques from your enemies so that you can use it on them that was first introduced in Brave Fencer. But everything else is pretty simple and straightforward. You won't have any trouble finding out what to do and where to go. There's a bit of a puzzle solving element in each dungeon but most of them usually requires you to use the latent powers of one of the five elemental swords that you will acquire as you progress in the game. There isn't any world exploration that you need to do since there's basically only one city or town in this game. A very linear game. Your goals in this game are pretty simple. Free the Mystics and explore dungeons to get the five elemental swords. Only two or three key features that worth a mention here because everything else is what you would normally see in an action platform rpg game. Latent Power:Your only source of magical powers are from the latent powers of your five elemental swords. Each latent power is different in that they will either provide offensive or defensive help to Musashi. Another purpose to the latent powers is that they can be a source of helping to unlock areas in dungeons that aren't normally accessible. Focus: Focus is the ability that Musashi must do in order to learn a special ability of an enemy or friend. Charge up the focus gauge and once it's full, you just press the square button at the right time and Musashi can learn the ability of a foe. Abilities: This is probably the only really unique features of Samurai Legend. Special abilities or special skills aren't new by any definition in rpg games but for the Musashi series, these abilities are special in that you need to learn them from the monsters that you are fighting. There are up to 25 special abilites each grouped into two categories, offense and defense. Some of the abilities are very useful while some you won't even bother touching after first learning them. On the surface, the gameplay doesn't look too bad for an action rpg. All the usual elements in an action rpg are here, hack & slash, skill techniques, puzzle solving, jumping platform, and dungeon exploration. However there are three very important key elements in this game that are missing that make any action rpg game decent to great. They are good camera angles, good controls, and most important, save points. The controls are decent enough that you can get by it on this game but average to poor camera angle is unacceptable. Many times in the game, the camera angle just frustrate you as it won't lock on in the right direction the way you want it to or it will zoom in and out when you don't want it too. But even then as a charitable reviewer, I could have gotten by with this poor use of camera angles but how in gods name can any game developer only put in one save point in the entire game. I repeat only one save point. I have never in my entire experience years of playing rpgs have seen where only one save point is made available for an rpg game. This is the most frustrating and most annoying lack of feature to not have in this game. It takes away any chance of any enjoyment you can have in this game. The only save point available is in Musashi room in town. If you plan on trekking out there on a journey in a dungeon and there are some really long dungeons mind you, you better make sure you have the time to play and the patience to explore and solve these dungeons. Nothing is worst than spending hours of exploring a dungeon and trying to solve the dungeon riddle to only have to die and have to start all over again at your previous last save point in town. Nothing is worst then spending time leveling and hacking away at enemies during your journey when all of a sudden you ran out of time to play because real life issue needed to be attended to and there's no save point at all for you to save your progress. If you aren't cursing yourself at the crappy camera angles then you will definitely be cursing at yourself for the fact there isn't a bloody save point anywhere around in this game. Whatever good thoughts I may have had for this game got flush down the toilet because of the idiocy of the fool who decided it was a good idea to only have one save point in town. Gameplay is about having fun and enjoying yourself. It's certainly not about screaming at this bloody game and at the fools who made this game. I'm betting that most of you will be doing the latter.

Score: 5/10

It's all about collecting cards.      There are only two sidequests available in this game. And both sidequests are very short and really don't serve too much purpose to the story or even net you any extra cool items. An extra addition is the Imagecards collecting feature. An Imagecards is basically a card with an image of a character or monster in this game. You collect imagecards for the purpose of looking at the stats of the character or monster that the imagecard is mirrored to. Is there any other reason to collect these Imagecards? No, which pretty much makes collecting these Imagecards pointless considering you can't do anything with them or even get anything in return for spending so much time trying to get each Imagecard to complete your collection. The only thing worth value is the Arena battles that you can do as an extra activity away from the main storyline game. But unlike the sidequests or Imagecards, you actually get a reward for completing each Arena battles. It's just too bad the Arena battles are too short and too easy to do. It's possible to replay this game again with a New Game+ file for the purpose of being able to access a couple of locked areas that you weren't able to have access to as well as get some Imagecards that you weren't able to get in the first game. But truthfully this game isn't worth the time to even play it a second time and certainly the incentives aren't good enough for you to want to play it again.

Looking at the flip side of things, Samurai Legend Musashi isn't all bad, it does provide a service to us in reminding us just what not to do when making an action rpg game. As for now, well it's surprising that Brave Fencer Musashi actually received a sequel in the name of this game but from here on, I believe the Musashi series bloodline pretty much ended with this game. With poor sales and reviews overall in the industry, it's very doubtful that SquareEnix would put more money into making another Musashi game. And you would be hard press to find anyone that really thinks this game is that good that it deserve a sequel. But if you still willing to dare yourself into picking this game up despite all the unfavorable reviews it has receive in the industry, you can probably find a copy of it for under $20 U.S in just four months after its first initial release. Final Score: 5.2/10