Brave Fencer Musashi was not the Zelda killer Square pushed on us, but
if you're a fan of Zelda I couldn't see a reason why you wouldn't enjoy
this to a certain extent. There was a ton of Zelda elements to the
game, but they slapped a bunch of random stuff into the game to make it
seem less-Zelda cloney. There's alot of minigames you'll be forced to
do in the game, like one boss you have to do a memory test, similar to
Simon Says, or another where you have to ride down a waterfall
collecting coins (didn't you do that in Mario RPG?). There's even a
Forgotten Forest type area that you would see in a Zelda game. The
dialog scenes seemed poorly edited. The controls were bad most of the
time, this game had terrible depth perception. The game was overall
decent though, but just way to short and easy. There was no challenge
unless you want to call terrible controls on generic platforming stages
a challenge. I guess the last chapter was a bit difficult, but if you
brought enough items with you there wasn't a problem.
There's quite a few collectibles in the game, for example after a
chapter is finished you can go to the Toy store and buy action figures
of each enemy and boss of that chapter. You can try to find all the
Bincho Fields or find all the Longevity Berries. There was even one
hidden boss I found, not sure if there was others. Even with all of
that, the game was pretty short, compact inside a small world.
----------Battle System----------
Brave Fencer Musashi is an action / platformer / RPG game, pretty
similar to Zelda. The game doesn't have any standard camera angles. At
some points it might be a side scroller view, or 3rd person or overhead
view like in a dungeon crawler. The biggest draw to Musashi is the
ability to learn the enemies moves. Musashi has to charge up his Fusion
sword and throw it at the enemy. If you hit, then you have to tap the
square button until you gain the ability. The biggest draw back about
this though is you can only hold one ability at a time.
Musashi will learn various fighting techniques after saving
certain characters in the game after you visit them again. Each time
Musashi free's a scroll he will gain a new elemental ability with his
Lumina sword. You can perform this ability by charging up their Fusion
sword and taping the triangle button. The Earth scroll will cause a
small quake and stun enemies. The Fire scroll spits fire, lights
torches, and melts ice. The Water scroll spits water that puts out
flames and helps Musashi walk over water hazards. The Wind scroll will
help Musashi walk through wind bursts and dig through the ground. The
Sky scroll makes Musashi hover through the air. You use these abilities
to get to the next area, and you always have to use them to defeat the
Crest Guardians.
Musashi gains experience and levels, but I still haven't figured
how the leveling up system works other than he gets a new title.
Musashi has 4 level meters, Mind, Body, Fusion and Lumina. The more
often you use Lumina in battle, the more experience it gains and the
stronger it gets. The more you use fusion attacks the same happens. You
gain Hit Points (HP) and Bincho Points (BP) quite differently from a
standard RPG, maybe more similar to Zelda. To gain HP you have to find
poop.. yes you have to find poop. When you find the poop, you wait at
night for a rare sheep like creature to come out, so you have to chase
it around and grab it until it coughs up some Longevity Berries and
that will raise your HP by 25 points. Bincho Points are similar to
Magic Points, the way you raise your max BP is by defeating a Scroll
Guardian, they will give Musashi a 25 max points. You can also find
Bincho Fields that trapped the castle servants, and it will give you 5
max points.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Musashi, who is summoned by the Princess to save their
Kingdom from the evil Thirstquencher Empire. You must go on a quest to
retrieve the Lumina sword, and break the seals of the Five scrolls to
save the world. While the Thirstquencher Empire is trying to get the
Lumina sword to rule the world. The dialog can be pretty cheesy but
it's atleast humorous at times. There's nothing to exciting about the
story until the last hour of the game. The ending had plenty of twists
I wasn't expecting and I played this before 8 years ago. The rest of
the game is just a bunch of small side quests until you find the Crest
Guardian. The game goes through chapters, but there was no real pattern
that got old or stale like in most games, but each chapter always ended
with the defeat of a Crest Guardian.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics are ok, but there isn't much to the game. The game
revolves around a single town with a couple dungeons around it. No
other towns, you can't even walk houses or shops in the one town and
explore for yourself. They stop you with a bunch of menus that are slow
to navigate. The character models are good looking and there's really
no repeating characters within the town or castle, so I can't complain
to much. The only time you get control of the camera is within the
town, the rest of the game has a pre-determined camera angle that will
change with your movements. Sometimes the graphics will fluctuate off
and on, other times you can't tell if something is close or far away.
Sometimes Musashi will fall through stuff that should be soiled (the
bones on Twin Peak Mountain for example).
----------Sound----------
The music is great, it's a Squaresoft game after all. I especially
loved the chapter 3 music during the Vampee attack. This game is
probably the first Squaresoft game to feature a full voice cast, if not
then it's still a very early one. There's alot of voice work in the
game, and it all fit on one CD, so that's pretty impressive in that
sense, but it gives you a sense how small the game is. The voice work
is totally over the top typical wacky anime stuff directed towards kids
and pre-teens. That doesn't stop the voice work from being pretty damn
good though. There's really nothing bad about the sound, just having
that much voice work on a PS1 game was enough to blow me away back when
this was released.
----------World Map----------
There's no world map, but the world takes place inside of a small
village that connects through various exits into different areas. The
world is not huge at all, but it's always interesting to find the new
dungeon within the town or just outside of it. Like a Metroid or Zelda
game, the more scrolls and pieces of Legendary Armor you get helps you
advance through the game by moving rocks, draining water, etc (scrolls)
or giving you abilities to double jump (Legendary Armor). Just inside
of town there's dungeons waiting you like the Mine, the basement of the
Restaurant, or even the Well. You can walk outside of town to travel
through a woods or climb a mountain. Not much to the game, but it's
still pretty fun.
The town has a day / night system, similar to Radiata Stories,
Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing. The people within town will walk
around and do their business. Shops will only open on certain times and
days. Musashi gets tired, so he has to sleep. If you meter reaches
around 70% Musashi will start to slow down. Once he reaches 100% he
will just fall asleep on the ground any where in the game. The game
will go in fast forward for a while until he has had plenty of sleep,
but it will also stop at the 20% marker. You can wake him up at any
time, but it's best to let him sleep. While this is a creative idea for
the game, it doesn't make it harder or more challenging, it just makes
it freaking annoying. I was doing one of the longer missions and was
running back to the exit where I got trapped on a platformer with a
conveyer belt in front of me. I had enough strength to jump to it, but
since he was tired he could run those few steps to gain another jump on
the belt, so I had to wait there on this small platform for about 4
minutes until he feel asleep.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
11:39
The stuff leading up to the final boss was great storytelling, but
after you beat the boss, the ending is pretty lame. You save
afterwards, I hear there's a 2nd ending to the game, but if you beat
the game a certain way, but it doesn't seem worth it.
