Asura's Wrath being the laughing stock of excessive QTE use during the 7th gen has become a bit of an unfair reputation, considering how little credit it tends to get for how successfully it actually manages to pull it off. Described as an "interactive anime" by the developers themselves, it is clear that the people behind this production knew what they were doing, using all the classic tropes and cliches that have turned shounen into such a successful venue for guys being dudes.

So well executed in fact, that soon you forget that you are for the most part just pressing button prompts as you watch long ass cutscenes of big muscle guy punching another big muscle guy. There is definitely an art to making visceral rage and violence this engaging and purposeful, emotions that the japanese have managed to perfect and capitalize on with animation for decades now, and Asura's Wrath pays tribute to that legacy in a grand display of revenge melodrama between gods that puts God of War to shame.

It's an escalation of every increasingly insurmountable odds that Asura inevitably bursts through with his fists, fury and will alone, surprassing the greatests of Platinum Games finales, and it's amazing what a few buttons can do to elevate a story that we have seen told countless times before to new heights of catharsis. The final boss (which is locked behind payed dlc, a decision that sits at the pantheon of bad Capcom ideas) gets his shit kicked in so hard that by that point you welcome those QTEs with open arms.

The bittersweet ending note of Asura's Wrath is wondering how much more amazing it would have been were it a real ass videogame.

This game is incredibly flawed, but I love it. The developer’s ambition outstrips their abilities in many ways, which creates a fun, uneven, unique experience.

A couple caveats going in - this game's flaws are easy to describe, while its appeal, less so. The game shipped literally unfinished - the ending was sold months after release as DLC. Textures can pop-in if you skip through cutscenes. Reading a wiki summary of the plot and setting may lead you to expect elements of Buddhist and Hindu influence, but they are little more than aesthetic inspiration for a cliche'd anime space opera. Altogether, its a weird, hard sell.

Despite all of that, the experience of playing the game is fun in an uncomplicated way. Asura is angry, and will tear the heavens apart to save his family. The set-up is simple enough to seem contrite, but Asura's characterization is handled with enough nuance to explore the depth of his rage. Asura's anger is fueled by grief, loss, injustice, indignation, hopelessness, insecurity, and righteousness at different points, which grants enough variety to always enjoy expressing his over-the-top violent rage.

There are a couple boss fights in this game that are all-timers. Asura's Wrath is not a difficult game for its genre, and that is fine. Its design sensibility is to immerse you in the mindset of a character who can interrupt villainous monologs by punching them in the face. Once you've rehearsed a level a couple times to know what QTEs to expect, you can feel like a performer who knows their choreography as well as their acting (gameplay) down pat.

Asura’s Wrath elevates quick time event button presses into a defendable game mechanic, and shows why QTEs are so terrible in most games that use them. Every QTE in Asura’s Wrath is matched to how you would perform the corresponding action in the character action levels of the game - punches, jumps, or stick inputs for movement. Failing a QTE does not slow down the action or cause a Game Over, and in some cases makes the game go by faster. Generous windows make missed inputs rare, even on your first time playing a level. But more importantly, the cinematography is always directed in a way to anticipate your next action. The camera will zoom out to show the sky, and linger before it asks you to jump. Asura will pull back his fists to an absurd degree before you are asked to punch. Actions performed with the control sticks are repeated across chapters, (not exactly, but close enough to breed familiarity), so that you can develop an intuition of which situations will require you to pull or rotate the control stick in different ways. Every new set of cutscenes will include QTEs towards the beginning, so you are not caught unaware. And that is the real reason why QTEs in Asura's Wrath feel different than other games - everything about the games design from the top down is focused on keeping you engaged and anticipating when you get to perform your role.

In my rating system, 2 stars represent an average game. I award Asura's Wrath 4 stars, a solid A-rank game. I was completely satisfied playing the content that was included on the disc, but the true ending is in the DLC Part IV: Nirvana. Which, unfortunately, is some of the best gameplay and boss design of the whole experience. I strongly recommend you give this game a try while the ending DLC is still available for purchase on your platform of choice.

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This game tries to economize its gameplay to make sure that everything you input is as meaningful as possible. To make sure of that, it provides a bombastic and loud story where big events happen constantly, or are brought up in the form of a flashback that avoid boring you on the quieter parts. While I applaud the effort and think that the DLC reaches some particularly interesting heights, it does not bode well for this approach that it requires something epic to happen every few seconds. If this was a TV show, as it's pretending to be most of the time, I'd be a bored by it pretty soon.

"I WILL HAVE MY VENGEANCE!!"

On very few occasions does this happen, but for Asura's Wrath my anger boils at a furious temperature. It is almost ready to melt the foundations of my train of thought because of this. What should have been ten billion percent exhilarating, instead, left me blindsided with disappointment and absolute peak rage. A single moment defining the entirety of my experience. What had been a short, yet thoroughly rousing ride, was spat upon. While the glorified hype nature in many ways made up for the lack of proper solid gameplay, and engaging narrative, a true finale would at least make the show worth it in the end. Too bad, that despite everything it threw at the wall, hoping some of the wildness would stick, ripping the true ending of the game and packaging it as DLC can't salvage those few high points. Imagine a world where all you want to see is how some vengeful god is going to get his, only to be told first, you need to replay chunks of the game better. You go to do this very task, only to find that you are gated by a paywall. The disrespect to itself, the player, and the industry at large put on display here forever soured any positive lingering emotions I could have shared with others about this. Now, all I am left with is a desire to destroy. Not for pleasure, but for closure, as I know nothing can bring back what has been taken from me.

We hereby award: The Black Seal of Malcontent