A versão de Muramasa para Vita é definitivamente a versão definitiva, em relação à original, no Wii.

A bela arte visual e o combate fluido, somado ao enredo carismático e a temática folclórica japonesa que são de muito meu apreço são incapazes de contrapor o gameplay absurdamente repetitivo, de baixa criatividade em progressão e level design pobre.

É um desperdício um jogo tão charmoso e carismático se perder com um design tão simplório e maçante, apesar de funcional.

Muramasa: Rebirth is a port of a game originally developed for the Nintendo Wii, but unfortunately it didn't get the attention it deserved from the public. However, the developers decided to give it another chance on the PlayStation Vita. Despite the Vita's lack of success, the game remains hidden and will probably remain so, which is a shame because it is an amazing game.

Muramasa: Rebirth is a 2D hack and slash game that takes place in a side-scrolling environment, featuring frenetic samurai sword fights that are an absolute pleasure to engage in.

The game's art is simply gorgeous, making it one of the most visually stunning games on the Vita. The graphics aim to simulate a painting, and the developers did a fantastic job of porting the game to a handheld console without losing this artistic style.

The story revolves around a woman villager who is possessed by a fighting demon, granting her incredible fighting skills. However, I must admit that I got a little lost in the middle of the story, and I think it was because I wasn't paying enough attention. Perhaps it was because I didn't find it as interesting as the game's amazing fighting mechanics, which kept me engaged until the end.

Even though I found the story somewhat uninteresting, it didn't make me feel like I had wasted my time. The game's incredible fighting mechanics are so much fun that I kept playing until I reached the credits.

In my opinion, Muramasa: Rebirth is a hidden gem. If you own a PlayStation Vita, I highly recommend giving it a chance.

Primera experiencia muy positiva con un juego de Vanillaware. Estamos ante un Action RPG 2D cuya jugabilidad esta muy pulida y cuyo apartado artistico, tanto visual como sonoro, son simplemente sobresalientes y le sientan como un guante a la pantalla de PS Vita.

La jugabilidad, cargada de acción, y el sistema de combate con 3 espadas con habilidades únicas y hasta un total de 108 espadas para craftear, hacen este título muy variado y divertido al mismo tiempo. Nunca se hace monótono.

Buenas historias, tanto las dos principales del juego base como las cuatro más secundarias de los DLCs, que hacen que todo el conjunto sea muy compacto y sólido. Desde luego recomiendo jugar Muramasa y seguiré con más títulos de Vanillaware tras esta primera gran experiencia.

ill start by saying what youre missing out on by playing rebirth instead of the demon blade
-they translated a lot of sword names and all the difficulty names, which is pretty dumb and detracts from the japanese style the game is going for
-having a big screen to truly appreciate the game on

other than that, this game is the definitive version of muramasa. all the new characters are fun and have unique and varied movesets. you get the updated textures as well, which is amazing considering how absolutely gorgeous the original game is.

if you dont have a vita, id recommend playing the demon blade for wii for now. the new content doesnt ineract with the older content at all, in fact by the game they're considered sort of as if theyre separate games.

overall, one of my favorite games and an absolute must play for literally any human being with a pulse.

Excellent 2D hack'n'slash sidescroller. Game looks absolutely beautiful, oozing with detail from every single object. Music is outstanding, love how there's two versions of every area theme (one for traversal, and one for battle), and how they seamlessly transition between the two.

The stories are engaging, with really entertaining dialogue (fully-voiced to boot!), with a Kabuki Theatre-esque presentation to them.

Gameplay feels a bit mindless, but it's so frenetic and stylish that it never really got old for me. It also helps that every single weapon has its own unique special attack, letting you mix and match to your specific playstyle.

Biggest flaw with the game would have to be map traversal. Even after you unlock the ability to fast-travel between shrine savepoints in the postgame, running all the way across the map is legitimately exhausting, even if you don't run into enemy encounters (you will).

Overall, an extremely strong showing from Vanillaware, and one of those rare "you should own a Vita just to play this" games. The game desperately deserves a modern port.

Muramasa was a highly acclaimed Wii game from Vanillaware of Odin Sphere (and now) Dragon’s Crown fame. It had high speed and fancy fight moves but was extremely challenging and had memorable characters. It now makes its transfer to Vita in HD with bright gorgeous graphics and two whole storylines to play through.

I played through Momohime’s (Peach Princess) storyline so my experience is based on that. Momohime is possessed by a spirit who wants the infamous Demon Blade and will cut anyone down in her path. She goes from Hell to Heaven and even cuts down gods. The game is 90% combat and man are it tough and fun. You can equip three different blades at once and switch between them with a triangle. When your blades are flashing you can press triangle to unleash a powerful full-screen attack. Each blade has their own special power which is key to winning hard fights. If you use the blade too much or block too often the blade will break and you will need to switch to a different on and wait for it to recharge. You can use whetstones to hasten this, but as you level up and forge new weapons they will break less often.

This is the basically all there is to combat: You press the attack or use special powers combined with directions. It may seem simple but the game is so tough you can’t just button mash. You have to use strategy mixing up dodges, blocking, special and regular attacks. The game constantly kept me on my toes and I had to learn every bosses’ moves and sometimes restarted dozens of times. When I finally beat a boss it was so satisfying. In between there’s some platforming and item hunting but you traveling from locale to locale and getting stopped by fights between each screen. I had a lot of navigating the gorgeous environments and even stopping to shop for health items and various other ones to help out in fights.

One other small feature is being able to cook with items you find. These are used to heal you which you will use often. Always make sure you are stocked on health items or you will never make it through the game. Outside of all the fighting, the dialogue is interesting and the Japanese voice acting is fantastic. The characters are memorable (I have already purchased a $145 figure of Kongiku) and you will stay hooked. With two stories to play through, there’s a lot of content here.

Vanillaware is known for their unique high-fantasy mixed with ancient Japanese art style and it really shines here. The game pops to life on the Vita’s OLED screen and just makes your eyes water it looks so crisp. The controls are perfect and extremely responsive, honestly, even though this is a port, it’s one of the best Vita games available right now. That makes two Vanillaware games on one system. If you love 2D games or action hack and slash games this is a must buy.

Muramasa Rebirth is the second Vanillaware game I have ever completed. The first Vanillaware game I have completed was Odin Sphere Leifthrasir and to summarize my final thoughts on that game: It was good game. The combat was fun and the visuals were gorgeous. The story was not that amazing from what I remember and the repetition of visiting the same areas in a different order and fighting similar bosses with 5 different characters was my biggest issue with Odin Sphere. Muramasa only having two characters instead of the five in Odin Sphere gives Muramasa a point in that regard. There is still repetition with the backtracking and exploring the same areas as the two different characters, but it is nowhere near as bad as with Odin Sphere.

For combat, Muramasa is crazy fast. You will be doing crazy aerial combos with Momohime and Kisuke. Couple that with the game encouraging you to forge different swords that have better stats and different Secret Art techniques and you have fun gameplay. I do wish the game describes what a specific Secret Art does. I could be wrong, but to my knowledge, the game does not have a description of the Secret Art’s effects, only the name of said Secret Art. How am I supposed to know that Tempest 1 can let me do a vertical spin slash in the air? I can figure what it does by trying it out, but let me have a description in the equipment menu. Also, have a better way to separate the swords and the long swords. Once you obtain loads of swords and long swords via forging, the equipment menu can become cluttered. I think having different tabs for swords and long swords would have helped. Finally for combat, why is there only one accessory slot? We can have three swords, multiple slots for item shortcuts for healing items, but one accessory slot? I would have love to equip more accessories.

Visually, what can I say? It is a Vanillaware game, so of course the game looks marvelous, no pun intended since this game was published by Marvelous in Japan. Even in 720p with my Vita TV (PlayStation TV), this game still looks pretty. The backgrounds, the character designs, all looks fantastic.

Not much to say about the music. Not many are sticking out in my mind. The soundtrack was not bad, I was more focused on the action, so my concentration drowned out the music.

For the story, I thought it was a standard story. The game is not too heavy on story, more on gameplay, but what we got, I thought it was standard. I preferred Momohime’s story more than Kisuke’s story. Momohime getting possessed by the malicious Jinkuro and seeing their interactions throughout her story was more entertaining than the amnesiac ninja, Kisuke.

Muramasa Rebirth is a good game. The fast combat and gorgeous visuals are the best parts on the game. There could be some improvements with the gameplay like descriptions for the Secret Arts and accessory slots. The story is standard, but I know the gameplay took higher priority for this type of game. Even you never touched a Vanillaware game, I think this a good starting point.

Second verse, same as the first, but it's better-translated this time and a little bigger (or, considering the Vita's size, smaller?).
All the high and low points are basically untouched, though the better translation sheds some more light on the story, and it's the same just-short-of-perfect game that I would recommend to all people who love beautiful things. It's been just about 10 years since Rebirth's release at the time of this review, so the ball is in Vanillaware and Aksys's court to bust this one out of Vita jail.
I loved the Wii version so much I'm going through it again on Vita just to see the translation differences. Will update this review once I get to the DLC content.

i'm notoriously lazy with actually playing thru a game a second time even with multiple characters, so the fact I actually did that here is a big green flag for me. kisuke was your typical grunting angsty Bakugo-type dude but the gameplay was phenomenal no matter who you play (Momohime was my favorite tho, and by then I finally figured out how to forge new swords lol).

VanillaWare games are consistently beautiful, always in shock any time I see the release date on their titles since they all look so fresh visually, you'd think they were made in the last couple years. game suffers from too much backtracking and runnin back and forth to the exact same locales, and there's a bit of a repetitious-ness to the level design that can get a bit boring. however, the gameplay itself is such a blast and the atmosphere is so singular that it more than makes up for it. First game I played on my PS Vita after finally acquiring one in January and I jailbroke it, so I'm feeling especially fond #Feels towards this title. T___T

I played the original Wii version many years ago and only finished Kisuke's story. I was already a big Odin Sphere fan at the time and so I was disappointed that Muramasa wasn't nearly as enjoyable. I decided to give the game another chance with the Rebirth version and finished both MCs' stories as well as two of the DLC stories.

Muramasa's main story is probably the part has left me the most disappointed in the game. I wouldn't go as far as say it was a terrible one, but it just wasn't particularly interesting. I thought about it a lot and I'm not sure why I didn't enjoy it more. There's some political intrigue combined with fantasy elements. Kisuke's story is a bit more interesting since I found him more interesting as a character, but even then, his story wasn't anything amazing either.

Part of me probably wanted a more epic story like in Odin Sphere and having multiple playable character stories crossover with each other. Unfortunately, there's barely any crossover to begin with and Momohime and Kisuke never really meet each other except at the very end or during the random hot spring scenes. This is surprising despite the connections they have via Momohime's sister.

I already touched on the main characters a bit, but the supporting characters could've been more compelling too. Other than Torahime, the only other characters I liked and were memorable were the two Kitsunes, but they didn't have much depth as characters. The antagonists were weak and lacked much of an impact.

Graphics and the art direction is what you would expect from a Vanillaware game. Beautiful 2D art and a few breathtaking scenery. Music is also solid with the heavy traditional Japanese theme.

Gameplay is where the game shines fortunately. The heavy combo based combat is quite fun. Being able to launch enemies into the air and then further juggle them for more hits is very satisfying. It's also fast paced as well. There's a lot of variety with bosses and they provide a fun challenge even more than Odin Sphere. My only issue with the combat in general is that it's incredibly difficult to defend against enemy attacks especially during those moments where projectiles are flying all over the place. Offense is heavily favored. Momohime and Kisuke don't have much to distinguish themselves despite being the only two main playable characters. This is in contrast with Odin Sphere where you have five characters and all play differently from each other. The only difference between the Muramasa leads are the swords they get which has different sword skills attached to them. It's not a whole lot, but it's better than nothing.

My other major issue with the gameplay is that there's a lot of repetitive backtracking. You don't get accessed to the standard fast travel until beating the game. The transporters excluded since they don't make much of a difference.

I've only played 2 of the DLC, but I think they are decent. $5 USD for each or $15 if you buy the bundle. They aren't very long at just about ~3 hours to beat the story, but the different and unique combat style for each character is quite good. The stories are on the smaller scale compared to the main story, but they are surprisingly entertaining. I do think they are worth the price if you enjoyed the combat and wanted more from the world.

Overall, Muramasa ranks somewhat low on my Vanillaware list. The combat is very fun, but the story and characters drag it down for me.