Something crazy about Muramasa is that it actually solves literally all the questions it poses in one particular scene, but then never touches on this again, pretending like they're still unsolved issues.
I don't wanna lay my cards bare in a backloggd review of all things, since I plan on making a large youtube video about this, but I wonder how many people caught on to that. And even more importantly, I wonder how many people continued to understand what this means about the game, and what Muramasa is actually about.

Bir eser aynı zamanda nasıl hem çok doğru hem çok yanlış hissettirebilir?

Basit, ne yaptığını çok iyi bilerek ve Muramasa da aynen bunu yapıyor. Narahara başından sonuna kadar ne yazmak istediğinden emin bir şekilde yazmış ve bu rota sisteminden tut oyunun rotalarının temalarına, karakterlerine, diyaloglarında ve en önemlisi Kageakide sonuna kadar hissettiriyor.

Muramasa gözümde objektif olarak mükemmele en çok yaklaşan eser. Aldığı bazı kararlar kesinlikle herkesin hoşuna gidecek kararlar değil ama eserin geneline baktığımda "Evet, VNDB'de ilk sırayı hakeden eser aslında bu." diyebiliyorum.
Peki Muramasa bu kadar iyiyse neden kişisel listemde daha yukarıda değil? Çünkü dediğim gibi, gözümde mükemmel değil. Dies Irae gözümde "bana itafen" yazılmış gibi hissettiğim tek eser olduğu için yeri her zaman bende ayrı olacak, keza Subarashiki Hibi de açık ara tükettiğim en iyi hikaye olduğu için Muramasa'yı geride bırakıyor. Ama bu demek değil ki Muramasa'nın hikayesi kötü, aksine Muramasa yine dediğim gibi ne anlatmak istediğini bilen dahi bir yazar tarafından yazıldığı için her rotası birbirinden ayrı hissettiren muazzam bir hikayeye sahip ama işte bu rotaların bazı noktaları var ki göz ardı edemiyorum.

Hero "adalet" kavramını muazzam bir şekilde işliyor ve daha iyisini düşünemeyeceğim bir sonla noktalıyor ama zorlama romance kısımları ve hikayenin ilerisinde okuduğumda farkettiğim (True Demon okurken) tutarsızlıklar beni fazlası ile rahatsız etti. Nemesis keza aynı şeyi "İntikam" kavramı ile çok iyi yapıyor ve yine daha iyisini düşünemeyeceğim, insanın içini burkan bir sonla bitiyor ama yine bu tutarsızlıklar ve genel olarak siyasi hikaye anlatımı benim gözümde düşürüyor hikayeyi.

Tyrant ve True Demon ise çok farklı hikayeler. Tyrant ve True Demon "intikam" veya "adalet" gibi felsefi konuları anlatmak yerine genel olarak daha çok Muramasa'nın kendi evrenin in hikayesine ve Kageaki'ye odaklanıyor. Dürüst olayım Tyrant'ın sonunu hiç beğenmedigim ve bad end'den hallice olduğunu düşündüğüm için üzerine konuşmak istemiyorum. True Demon ise apayrı bir mesele. True Demon, Muramasa'nın özünde anlatmak istediği herşey ve çok daha fazlası. Hem pacing hem kurgu hem de karakterler açısından bir şaheser bu rota. Epiloguedan önce yazılar akarken gözlerimin yaşadığını, boğazımın düğümlendiğini hissettim, yazılar geçtikten sonra ise Muazzam bir epilogue ile son noktayı koydu Muramasa. Evet, Muramasa bir başyapıt ama gözümde en iyi eser asla değil ve bunu söylemek içimi rahatlatıyor biraz çünkü Dies ve Subahibi'yi Muramasa geçemediyse hiçbir eserin geçemeyeceğine adım gibi emin oldum.

Ve böylece daha çok içimi dökmek ve Muramasa hakkındaki düşüncelerimi biraz daha sıraya koymak için yazdığım "inceleme" tarzı yazımı sonlandırıyorum. Muramasa herkesin okuması gereken bir eser ve tanıdığım herkese öneririm, kimseye seveceğinin garantisini veremem ama eşsiz bir deneyim yaşayacaklarının garantisini verebilirim.

Hero 9/10
Nemesis 9/10
Tyrant 8/10
True Demon 10/10

My one rec if you play this game is just skip through the h scenes. Ik some may consider that a sin, but the content in them is just kinda horrific, and you're best off just skimming the backlog for the few plot important details they have. Like admittedly the first one sets the scene and plot elements, but it's also like probs worst one in whole thing.

If you can stomach this game having every trigger warning in the book, there is a wonderful, beautiful story about the value of life. As much of a simple moral "murder = bad" is, I greatly respect how much emphasis this story puts on it. There are oc other important themes besides that, but that is like the main one for me.

The mecha are all super sick. Kageaki is a wonderful main protagonist, and is an actual rare morally grey character.

The battles are a kind of love or hate thing. I personally loved them, but they do tend to overexplain stuff. The world has a lot of cool bg details, and lore. The cast is fairly strong, and the main antagonist is super unique. Unlike anything I've really seen.

45 hours of Kageaki being depressed and suicidal, and then a spider footjob making him happy is really funny.

Is Full Metal Daemon Muramasa as """kamige""" as people say? I'd say not quite. Is it overall worth reading? I'd say so.

There's quite a number of reviews on this site already, so I'll just try to focus on my personal pros/cons while trying my best not to spoil too much (I personally think marking a whole review as spoilers ruins the point unless you just specifically make reviews to have discussions with people who also read it)

++The Major Characters Are Quite Good

Pretty much have no complaints here. The protagonist is very unique, cool, while still being deep with solid character development. The main heroines all have very different and likable or interesting personalities and bring something to the plot, even outside their routes. Even a lot of the recurring and one-time characters are interesting too.

++Surprisingly Good Comedy

A part of what makes the characters and their banter good is the surprisingly well done naturally put in jokes. There's a mix of sarcasm, goofiness, and occasional typical anime-ish gags. It's done just enough so things don't get too dark and simultaneously doesn't take away from any seriousness that's happening in the moment.

++Pretty good Thought-Provoking Themes

The most stick out thing compared to other Nitro+ VNs, and even some other story-based visual novels. You will get interesting themes related to killing, revenge, politics, love, faith, etc. And it covers both the good and bad sides of both without getting too preachy on either argument for the most part.

++Fairly Unique and Interesting Common Route

There's not too many common routes that have chapter systems (in fact in terms of English translations only Bokuten has a well done chaptered common route). I like the way it was structured, having different characters in chapter with similar but not fully re-used themes. And they're all eventually plot relevant for routes. Also the Affection System is pretty interesting, not what you'd expect to see in a VN like this, but makes perfect sense to have.

++Nemesis and Demon Routes

Nemesis and Demon routes were definitely the standout consistently good routes for me. The featured heroines were my favorite girls, and I thought the routes just always had interesting stuff happen with solid endings.


+-Art/Music/Presentation

Muramasa's art and music are... fine I guess? They get the job done but overall don't particularly wow or disgust me. The UI having vertical textboxes is very weird, but you do get used to. I don't understand why it'll just randomly switch to regular ADV for particular scenes. The best thing about the presentation is Muramasa having the surprisingly rare "Quick Skip" text feature. This VN is very long so having the ability to skip through the choices quickly is very helpful.

+-The Fight Scenes

I'm not really a fan of action scenes in most visual novels. A lot of the fights have really ghetto animated sprite moving and/or relying too much on still CGs. I do think Muramasa is a bit better than most, mostly cuz you'll get much more of a PoV experience than usual. However, it does have an issue where some fights go on a bit long cuz the author clearly was masturbating while imparting his samurai knowledge.

+-Length and Pacing

This visual novel is looooooooooooooooonnnnnng. The character and text count is one of the highest out there. Even as a fairly fast reader it still took me 60 hours, and some of the slower readers took easily over 100. This visual novel gets very detailed on many of its scenes. On a personal level, this made the thought provoking, plot twist, and some drama scenes pretty good since we got more lines. Unfortunately whenever there were random info dumps, or when there minor characters talking about random stuff, or when there are large war scenes with a lot of characters the pacing gets really bad for me and it became drag to read these parts.


--Occasional Preachiness

This is mostly a problem I have with Hero route, but sometimes this visual novel goes a little hard on the KILLING IS ACTUALLY BAD OKAY GUYS. The Hero route has this weird issue where they tried to have this dual argument related to Heroes and Killing and pretending to act 'fair' on both sides of the argument but still very clearly preferring the the KILLING BAD in the actual execution. Thankfully the other routes were a lot more honest/interesting about the theme.

--Typical Edgey Nitro+ Rape Scenes

If you for some reason haven't a read a Nitro+ visual novel, always expect at least 1 or 2 rape scenes. And oooh boy this VN certainly has a handful of them. Personally I think maybe 1-2 of them have story relevance and kind of fit the story. The others imo are clearly just Nitro+ going "we need more token edgey rape, let's throw it in here cuz why not?".

--Bad occasional "gameplay" moments

There are a few parts in the story that get heavily slowed down because of these randomly added "point and click adventure" puzzles forced on you. A few of them require a lot of moving around using choices, and it can be really annoying to navigate. There are little bits of dialogue during it but for the most part it just felt really unnecessary to have. There's also another dumb puzzle clearly meant for math nerds that most people wouldn't be able to solve properly without consulting a guide. Thankfully there weren't too many of these but the ones that were there, were frustrating to do to say the least.

--Conqueror Route plot twists

Easily the biggest flaw I have with the VN, to the point I almost docked the visual novel a whole point for it. So the first half of Conqueror Route to me was good, potentially great even.

However, there was one twist that THAT bad and a few others that did not help.

+++ Conclusion

Muramasa is a fun and thought provoking read, with some decent action scenes and good characters. It has flaws that prevent it from being consistently enjoyable, but I'd overall recommend reading it as long as you're ok with a darker and longer story than usual.

PS Kanae is best girl.

I have the theory that Chachamaru is by far the most popular heroine (especially in JP) because the readers subconsciously understand that she's the only life-affirming character in the whole game. You would think it's weird to like this borderline side-character the most, who barely has a route herself, but it makes complete sense when you consider her thematic relevance. Though I HIGHLY doubt anyone actually understands why she's the best one beyond subconsciously. Regardless, she's best girl, because she's the most human of them.

Played this cuz i went on backloggd sorted by top rated and scrolled till i found cool stuff. I have now realized the problem with that is that a lot of highly rated games are highly rated because either you haven't finished the game and therefore wouldnt take the time out of your day to negitively rate it, or you have finished it and you've specifically come here to give it 5 stars because you're a visual novel guy and this is your thing. Me personally, I'm not actually much of a visual novel guy and i got really bored :3

Muramasa's core question is simple - can killing ever be justified? - but in a world of often cut-and-dry morality, where it's clear who should live and who should die, the suspension of disbelief can be easily broken. The world is very interesting, the fights are great, and when humor is present and intentional, it's very amusing. Unfortunately, the absurdity and contrivances at the core of the story do render its explorations somewhat juvenile and difficult to take seriously. I would recommend starting with the Kanae route as the Ichigo route - though you'll have to read both to see the true route - is the most 'stupid.' That might be the point, though.

All this time...I was right.
There was love!

Then all is well! I have what I wanted!

The bond that was severed...Restored!

Ah...it was a good dream...