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.
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.