One of the most interesting PC “games” I’ve ever played.
This title is less of a game and more of an interactive piece of computer software, or as the box puts it, a “visual mindscape”. It takes place in Kyoto at the time of the Japanese Heian period and is deeply rooted in Japanese myth and spiritualism, primarily with Buddhist ideas and concepts.

You start off in a field just outside Kyoto with absolutely nothing to your name. You have no money and are completely naked to boot. Luckily, nearby is the skinny and decomposing corpse of some unfortunate fellow, whom you can steal the clothes of. After looting the corpse, you can make your way to the city gate only to be told off by a stern samurai. You can easily sneak in through a hole in the wall, though.

Now you’re in Kyoto and the world is at your fingertips. There is no indication of where you should go or what to do; you must give yourself the motivation to see what lies in this city.

Kyoto is in a very rough condition during this time. The homeless and the sick line the walls and fences of the city begging for scraps while demons prey on unsuspecting humans and the rich elites vie endlessly with one another for further power. Wandering too far into any section of the city will result in seeing something you’d probably rather want to avoid, or maybe it will happen directly to you instead. This something is obviously a very cruel death.

Should this happen you will be sent to the afterlife and depending on your karma you will be sent to vastly different realms. Karma in this game is determined by what actions you did while you were alive, and if it is negative you are sent to one of the Buddhist realms of hell and torture, and if it is positive you will enjoy a good afterlife.

After your afterlife is complete you will be reincarnated. Even if your karma is negative, you will likely be reborn as a human, but if it falls too low a dog will be decided to be a much more suitable form for you. If you are reincarnated as a human, you will have to steal clothes off of another corpse, that being your own corpse from your previous life.

You might be thinking that death is a total pain that you’d rather want to avoid. There are a number of ways one can die in this game; sickness, food poisoning, assault, etc. but the one most players are going to die to first are demons. Demons roam around in certain sections of Kyoto, and for the unprepared human they mean instant death. The game does give the player a few options to deal with them, however.

You can visit the Buddhist temple and become a monk, learning various scriptures gaining access to scrolls that ward away demons. Even if you choose not to become a monk, the monks there are charitable to give you a one use scroll. If you are not a spiritual person you may head to the bustling marketplace, the most active location in Kyoto. There you can purchase bows and arrows to attack demons from afar. Many demons probably won’t be discouraged from attacking you just because you’re armed though.

Really, I could go on and on with the multitude of events and things one can do. It feels like an open world game but much much smaller with little to no empty space and all of the interesting things in the same location without unnecessarily long travel distances between them. Everything I’ve written about here are things that can be encountered in the first 10 minutes of playing BTW.

So yeah, I thoroughly recommend experiencing this title. It is so expansive and large that it is impossible for any two players to have the same experience, so if you decide to try it please let me know how it was. I also apologize if this review seems a bit rambling as there’s so much I could write about this I become a little overwhelmed and have to limit myself to just the gameplay experience.
I really need to play more of these DOS games