Bujingai: The Forgotten City is best-known today for starring Gackt. For the uninitiated, Gackt is a recording artist who was a pretty big deal in Japan in the 2000s - first as a member of the visual kei band Malice Mizer, then as a solo performer. His handsome face was plastered on billboards, magazine covers, and even a credit card. All the girls wanted him; all the boys wanted to be him. He claimed to be a 600-year-old vampire. Not that that has anything to do with Bujingai.
Gackt is interesting, eccentric, and a bit of an egotist. Given his stranglehold on Japanese pop culture back then, it's no wonder he showed up in a few video games, most notably the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. But before Crisis Core, before Dirge of Cerberus, there was Bujingai.
I played through the entirety of this game in a single session on a warm August morning a couple of years ago. At the time, I had a terrible schedule where I'd stay up all night and sleep in the morning. This meant that immediately after finishing it, I was too tired to write a proper review of it. But luckily, I had given my thoughts, point-by-point, to a fellow visual kei fan as I played through the game. Here they are, unearthed now, for your reading pleasure:
- Even if this game didn't star Gackt, it would still be the most Gackt video game ever made. For starters, the game's save file is over 1 MB large. The PS2 memory card has a total of 8 MB space. This game eats up a whole eighth of your memory card just to save.
- The actual game takes up very little space on the disk. The majority of it is Gackt interviews, press conference videos, and other such 'goodies.' You unlock them by collecting hidden tokens; there are around 15 such videos total. This game was released in the pre-YouTube days, and I'm making myself legitimately sad imagining a desperate Gackt fangirl suffering through this horrible game to collect the WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY, NOWHERE tokens just so she could see good-quality videos of her idol.
- The coolest part of the game is that it starts off by kicking you straight into the gameplay, no title screen. You get to run around and hack and slash for a bit. Then the opening credits play over a stylized version of your gameplay in the opening level.
- Gackt has no voice work beyond grunts.
- In fact, there's really nothing in the core game itself to suggest that you're playing as Gackt, and early PS2 graphics weren't much for allowing an accurate likeness. They could have said this game was about a guy called Gilles or Gonzales and it would be the same thing.
- This game was made by a toy company.
- The CGI in the game is laughably bad. This game as a whole is such a Z-movie that I believe it would be extremely fun to play while a friend watches so you can laugh at it together.
- Lastly, in true Gackt fashion... this game gives you an interesting combat system and then fucks off with it, leaving you to do platforming with the terrible jumping controls instead. I JUST WANNA DO FLASHY SWORD MOVES FUCK.
- I'm 99.9% sure this game steals its in-game text font from Devil May Cry.
- Whoever designed the platforming sections in the final level, I hope his wife left him.
I give this game one and a half stars. Half a star is only because I enjoy Gackt's music. And no, he didn't work on the music for this game.
Gackt is interesting, eccentric, and a bit of an egotist. Given his stranglehold on Japanese pop culture back then, it's no wonder he showed up in a few video games, most notably the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. But before Crisis Core, before Dirge of Cerberus, there was Bujingai.
I played through the entirety of this game in a single session on a warm August morning a couple of years ago. At the time, I had a terrible schedule where I'd stay up all night and sleep in the morning. This meant that immediately after finishing it, I was too tired to write a proper review of it. But luckily, I had given my thoughts, point-by-point, to a fellow visual kei fan as I played through the game. Here they are, unearthed now, for your reading pleasure:
- Even if this game didn't star Gackt, it would still be the most Gackt video game ever made. For starters, the game's save file is over 1 MB large. The PS2 memory card has a total of 8 MB space. This game eats up a whole eighth of your memory card just to save.
- The actual game takes up very little space on the disk. The majority of it is Gackt interviews, press conference videos, and other such 'goodies.' You unlock them by collecting hidden tokens; there are around 15 such videos total. This game was released in the pre-YouTube days, and I'm making myself legitimately sad imagining a desperate Gackt fangirl suffering through this horrible game to collect the WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY, NOWHERE tokens just so she could see good-quality videos of her idol.
- The coolest part of the game is that it starts off by kicking you straight into the gameplay, no title screen. You get to run around and hack and slash for a bit. Then the opening credits play over a stylized version of your gameplay in the opening level.
- Gackt has no voice work beyond grunts.
- In fact, there's really nothing in the core game itself to suggest that you're playing as Gackt, and early PS2 graphics weren't much for allowing an accurate likeness. They could have said this game was about a guy called Gilles or Gonzales and it would be the same thing.
- This game was made by a toy company.
- The CGI in the game is laughably bad. This game as a whole is such a Z-movie that I believe it would be extremely fun to play while a friend watches so you can laugh at it together.
- Lastly, in true Gackt fashion... this game gives you an interesting combat system and then fucks off with it, leaving you to do platforming with the terrible jumping controls instead. I JUST WANNA DO FLASHY SWORD MOVES FUCK.
- I'm 99.9% sure this game steals its in-game text font from Devil May Cry.
- Whoever designed the platforming sections in the final level, I hope his wife left him.
I give this game one and a half stars. Half a star is only because I enjoy Gackt's music. And no, he didn't work on the music for this game.