I had my reservations when I first started playing Full Metal Daemon Muramasa. The first few hours of the game had me feeling confused, frustrated, disgusted, and angry bordering on outright furious. I felt so repulsed that there were a few times I even considered just giving up on the game entirely.

But I'm so glad I didn't. Once I figured out what the game was going for, and everything clicked, I ended up loving it. I realized that the game was trying to elicit those emotions from me because they were the same emotions Kageaki felt every day of his life, and feeling that way helped me fit into his shoes perfectly. It's rare to see a story manage that so excellently.

As for the story itself, the writing is phenomenal. I was surprised by how much I fell in love with most of the characters. Kageaki is an amazing subversive protagonist, and Kanae and Ichijo were both fantastic and I loved both of their routes (though I prefer Ichijo a little more, I was surprised that she ended up being my favorite character), and the third route's love interest was so incredibly interesting as well, I can see why so many people love her so much.

(I think the only character I outright did not enjoy seeing was the underwear Nazi who just annoyed me most of the time. There's a few other characters I despised, but I enjoyed despising them. I just had no love for the underwear Nazi dude at all.)

From a philosophical standpoint, this game is nothing short of fantastic. While I don't fully agree with every point the game has to make, it makes those points incredibly well and hammers them home in a way that might just stick with me for life. There are plenty of "Revenge Bad" and "Killing Bad" stories in media nowadays, to the point that it feel a little oversaturated at times, but this is one of the stories that stands out among the rest. The "Law of Balance" is such a fantastic way of expressing the game's philosophy, and it does so with incredible finesse, I was left in awe of how well it managed to convey itself.

My only real criticism of the writing is that some scenes go on for a bit too long and overstay their welcome, particularly some of the fight scenes. Those scenes were the only times I found myself losing focus and just going through the motions, thankfully most scenes redeemed themselves almost immediately, so I can't be mad in the slightest. (Though I do hate that I was forced to do a math puzzle during one of the biggest fights in the whole game, that wasn't fun.)

I do have a second criticism of the game, but that has to do with the H-scenes. (If you have no interest in those, then please just disregard this whole section entirely.) This is a PC only visual novel from Japan meant for adults, so naturally they have to be here, that's just how it goes. Now, when it comes to H-scenes in games like this, there are two things I hate:
1. When the game comes up with some stupid justification for sex to happen (i.e. "we need to have sex to generate power!" or "The door won't open unless we show our love!!!" etc)
2. When an H-scene abruptly interrupts the story, and is seemingly forgotten about immediately afterwards as though it never happened or just feels overall irrelevant.

Thankfully, Muramasa doesn't commit the first, but sadly, it does commit the second a little too much for my taste. Most of the scenes do feel important and have some level of consequence for the characters, but there are a few that just didn't have to be there, and most of those depict... unsavory elements. There's one in particular I really wasn't a fan of, solely because the moment right before the H-scene fulfilled the H-scene's purpose already, so adding a violent H-scene right afterwards just muddied the waters for me. However, even with that said, the scenes are decently rare throughout the whole game, and the rest of the experience greatly outweighs the negatives that those scenes might have brought up. (Though you should probably avoid this game if you can't stomach stuff like that, you probably won't have a great time just because of how dark this game can get.)

Overall though, this ended up being my second favorite visual novel so far, right behind Wonderful Everyday. Granted, I'm relatively new to the genre and haven't played a lot of visual novels, so that could change soon. But my experience with this game was incredible. Even when playing it late at night when I couldn't get any sleep, this game enraptured me. I can see why it's considered one of the greatest visual novels of all time. Once I was able to click with the game, everything fell into place and I ended up loving the hell out of this game. I'd fully recommend it to anyone who's into philosophical and dark games like this.

(Getting the final CG was way more annoying than it had to be. Still totally worth it though.)

A2 does something no other FFT and honestly no other game really does- or even attempts to do. The game tries to personalize the player as the group, and not as any individual character.

The game allows any clan member to be the representative in major longrunning questlines and turf wars. Luso is treated as A main character, not THE main character. The other clan members take part in his quest just as well as he takes part in theirs. Its a subtle theme that gets pushed with every other named party member as well. Its not really something any company would market with and its not really anything anyone looks for in a game, but regardless it makes A2 have a unique flavor that no other game has, nor does any other game try to match.

This one was really mixed, I adore this cast and the OST to death but the gameplay is boring and the story doesn't really have much going for it. The dungeons were slightly better than Berseria, they felt like they at least had some decent ideas going. The whole world just felt so disconnected and thrown together where I couldn't get myself as nearly involved as some of the other titles in the series, I did really enjoy the character designs, the animated cutscenes, and sometimes I did have a good time with the combat system but nothing besides the characters really kept me going back.

Edna made playing worth it