Copycatting New Foes, To Beat Old Foes From Past Lives

Musashi: Samurai Legend is the second game featuring a young sword fighter named Musashi. In the first one he was merely a brave fencer, now he's a samurai legend. Or he will be by the end of the game, so moving up in the world.

I made it through last week, but I held off on reviewing until I could see what the deal was with the new game being saved on top of the completed one. I was hoping for a similar experience to Resident Evil 4, where I'd start from the beginning, but with all the swords and equipment I'd accumulated by the end of my first play through. That doesn't seem to be the case. I'm back down to Level 1, with only what I started with originally. All that's changed is I think the difficulty went up. Oh joy.

Much of the game is similar to others I've played. The hero arrives to help the princess and her people stave off a dangerous enemy. The enemy in this case is a corporation, rather than some rival nation, but that mostly means they talk about their nefarious plans in "board meetings", rather than military debriefings or cabinet meetings, or whatever. And rather than fighting the head bad guys lieutenants, I'm fighting his board of directors. The names are changed, but the rest is the same. Go to a level, hack through lots of enemies (including ones that in many cases respawn if you tarry too long in a particular room, which is annoying), fight boss, beat boss, thwart particular nefarious plan, and rescue the Mystic or sword that's the goal.

There are two things about the game that can make it a bit more interesting. The first is the ability to learn enemy techniques. Musashi can lock onto an enemy, and when a gauge on the screen is filled, if the enemy attacks, he can learn that attack, if I can hit the button at the right instant. That's was where the problems started, because I was really bad at that. I'm guessing there were at least a few dozen techniques, and I only picked up 7 or so, on my first play. Mostly I couldn't get the timing right, or I'd be hit by an enemy other than the one I was locked onto, or they didn't use an attack I could copy. As you might guess since I beat the game, the learned techniques aren't mandatory. I got by basically just slicing through whatever barred my way, defending occasionally, using the special powers contained in some of the swords a little more often. I imagine some of the better learned skills make things easier, but they aren't vital by any means.

The other bit was story-related. Apparently Musashi and the villain of the game have past history. Past life history, to be exact, which Gandrake remembers and Musashi doesn't. Musashi has heard of their past names and great battles, but he doesn't seem to know he was one of the two involved in them, for whatever reason. It's not so much the idea that the two of them may be linked somehow, possibly being reborn on opposing sides of problems again and again that interests me. I'm sure that's been done before. That could sort of describe The Doctor and The Master, couldn't it (I'm guessing, as I know about zilch when it comes to Doctor Who)? If you making it being lovers instead of adversaries, it sort of describes the Hawkman/Hawkgirl thing.

It's more that only one of them remembers it. I wonder what's the most common variation. They meet again, and they both remember they fought in past lives? They meet and at least at first, neither of them remembers? The hero could remember when the villain doesn't, or vice versa, which is the case here. I'm betting only the hero remembering is the most rare, because if that happens, then hero can try to plan ahead for it, then the villain is operating at a disadvantage before it's even begun, and I think it's much more common for the hero to start on the defensive, only to turn things around later. It could be worked out so that the hero trying to be proactive makes things worse, accelerating the villain recalling, or making them more erratic, more dangerous because they don't know why this person is after them.

I suppose the proactive approach could be used to establish a cycle where only one remembers their previous life per life cycle. Set it up so the one that remembers (Person A) is being proactive because they have strong emotion attached to the memories of being hounded by the other person (Person B) in that past life. A felt persecuted, hunted, hated, and A doesn't know why it was happening, but they're angry about it, and not prepared to let it happen again. So A goes after B, who was perhaps satisfied with how things went in the past life, doesn't have strong emotion attached to the memories, and thus doesn't remember. Except all this does is ensure that when they're reborn later, B will have the intensely bitter feelings, and go searching for A. Eventually, someone would have to figure out how it started, and see if it could be halted, assuming it isn't one of those endless conflicts the universe requires for some reason.

There's nothing quite that looping suggested in Musashi: Samurai Legend, but that is where the game sent my thoughts, so I owe it for that, at least.