New manga phenomenon, Kimetsu No Yaiba, also known in our latitudes under the name of Demon Slayer, continues its journey and thus naturally arrives in a video game developed by CyberConnect2 and published by SEGA.
I personally only know the first 3-4 chapters of the manga, having not yet had time to read the rest, but this series seemed to me to have an air of promise. It is therefore somewhat blindly, voluntarily so as not to be too disappointed by a possible lack of fidelity as I have been for many adaptations, that I embarked on this adaptation of a work that I don't really know. This time, I may have made a mistake of not knowing...
And the mistake is due to the game not taking the time to explain certain things despite the fact that the story goes from the beginning until the infinity train arc. We thus find ourselves in the shoes of Tanjirô, completely clueless in the story, trying to fill in the storyline holes left by the game. Coming from CyberConnect2, I am still surprised to see such story craters when this studio used to go so far as to invent arcs or ends of arcs to enrich its games. What is not surprising, however, is the type of game. We are dealing with an arena fighting game exactly like the Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm series, interspersed with a ton of cutscenes and "drama" sequences. anecdotal and uninteresting 'exploration' that form a story mode that is both puny and indigestible. Same system, same game engine, same gameplay as Naruto games. Unfortunately, we are not dealing here with a Naruto game and that is the biggest problem. Because as nice the gameplay is for Naruto, it is absolutely not adapted to the fighting style of Demon Slayer where the protagonists are swordsmen with short, or even at best medium range attacks, who face demons with all kinds of ranged abilities. Faithful or not to the manga, I don't know, but the fact that the demons we face have fun playing anti-game, using a flagrant lack of balance (especially in damage management) as we had in Naruto Shippuden and abusing distance and certain mechanics inaccessible to the player, there is nothing more frustrating in a fighting game. Especially when each of your blows is systematically canceled in favor of those of the opponent launched simultaneously and the defensive side is nevertheless relegated to the background with no real means of acting against the 20-hit combo as soon as you take the first in the face.
We therefore enter a race to join the opponent and a dance of eternal dodging until an opening at the end of the opposing combo is large enough to attack, while hoping not to take a hit despite the dodges.
In short, the story mode will only be useful and interesting to unlock as many things as possible without having to pay the game credits which take too long to accumulate (characters, music, arenas, costumes, etc.).
Let's see what the rest of the modes have in store for us, starting with the Training mode, which is relatively classic, since in fact it is a challenge mode with each character in which you will be asked to beat an opponent under certain conditions to be able to move on to the next challenge with a total of 10 challenges per "coach". Here again, there is a lack of depth and variety in the objectives which will generally be satisfied with asking to beat the opponent in a certain time as a primary objective and do combos of x or y hits, use awakening or l ultimate attack x times as secondary objectives.
Last game mode, probably the one where you will probably spend the most time on it: Versus.
You can thus face the computer or humans locally or online.
And there, it's still already much better, because we get rid of a huge part of the frustration: the playable characters are all on an equal footing. The clashes are 2 against 2 with the second character who can intervene in 3 ways using the teammate button, using the support gauge: add damage to yours, take the place of the character on the field, or even allow saving in extremis your character from an attack, adding a bit of depth to the defense system.
And the result is really more enjoyable than the story mode clashes.
However, the roster is very, very small, barely 12 characters to which we add 6 so-called "Academy" characters, who are in fact identical versions of Tanjirô, Nezuko, Zen'Itsu, Inosuke, Giyû and Shinobu and whose only differences are the school uniform skins and the ultimate attack also based on school madness. Probably inspired by manga bonus pages (or not). It's really little. Especially since, among these 18 characters, we have 3 Tanjiro (Normal, god of fire, and Academy). Really a shame, especially when the 9 Pillars are introduced into the game, but only three are playable (Giyû, Shinobu and Rengoku Kyôjurô). I don't know if other people's techniques were shown partially or completely in the manga or anime, but that never stopped CyberConnect2 from inventing them in Naruto games. It would have already made it possible to add 6 characters and we would not have been reluctant to be able to embody a few demons affiliated with the Demon Moons like Rui who appear in the game, or even more anecdotal demons but who still serve as chapter bosses.
In short, the game could appeal to Demon Slayer fans, but as long as they can play with friends in front of the same TV or online. The single-player experience being too lean and frustrating to offer any fun on its own. Let's hope that a possible sequel sees things much bigger and with a combat system better calibrated for the fighting style.
- Playstation (Playstation 4 tested version)
- Steam
- Xbox
