Demon Slayer is an action anime property, but at the same time, between the television series and film people have cried. The other challenge that CyberConnect2 faced was the issue of characters and storylines. Critically it’s also going to be totally adequate for fans that remember these combat scenes in the anime and use their imaginations to fill in the blanks in the vision. CyberConnect2 has been peddling these arena brawlers for quite some time now, so the basics were there, and while the way it has been tweaked to suit the Demon Slayer license is not the deepest or elegant approach, it’s also highly playable. They were always there to give players that all-important link to the beauty of the anime itself. They’re not the most demanding QTEs, but they were never meant to be. Then, at the end of each battle, you’ll get a little QTE to play, which is the developer’s way of wrestling back control for a short period to make sure that those critical final kill scenes match as closely as possible to the elegance of the show. All the character’s various attacks match the screen-filling, richly detailed attack specials found in the show. What the developers absolutely did nail was the spectacle of colour and energy. Boss battles occur over multiple “phases” and while this means you only need to work out a handful of dodge and counter-attacks in each phase, it does closely mirror the behaviour of the bosses in the anime itself, so if you’re playing along you find the whole experience authentic. It becomes possible to approach most combat in a button-mashing way (especially once you’ve worked out enemy attack patterns and know how to effectively whittle down their health), but because it’s so fast-paced, and the personality in each character is reflected through their combat style, Demon Slayer at least has a good energy to it. Characters have access to regular and special attacks, as well as a couple of additional tactical options, and the block and dodge button. It’s a 3D brawler that takes place in arena-style areas. But it does lose some of the elegance and spectacle of the anime, and while there was little the developers could do to address that, the game does nonetheless feel a little stuff in comparison to the source material. Demon Slayer plays nicely, and the combat is, for the most part, tight and enjoyable. The developers at CyberConnect2 have opted for the latter. As a developer, when you put the control over the choreography in the hands of the player, you also hand over the choreography duties, and in doing so, you either design gameplay systems that make the combat intricately beautiful in exchange for a level of complexity that most players will find unwieldy, or you build a simple combat engine, and replace the beautiful choreography with simple, repeatable, attack patterns and inputs. The biggest problem that Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles faced can be seen in that very quote above: Demon Slayer is notable for beautifully composed fight scenes, and intricate stories and characters. As noted by one post-mortem analysis of that achievement: “Demon Slayer has been praised for its incredible animation, beautifully composed fight scenes, and intricate stories and characters.” In that context, so much could have gone wrong with this game, and it’s a massive achievement on the part of the developers that very little of that eventuated. The recent(ish) film had the rare achievement of pulling in over $500 million in the box office, and that is something other beloved anime films like Your Name and even the classic Spirited Away weren’t able to manage. Demon Slayer has become an anime behemoth.
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