Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors Review - Xbox

Otogi: Myth of Demons was released fairly early in the Xbox's prosperous life, demonstrating the console's power through the utilisation of dazzling displays of colourful, powerful magic and frantic, fluent action. Now, nigh on two years later, Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors has hit shelves with the intent of improving upon its predecessor, retaining the same Japanese and Samurai influence and hacking and slashing action.

Gameplay

In typical action game style, the storyline in Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors is not well told. While you will be presented with a few short cut scenes here and there, dialogue is limited and the general gist of what's going on is never really established; I was often left with the personal objective of simply slashing and bouncing my way through areas and levels rather than attempting to bring the characters to their goal. This leaves the game with an often empty and arcadey feel and you'll wish developer From Software made use of the game's potential to tell a story in more detail and depth.

By allowing you to purchase and sell upgrades, spells and weapons and develop and switch between characters, the game successfully integrates a hint of strategy and management into what would've otherwise been a generally repetitive affair. The characters at hand - Raikoh, Kintoki, Tsuna, Sadamitsu, Suetake and Seimei - each feature slightly different abilities, attributes, fighting styles and moves without alienating themselves; taking up control of another doesn't bear too steep a learning curve. The strategy comes into play when selecting a character to use throughout a level; you'll need to choose them according to which house they belong to and which house the enemies in that particular level belong to so that you can match them up to give yourself a powerful advantage. The fact that the houses are an assortment of Japanese words, however, often require you to inconveniently keep at hand and flick through the game's manual in order to determine your plan of attack.

As you fight through the game's largely open levels against the hordes of monsters impeding your progress you'll find your characters gaining experience, going up levels and accumulating gold that, as mentioned above, can be used to purchase upgrades and other helpful items. This encourages you to take part in fights - even against the more pesky of monsters - as you'll always know there's a reward and goal worth fighting for.

As in the game's predecessor, each character features a set of moves similar to those in one-on-one fighting games - you're able to take down the often large groups of enemies in a variety of ways, either with a few inhumanly fast slashes with your blade, dashing in order to hop from one enemy to another, or with an assortment of devastating spells that'll see your enemies explode in a shower of blinding light and other magical elements. While the game provides a lock-on system to help you target singular monsters, the fact that there are often so many (continued next page)