Games of the Abstract: Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae (2013)

 

Developer: Zenith Blue

Publisher: Zenith Blue

One Player

Microsoft Windows / Nintendo Switch / Sony PlayStation 4 / Xbox One

We return to the world of button bashers here with Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae, which is from the polygonal and three dimensional area school of them, be it beat-em-up or hack’n’ slash. And yes, I admit an appreciation for them even when they are minimal in content and very repetitive. It is my reptilian brain vice, and also having grown up in the Playstation One and Two eras, where these games were prominent, that has made them of interest for me. It is compelling for me, a pleasure in just pure bloody-mindedness, even if with a limited amount of game play design, even if many are not fleshed out fully. If one was to look through them, you have alone characters within them who, with a lick of additional fighting moves or just being bunched together into one large crossover, would be fully of the most fascinating motley crew of eccentrics. Some are just idiosyncratic - Cinderella Escape 2 Revenge (2017) brings us Cinderella with her arms bond behind her back doing aerial kicks that defy gravity like a Matrix character – and others bring us a plethora of Mohawks, thugs, baseball bats and giant swords, and enough shurikens and ninja costumes to film a Godfrey Ho film with. This is not even factoring in games from big companies, including those famous for these games in the two dimensional era, who struggled at this time in these genres, be it Capcom with Chaos Legion (2003) to Namco’s Urban Reign (2005), which everyone have forgotten and died on the vine.

Mitsurugi, of the hack n slash variety, is ultra minimalistic, a test demo for an ambitious larger title which has (sadly) yet to be brought to life. This is a "doujin" game, or doujin soft game, software produced by Japanese hobbyists or hobbyist groups from their own resources, titles usually not readily available and sold at places in limited numbers, like doujin manga, such as Comiket, a semi-annual doujinshi convention in Tokyo, Japan of great note. A lot of bullet hell shooters have come from these groups, but Zenith Blue, who were quietly chugging away, made a hack n slash game, among the many of these titles which have become more readily available in the West through the likes of Valve’s Steam service. Mitsurugi has even managed to be available on the likes of Xbox One and Playstation 4, even getting a limited edition Limited Run physical release for these consoles¹.

The origins of the game has to be barred in mind as this is a sparse game, which could be dismissed for this but in what we got here was still an impressive feat for a doujin developer. Mitsurugi takes a visual image which would sell, a schoolgirl with a giant katana sword, and ran with it, another Japanese game dealing with the idea of “cursed” swords. Blade Templar Misa has to hunt down her best friend Suzuka, a blonde haired sword welding woman, who has been possessed by her own cursed sword, becoming more demonic as demons are brought into our world. One poor figure who has been marked in legend and popular culture for his swords being cursed is Sengo Muramasa, a legendary swordsmith from the late Muromachi period (early 16th century), arguably one of the best of all in crafting katana swords which became prized possessions to own over centuries. Things went sour however by the 18^th century, from this legend of their cursed nature, when they became taboo objects which had to be hidden^2a&2b. It would not be surprise this was one of the hugest influences on Japanese pop culture on the subject of cursed katana blades, even leading to the Vanillaware game Muramasa: The Demon Blade (2009) which explicitly touches on Muramasa himself, let alone likely influences Mitsurugi’s premise and the function of Misa’s own weapon.

There is an additional sci-fi slant – that your enemies include Geordi La Forge visor wearing goons, giant robots which bleed blood and monstrous hulks whose giant blades are more blunt trauma instruments than cutting objects – which is never explained, but adds personality, whilst the game structurally itself is a series of rounds, over three different locations, where you clear through the enemies, with bosses at the end of each location. This is differently an acquired taste as, only over an hour or so long, in mind to multiple difficulty levels and a new game plus mode, this does not have much in terms of variety in structure. The game is short, to its advantage, and replaying the game is in mind that, as you win skill points, you can unlock new moves, improve one’s stats and eventually acquire one of a couple new costumes which can be bought mid-game on the pause menu. There is, to the game’s credit, a solid production here in mind to its doujin origins; most games, least for their PC release, do not have a counter for frames per second on the top right corner as I had visible, but it is to the game’s virtue. This is a solidly put together production, with no rough edges, from Zenith Blue likely with only a few people involved. All the limitations are in what they clearly could not do, as you have to strip back on the aesthetic choices and cannot have too many varieties of enemy etc. without juggling too many resources.

The game play, or its most important aspect the fighting mechanics, are thankfully solid, enough to the point one wishes that Zenith Blue would return to this world and flesh it out with more ambition. There is the basics – hand to hand combat, a bar for the sword’s power which diminishes but can be replenished, and as you upgrade a variety of slashes and aerial moves. There is the sword’s attack power, and a sword unsheathing move which has different versions, and prominently, causing your opponents to bleed is vital for getting ahead in the game. There is a move called the Zanshin that, as long as you are not vulnerable to an attack, has Misa sheath the sword, causing blood in giant red globules to come to her blade, vital to use as it replenishes one’s health as much as the sword’s power. (Bosses, if you are not careful, have a self taught way to psychically cauterise their wounds which, alongside stopping the bleeding, can harm you if you do not get out of reach).

The game’s limits in variety beyond this are the only real issues for me personally, but in hindsight, it was the wisest choice Zenith Blue could have made, not biting too much they could have been able to choose. The reference to Cinderella Escape 2 Revenge earlier was not a jokey one either. Another independently made 3D beat-em-up, it is a festishistic game, where without the uncensored patch it still has you able to beat up someone so hard their clothes explode down to their underwear, but they are in the same ballpark of games unable to go beyond the basics in the variety of enemies (barring some bosses) and scope, but with ambitions to them. They are both games set in polygonal but restricted areas of combat, and yet between them having really solid fighting mechanics and some invention with the limitations of these. They only suffer from repetition, unlike the Playstation 1 and 2 eras of games they can be compared to, which could come from studios and feel shabby, because the developers wisely realised they had limited resources and time at their hands, and made games which at least played well.  

On December 15th 2022, Zenith Blue posted that the PV for "Thunder Gun Trial Version (V1.0)" had been released for Windows 10/11, taking inspiration from Mitsurugi’s game engine but envisioning a red haired anime girl against bug humanoids. A gun otaku was clearly involved as, rather than a sword, she is rolling and taking these bug eyed figures with an assault rifle³. A doujin group, their interests (and ability to develop games with the resources they have) means that whether Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae will get an extended sequel is entirely on Zenith Blue themselves. Doujin games, in the era of Valve’s Steam and GOG, and the interest in indie games in general, are becoming more widely available in the West, so Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae’s presence comes as part of this grow in access to this part of Japanese culture. A polygonal hack n slash game was still ambitious even in the early 2010s to have put together, still a challenge that could have gone wrong, so it is a success alone that this was put together as well as possible, let alone that it was game I enjoyed playing.  

 

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1) The Limited Run Games page for the PS4 version.

2a) Dispelling The Curse Of Muramasa Swords, published for Yamato Magazine on June 4th 2019.

2b) The Curse of the Muramasa, an extract from A Brief History of the Samurai, by Jonathan Clements, published on Schoolgirl Milky Crisis on January 31st 2019.

3) Zenith Blue's blog post on the PV of the “Thunder Gun Trial Version”, in Japanese, from their office blog and published on December 25th 2022.