装甲悪鬼村正 Review

Aha. Wonderful. I finished it. Finally. Now I’m totally satisfied =3

Official

Getchu

Walkthrough

Some Rubbish Infomation

Company = ニトロプラス

Scenario =  奈良原一鉄 (Hanachirasu, Nitro+ Royale) (Yes, I know that his past works are total bull compared to this >_>)

Artist = なまにくATK (No idea who at ALL)

Genre = Dark  mystery action fantasy eroge

What’s so special = Vertical reading, lots and lots of complicated phrases/words, it’s unique dark old Japan theme, amazing cast, awesome art, 3D elements

Foreword

MURAMASAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Crap, this is probably what I’m going to shout in my head for a few weeks. I sure as hell like this eroge. Nitro+ 万歳！  Now if they’ll be kind enough to port steins over to the PC…

Story

This eroge has a lot of flashbacks so I’ll be giving more of an overview than a prologue.

In Japan, there are warriors who don on special armors called the Tsurugi, which has special powers hidden in them. The oldest, and most special armors are those who are made by crafters who use their own soul to complete the process.

Japan is controlled by a organisation called Rokuhara, which is monitored by another overseas organisation called the GHQ. Clashes are frequent, but not on a large scale.

In a society like that, there rose a warrior, one who bring destruction and madness to wherever it goes. A silver Tsurugi which appears and disappears when it pleases. People go mad at the very sight of it, warriors fear it’s might and the destruction it breeds. They named it the “Silver Star”.

But all hope is not lost, as there is someone chasing it. A red Tsurugi, one that fights with the Silver Star and vows to kill it. But, he is no hero. He wears a cursed Tsurugi. He kills both people who are good and evil. His pursuit for the Silver Star leaves death at his wake.

This is not a story of heroes.

~END~

This eroge is downright dark. And I mean pitch black.

It has rape, gore, destruction and so on. Especially since the protag kills both people fighting for justice and people fighting for power. It’s not something easy to stomach. As what they said right from the start, “This isn’t a story about a hero”. What’s more, everyone in this eroge has a chance to die at least once. Protag included. Not to mention most of the sub heroines die. Most of them got raped too, one way or the other.

The truth unveils more and more each route. It’s a standard procedure that most successful eroges use and this definitely is done well in Muramasa. The atmosphere for darkness and a huge mystery sticks throughout the whole eroge, making it a pretty tense eroge to read through IMO.

Also comes around the fact that there are the Tsurugi, those robot thingys that are probably catching your attention more than the characters. They aren’t the size of gundams (Hate them) but they’re much more logical in the sense that they’re pretty much human sized, abeit a little bigger. They’re armor, but armor while speaks and have their own opinions. For example, Muramasa doesn’t always agree to what the protag does and shows it in her own way. It makes things so much more interesting than just…. moving a machine.

The whole story focus though is mainly on one thing, the internal struggle that is in the protag. He doesn’t want to kill but he has to, the fact that everyone that get close to him dies and it haunts him day and night. More importantly, he isn’t exactly a great warrior either. Unlike what you may have thought, he’s actually, throughout the story, just a little better than most of the warriors.

There are also some really confusing explanations sometimes during battle explaining about forces and strategy. I gave up after a few seconds as it was so goddamned confusing.

What I liked most though, is the entire world that this story is built around. It’s old Japan, but it’s done in such a way that it’s jaw dropping. I’m not just talking about the art mind you, I mean the entire era difference can be felt throughout the entire eroge. The speech, way of life, actions taken. Not to mention the lords and everything. They’re all literally in the olden ages. Very unique in that sense.

While talking about the speech though, reminds me of something. The speech in this entire eroge is… confusing. As they prefer to say things in a roundabout way rather than just normally, not to mention the language used is deep. It’s probably to show that it’s olden Japan, but heck the words used are fairly different from what is normally used nowadays, which slowed me to a snail’s pace as I deciphered the contents. Seems like it’s not just me though, as I asked a few people.

Actual figure: More than 30 hours to finish the first route.

It’s long in terms of script length and in terms of the way it’s written, it requires a lot more time to understand. Unless you’re 100+ years old and live in Japan then yeah, you’re fine there.

The entire story is also seperated into chapters, with 4/5 chapters as common and then into the route only chapter.

The routes themselves are separated into 3 main parts. Ichijou’s “Heroism” route, Kanae’s “Revenge” route and Muramasa’s true route. There is Chachamaru’s ending too, but it can be considered to be more of a side route than anything. Remember though, that this is Nitro+, therefore an actual happy ending never ever exists. So be prepared. Different routes focus on vastly different things, ranging from politics to chasing the silver star. The variety is a great thing, as opposed to reading the same thing for a few hours.

Personally felt Chachamaru should have gotten more of a route and that they should reveal more of Sayo. And I wanted more Subaru dammit.

The true route would blow your mind. Really.

That said, Soukou Akki Muramasa’s story is definately exceptional when compared to most other eroges. It’s definately something really new and really different.

Characters

What is amazing about this eroge too, is the huge cast. It’s phenominal. What’s more is the fact that all the characters aren’t single-personality characters. Most of them hold many faces.

湊斗 景明 (Minato Kageaki)

Protag. He’s not a very strong person at heart. Still, he’s intelligent and talks in a very polite manner, though a little emotionless. He is extremely honest about things though, he doesn’t mind admitting that he likes pantsu or anything like that. He chases after the Silver star for some reason.

His rage face is hilarious.

村正 (Muramasa)

Kageaki’s Tsurugi. Yes she’s a spider. She is one of the strongest Tsurugi ever made and have one of the most powerful ability. She’s strong enough to go around on her own alone for scout missions. A little on the cold side but not exactly emotionless. Btw, my favourite character in the eroge =D

綾弥 一条 (Ayane Ichijyou)

A student in some school. She’s very caught up with the whole idea of justice and would fight anyone who does things against that. Saved once by Kageaki. She hated Kageaki at first.

I’m not sure if I would consider her a tsundere, but she is damned cute

大鳥 香奈枝 (Ootori Kanae)

She’s the daughter of a famous family. Currently working for GHQ. She smiles all the time and it’s hard to guess what she’s thinking usually. Though her jokes normally get through. For some reason, she’s trying to get close to Kageaki. She plays the double bass (I think) and carries it around sometimes.

If you noticed, she never opens her eyes >_>;

足利 茶々丸 (Ashikaga Chachamaru)

She’s a very bright and childlike character. But she is definitely not what she seems. One of the 4 generals that controls everything running in Rokuhara. She killed her father for the position. She also tries to get close to Kageaki for her own reasons.

She’s really cute =X

I’m too bored to cover all the characters. Just go over to the site and check it out if you want to know more. >_>;

System

Update it to 1.20.

Title screen. As you can see already, there is something really different in this. Yep. Even in the title screen, the text is all vertical. It would be exactly the same for the entire eroge so it’s best if you get used to it (If you’re not used to it that is). Also, they preferred to use 100% japanese text in this eroge, therefore you would find little or no english in the menu. The quick save for instance is ～おりを差す.

The config is a pile of WTF when you first go in. I swear. I went WTF for 10 seconds before trying to decipher the contents as even if I am somewhat used to vertical writing, I’m most definitely not used to vertical configs. The eroge doesn’t have individual voice controls, but that isn’t really needed unless you’re really picky.

Didn’t want to overload your mind so I chose something without too many words. The text box moves around slightly from time to time if there is a CG and it’s blocking the view. Or else it would almost always be in the middle of the screen. Yes, it’s totally vertical. When you couple up advanced Japanese and vertical text, you have a time sink. Anyway, it’s actually a pretty cool way of displaying the text. Not very hard to read once you get used to it too.

There are side buttons on the screen but I never use them. This is the menu when you right click. It has everything, even the shortcut keys needed to access the particular command immediately.

This is something you can check for to see if you’re on the right track. Note that if a girl has a high value, it doesn’t always mean you’ll get into her route. Sometimes she’ll die early on. Therefore this isn’t exactly helpful sometimes.

As I said in the story section, Mura is separated into chapters. Route specific chapters are much better looking >_>;

The high velocity skip system present in Nitro+ eroges. It’s not very fast TBH, but it sure is faster than the normal skip. I wish every eroge had this system >_>;

There is also a section in the specials where it lists all the Tsurugi that appeared in the eroge together with a revolving model. They also stated the stats of the different Tsurugis.

CG and Animation

The CG for this eroge is absolutely awesome. Mood, perspective, coloring, blending, lighting. All of them are near perfect. I can’t really say anything except that the art is exceptional and the fact that is plays a very huge part in the entire eroge, giving it a mysterious dark atmosphere. The action shots were wonderful too, with a nice blend of motion blur and color that makes things so much more interesting.

They made use of the idea of depth of field a lot in the eroge, blurring out backgrounds on closeups. I wouldn’t call their drawings highly detailed, but the blending and coloring just takes your breath away. It’s nothing short of stunning.

There were also HUD designs for some shots where the characters were inside the Tsurugi. What’s nice is that the HUD animates and there are lock-ons on the enemy tsurugi and they animated it to fly to the screen.

What’s the most amazing though, is the 3D models of the Tsurugi. It’s stunning. The amount of work and details into this model must have been phenomenal considering that they’re not only doing one 3D model but many totally different designs of them. It would take me ages to make one…. Maybe not. But still it’s pretty detailed and the textures are stunning. Light matchups with the CGs are wonderful too. Goddamned.

Not that it’s without it’s flaws. There were some with hotspots which was probably from point lights too close to the models itself. Didn’t happen much though so it’s just something small.

There is actually a decent amount of animation in the eroge ranging from movement and scale to some clips which show special powers. Muramasa’s railgun for example was an animated clip. Very nice touch.

Music

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of different tracks in the eroge itself. Still, the quality of the music was good. I wouldn’t call it epic, but it was much more than just decent. There’s also a total of 5 songs used throughout the eroge though most of them are for endings except one which played near the end of the true route.

Again, there MUST, THERE HAD TO BE AN ENGLISH SONG. The pronunciation was so bad that I could’ve been banging my head on the wall and it wouldn’t make a difference. Please, just stick to Japanese. I loved the second song. It’s really calming.

H scenes

There are a total of 10 H scenes in the game where a total of 4 were rape scenes. Most of the characters got 1 scene except a special someone who got the honour of having two.

To be honest, I’ll just tell you to forget the H scenes. It wasn’t really what you could call ero. Because of the nature of the writing, it just… didn’t feel like ero at all. Though Chachamaru’s scene was awesome. As chachamaru is awesome.

The H scenes don’t last either. They end really fast. Well most of them at least.

Last word

So… Just play this. Just do it. It’s going to be worth your time. There isn’t much to say except that. It’s highly satisfying when you finish. That’s one more script writer to look out for. Now all I have to do is wait for the FD.

EDIT: Due to a request I’ll add this in. Remember that it is a Nitro+ title. If you can’t stomach death in every corner, I suggest you skip this title.