Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade

Well. There isn't much I can say that's positive. I am posting this after completing all 3 characters story arcs. The Good: - The combat is snappy. It's fast and fluid - There are 3 playable characters, and they all play differently. Different strengths and weaknesses, and each character features multiple different weapons with traits that change up your playstyle The Bad: Almost everything else - The story is meh. Very meh, and gives off the vibe of a bunch of teens that are anime fans, but have zero clue how to actually write. Each story arc makes things confusing, until you realize it's basically a fan fiction inside of a fan fiction. There is also no voice action during any story scenes, and they are delivered in a visual novel style. I thought that decision was a little odd, because the characters do have voice lines during combat sections - The art direction is...serviceable? I guess. I personally found it very lacking - As a roguelite, this game is pretty terrible. You can have 3 "boons" for a characters weapon. The characters can each have 2 weapons equipped at a time. Well, the perks you get, are all stat bonuses. You can only upgrade a perk 3 times, then that's it. No more. There really are not any synergies you'll run into at all. The closest you'll get is "Another weapon can also accumulate this meter for your other weapon". With just stat bonuses, it get very boring - The are 3 characters. Sure, I mentioned they play differently from each other, but their individual movesets, do not change. You will never get anything your run that changes how they play. Ever. You don't unlock more moves. SOME weapons. may add an extra type of attack that is independent from the player, but that's it. There is no real build variety. Just "Light attack damaged increased by 20%' or "Heavy attack damage increased by 20%". - The meta progressions is also incredibly boring. It gets VERY expensive. but the gains aren't ever worth it. Things like "5% more gold gained" or "After a parry, can generate a shield for 5 seconds". These get upgraded, so 5 seconds becomes 15 seconds when maxed, or the 5% becomes 15%. It also doesn't carry over. Every character has the meta progression tree, and it's exactly the same between all 3 characters. I found that insulting. Its expensive, and with the souls you get, the currency for meta progressions, it sucks to have to do it all over if you ever plan to change characters. Each characters has smaller tree that different for each character (kinda, but not really), and that's boring too. It's basically the same gains, just slightly different ways to get them - The stages do not change. At all, nor do the enemies on them. Yknow the random appeal of roguelites? Yeah, it isn't present here. Once you go through a stage once, that's what it's gonna be for the rest of the game, including in different story arcs. - Not only do the stages not change. there isn't many. There is 1 main boss for every stage. There are 4 main bosses. No mini bosses or anything. There are 2 other bosses, but they are treated as main bosses? Confusing because they really don't have any importance in the stories. No elite enemies. 4 bosses and 4 stages - Enemy variety is horrible. There's maybe 6 or 7 enemy types? Might just be 4 or 5, but 2 enemies have palette swaps. The only difference they implement, is you will encounter some enemies that have a shield. Moves don't change or anything - The weapons I mentioned? They aren't anything special. They have traits that are different, sure, but majority of them just aren't very good. None really synergize with each other. I found with each character, there are 2 weapons for them that are just simply better than others. I could forgive it if they had a weapon upgrade system - The weapon upgrade system. Resources that you get slowly, and the weapons stop at 3. Oh wait, after you level a weapon, they randomly say "I know it only shows 3 upgrades, but actually it can go higher than that", and they introduce ANOTHER resource, that takes even longer than the first one. The upgrades themselves? Bunch of "10% chance to cause burn" which changes to "25% chance to cause burn". No thank you. - The endgame is just simply not worth engaging with. It has modifiers that makes the grind a little easier. The herder you raise the Inferno level, the higher percentage you get for resource gains. Problem is, the endgame changes nothing with the game. The same 4 stages, and same 4 main bosses you fought during the story arcs, are the exact same things you'll see during the endgame. Same moves, same layouts, same everything. They just have more health and hit harder Overall, this game is one I do NOT recommend. It doesn't respect your time, the story is very poorly written, its a terrible roguelite. and lacks quite literally everything that makes a roguelite good. This game isn't decent, it's bad. I would skip entirely. I don't recommend getting it on sale either, but if for some reason you are determined to play it (Please don't), get it on DEEP sale. Like 90-99% off. Anything less than that, is a rip off. Happy Gaming everybody!