In a market saturated with roguelikes, it is difficult to stand out, but Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade manages to do exactly that. My 10-hour journey into Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade was filled with incredibly satisfying gameplay moments to emotional storytelling that made me wait deeply for the next cutscene. Here is my review of the Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade.
Combat is Flashy and Satisfactory to the Core
A rogue-like demands smooth gameplay to keep the player engaged enough to make it to the end. Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade has the perfect combination of hits, parry, and dash. It is up to the player to learn the skill to get better. It’s a rogue-like, and like any demanding but good game in the genre, you can expect to die a lot, and I did. And yes, finally slaying the boss after 2 to 3 hours of rough battles is a victory that can’t be encapsulated with words.
The combat offers Light and Heavy attacks, and a Dash to dodge. Simple and effective, at first, I relied on Light, Light, Heavy for the quick and effective damage. It took me a while to add the Dash into the mix, which led to Dash> Light> Light> Heavy combo. Suddenly, I found myself killing a boss in under 20 seconds. After the basic combo, we have a parry. The game offers two types of parry, one with a simple click of the button, and the other is a charged parry.
For the entire run, charged parry was more effective, as I slashed through multiple enemies in a single frame, dealing devastating damage in the next frame. The sound and the animation following a successful charged parry make it feel more visceral and satisfying. The game rewards skill; if you can successfully parry while surrounded by 6 enemies, the attack will land on all six of them. After my fourth and fifth Rounds, I put less effort into dodging enemies’ attacks and more on charged parries.
It is a sight to behold when the katana goes through almost all the enemies in the area, killing them instantly, and the game shows that the stage is over. These kinds of adrenaline boost moments are what made Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade a really great time. It will not take long to get the hang of the parry skill, the timing window is excellent, and the enemies will have a golden circle around their attack for a brief second, that’s your cue to release the charge parry.
Bosses also have powerful attacks, and some of them can be parried, so your practice fighting smaller mobs to make your parry game perfect will work against the bosses. I always used the same tactic as I used against the smaller mobs. Survival of the game relies on you learning the charged parry or the normal parry attack. The reason is that every time you parry, you gain health in return. So parrying not only deals damage but also recovers bits of your health. While it may not seem like much at first, in later fights, a single numeric health value on the HP bar will save your life, as it did mine many times.
The Consistency of the Gameplay Loop
The game offers temporary rewards for your run after beating bosses or clearing stages, and permanent rewards that empower your character at the end. Both of these systems offer complexity that requires decision-making to be successful in combat.
When you finish a stage, you will get an orb that allows you to choose between three skills for your swords. Since you are allowed to carry two different types of swords at a time. You will get a single orb after completing a stage, each orb will offer three skill choices, and it is all random. Here comes the decision-making, whether you would use the Orb skill for the secondary sword or the primary sword. Another layer of decision comes in the form of the type of skills you want to see on your sword. Multiple times, I stopped on my track to make decisions such as: Should I swap my ‘more damage on low health’ to deal ‘more heavy damage on the sword’?
My two swords were the default Nameless Sword and a Fire Sword. The last thing you want to do is to prioritize the secondary weapon over the primary weapon of your choice. So I went with the Orb skills benefiting the Nameless sword over the Fire sword. Even when I had my fire sword on the side, I could trigger its fire AOE attack while using the default Nameless sword. This made the combat a bombastic, flaming experience, and certain skills found on orbs helped the process a bit faster, where I could use my secondary sword’s power while using the primary weapon.
You will also be earning Coins and Soul Power, just like the Orb’s skills. Coins will also go away after death. After beating a boss, you enter a social hub area with a few NPCs. Here, you can spend your Coins on various merchants, another crucial decision-making. One NPC will sell you Orb’s Skills in exchange for Coin, the other will sell trinkets, cooked food for your journey. You will always have a limited amount of Coins, so you must make a decision whether to choose from food or trinket, or orb skill. In my playthrough, I chose Trinkets and Cooked Food over Orb skill purchases, and in the end I would recommend that you do the same, some of the Trinkets come with really powerful effects that make the game that much more enjoyable.
Each hub area, after bosses, also offers a secret mission that you can take to earn more rewards and trinkets, but it comes with a price. You only have one chance to finish them; if you fail, then you lose half of your health and get sent back to the hub area. Here, you then need to find the bathtub or talk to the healer to restore health before heading to the new area.
When you die, you will return to the beginning of the game, with Soul Power and Weapon Fragments. Weapon Fragments can be invested to upgrade your sword permanently or unlock new types of swords. Soul Power is used to unlock character abilities. These two currencies are designed to make you stronger after every death. You will be replaying the game a lot to grab Soul Power and Weapon Fragments, since the abilities do demand a lot of currencies, repeated runs are needed to unlock the major skills for your character.
Replayability is the name of the game here, and the system works wonderfully and creating a gameplay loop that kept me engaged with it for a long time. Every time I died, I knew the next time would be different. While defeating the final boss was always the main focus, the story of the game was the major reason I came back to the game over and over again to see what awaited me at the end.
Emotional Storytelling with Beautifully Crafted Characters
The visual novel direction of storytelling works wonderfully with the soundtrack playing in the background. The main theme of the game is quite catchy, it is the first piece of music that you hear once you arrive at the main menu. The game starts out fairly well, with a bombastic intro of a large nine-tailed fox destroying a village, which felt right at home, as it did feel like watching the first episode of Naruto all over again.
The game allows you to choose between three distinct characters: Shigure with Katana, Sara with Dual Blades, and Taketora with a Bow. I went with Shigure, who can never go wrong with the katana in a game about cutting down beasts. By the time I made it to the end of the game, the game pulled a second act like in Ghost n Goblins, where I had to go start the entire game all over again to see more of the story content.
After finishing the game for the first time, I went back and did it again to cover more plot. Unlike my first run, the second run features some emotional details that are heart-wrenching. Without navigating to spoilers, the game did a very good job of portraying a diverse range of emotions through a visual novel perspective. The character animation also helped in bringing the emotions out, with the perfect sorrowful music playing in the background.
Finishing the game for the second time, the game revealed another layer of story information, which meant going through the entire game again to learn the true ending. While the first two worked, by the third time, the fun was wearing off. Two playthroughs would’ve been enough to deliver all the content, instead of making the player go through a third time to learn everything about the character. There is a very good reason why playing the game from start to finish, for the third time, got tedious.
Missing Randomness in Roguelike
The primary reason why the game felt a bit tedious running through the third or even second time after my first completion is the missing Randomness element universal in roguelikes. The Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade offers six bosses, all of whom are interesting in their own unique way, but you will face the same six bosses in the same order in every playthrough. The game doesn’t reshuffle bosses or areas to make the second playthrough different from the first.
The second playthrough adds more enemies to the same area, but nearly nothing changes; you will be facing the same bosses in sequence and encounter the enemies all over again. While the argument can be made, your character shows up with new powers and abilities, but at the end of the day, I’m playing the same game again to see the hidden finale. So I pushed through and burned the second run after dying a few times. As I was waiting for the secret finale, the game introduced another chapter and wanted me to go through the entire game again to see the true finale.
While the storytelling of the game is immersive, I liked the direction they went with Shigura and her redemption of loss and vendetta. The third playthrough for me is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The game offers many upgrade points and wants you to run the entire game again, but having no randomness to the bosses or enemies, and stages on my third playthrough, it felt like I was just playing the game on New Game Plus.
More Difficulty More Problems
It took me a while, but I did finish the third playthrough, and the ending to Shigure won me over. Completing an arc unlocks Tier-based difficulty in the game, basically, you will make the game harder to earn more Soul Power and Weapon Fragments. The best way to farm for resources or currencies in the game. The system of farming more resources behind difficulty was a good idea, but it soon led me to breed another complaint.
Another gripe I have with the game is that the Common Talents or Soul Power are not shared between characters. So if you grind Soul Power with one character, it will not transfer to other characters, which is a shame. At this point, I have already finished the game multiple times. When I want to start the game with a new character, I want to be at my best because I will be playing the same game over again. Here, sharing the Soul Power would’ve been a great way to jump into the high-tier action on all characters without having to start from scratch.
Final Summary
What Worked
- Gripping emotional storytelling.
- Engaging deep combat skill systems.
- Upgrades to continue after death.
- Three characters, all with their distinct playstyle.
What Didn’t
- Playing thrice to see the final ending.
- No randomness in bosses, reshuffling bosses, or stages.
- Some abilities demand a steep asking price, repeated playthrough is highly required.
Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade is one of the amazing roguelikes I’ve played this year. The storytelling, character, and the combat make sure that this experience is going to stay for a long time. However, playing the same game without any reshuffle, boss, or enemies thrice to unlock the full story made repeated playthroughs a bit boring towards the end.
Final Score: 8 /10
Reviewed on: PC
The review code for Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade was provided by the publisher.
