Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles Review

Anime fighters seem like a dime a dozen these days; does CyberConnect 2 and SEGA’s Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles stand out above the noise, or is it another anime cash-in? Check out our review and find out.

Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles Review

A 3D arena fighter from CyberConnect 2 (no stranger to the genre), this title combines fantastic visuals with precision combat system to bring the series to life. It begins with a tutorial fight that gives you the basics of combat. You play mainly as Tanjiro Kamado, a Demon Slayer in training who lost his family to a demon attack. His sister Nezuko survived the attack, but in the process became a demon herself. Upon beating your sparring partner, you are finally allowed to enter what is known as Final Selection. Naturally, this is the event that makes a person an official Demon Slayer…assuming they survive. You do the test, defeat a giant demon, and pass. You and five others survive the trial and become Demon Slayers.

From there, you get your first mission as a Slayer and go to a village to check out a rumored demon abducting women. You talk to the locals, investigate the demon’s scent, and eventually fight. The adventure mode isn’t that deep, but it works. I haven’t seen the show or read the manga, but I’ve been told it follows the anime and includes the new movie as well. It’s similar to a Dragon Ball Z game; if you want to play through the story it’s there, but don’t expect any surprises.

When it comes to fighting games, I am pretty much bottom of the barrel. I can’t stand long-winded combos or weird angles on sticks to do moves. Demon Slayer takes an easy-to-learn, hard-to-master approach to combat. Basic combos involve light attacks chaining into special attacks with only a few clicks. You can somewhat alter your move set by slightly moving the stick, but it isn’t like a half-clockwise turn or bust. Grabs, dodges, specials, and dashes all make an appearance as well. Then there is the parrying, which is the bane of everyone’s existence.

In this title, you need to cut the head off a demon to slay it. To do this easily, you need to counter at the right time; at least in its story mode. Sometimes you can kill a demon in a couple of hits with a good counterattack. The parry works online as well, but it isn’t a one-hit kill there. Much like Dark Souls, the person who parries better often wins in an online match. In other words, you can count me out.

I’m not sure how to make online fighting games work to the point that people like me don’t just get completely stuffed every fight. The online works great with hardly any lag. It takes a bit of time to get into a match, but it isn’t terrible and you can find opponents easily. The problem is I need to lose 5-10 in a row before the game finally understands I shouldn’t be fighting people who can parry at the drop of a hat. I don’t have that kind of patience, and I doubt others will either. I’ve also read others say that the rooster is a little light at the moment. I guess by other fighting games standards it is, but there are enough characters in my opinion.

Let’s cover a couple of other things before we wrap this up. First, unless I missed the option, the online fights are a minimum of three rounds. This means you need to win three to get the victory, not two out of three. You bring two fighters into battle with you, and they can be used to get you out of trouble, help increase combos, and switch at will. The adventure mode was laggy in towns and open areas, but I didn’t notice any frame drops during fights. The game also looks great, and the special moves are some of the best I’ve seen in a fighting game.

While Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles isn’t the game to get me into the genre, I can’t deny that it runs well and is mostly fun to play. Fans of the Demon Slayer anime – or fighting games in general – will be happy with this pickup.

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