Review #492: Brave Fencer Musashi

 Half a man, complete hero.

I miss the days when Squaresoft meant Quality

 Remember Square's golden years? They really knew how to create gold back in the SNES and PS1 eras, and Brave Fencer Musashi is no exception. This is an adventure game in which you play as the half-pint hero Musashi in his quest to empower his sword and save the town.

 Long-story short, Musashi is the reincarnation of the Brave Fencer Musashi, and he gets summoned to a Kingdom in order to stop the Thirstquencher Empire(You can already guess that the game doesn't take itself too seriously!) while at the same time collecting all five scrolls and unlock his sword's Lumina's true power. The story is nothing special, but it gets the job done. I wasn't a fan of the game's humor, but I think it might get some laughs from a younger crowd. Supposedly the game was criticized for its short length, but it lasted me about 9 hours, which is par for the course on the genre.

Rescued villagers must be visited inside the Castle to get their boons.

 The village below the Castle acts as your HUB, being placed at the center of pretty much everywhere you'll have to go. You can also buy supplies, save your game or interact with NPCs in here. The game experimented with 'time' mechanics, as there's a day-and-night cycle that's permanently running, and there're stores that won't open or certain days, and NPCs that have specific times of availability, heck, the bar only opens at night, for example. Musashi himself needs to rest frequently lest his overall performance decreases to a walk, although he is blessed with the ability to sleep at any time he wants, so don't be surprised if you need to sleep while inside a dungeon to restore your energy or even your HP gauge. Overall, I though Musashi getting tired was kinda lame, and giving shops holidays or closing at certain hours was kinda annoying, but I can appreciate the idea.

 Musashi is equipped with a jump and two different swords: Fusion and Lumina. Lumina can be equipped with the five different scrolls, once you find them, to gain new abilities, which are mostly used to solve puzzles, while Fusion's special ability allows Musashi to 'assimilate' an enemy and gain its power. Most powers are used to overcome obstacles, and what makes this ability little more than a gimmick is that every obstacle that requires one of these abilities has the appropriate enemy close by, so there's no much thinking involved, nor have you the need to collect a power from a certain zone to gain something in another one. In combat Lumina is slow but powerful while Fusion is fast and weak, but it's in your best interest to use both, as both level up individually and get stronger individually, and both are useful for different enemies.

The day-and-night cycle is alright, but I found it more meddlesome than anything.

 There're two main sidequests: Finding the Minku beasts, which only come out at night and extend your HP gauge and rescuing the 35 villagers, which extends your Binch gauge(It's used for special abilities, mostly). Villagers may also reward Musashi with new abilities or combo attacks, one even enhances Fusion into a Gold version of itself, so it's always a good idea to try and find every NPC. Some NPCs are mandatory to progress the story, but I never had to backtrack in order to gather them, so I'm guessing that they are hidden in plain sight so as to make it hard to actually miss them.

 Getting new scrolls or new pieces of the Legendary Armor is always very rewarding because it feels so good to gain access to new areas that you previously couldn't access. That said, a few times it can be a bit hard to figure out where to go, either because you haven't talked to the right NPC yet or because you forgot about that cave that required the fire scroll before you got it, but this being an old game... it kinda comes with the territory. There're a few mini-games here and then that break up the action, but the only one that really bothered me was the one in Steamwood.... which is the only one you must perform twice. It's a waste of time, and it's the only minigame that has you restarting from a checkpoint or your last savepoint if you lose.

Musashi is just adorable.

 What more can I say about Brave Fencer Musashi? It's a fun little adventure game that has decent combat, fun platforming, a lot to search and find and plenty of different obstacles to clear as you find new abilities. It's a game that feels fresh all the way to the end. I wasn't a fan of a few things it experimented with, but even then they weren't intrusive, but you gotta give it props for trying.
 8.0 out of 10