You'll need to take a deep breath before voicing this game's title.
The Hinokami Chronicles is first and mostly, a 2-on-2 arena anime fighter, much like their previous Naruto titles. You have a basic attack button, that changes animations depending on which direction you are holding as you deal the final strikes and a super move button that has three different special attacks(Neutral, tilting the analog stick and holding down L1) that consumer energy from your energy gauge. You can also block or parry, as well as dodge with the circle button or chase an enemy down, you can even dash-cancel your attack strings to extend your combo... if time allows it. The game has this... unique mechanic in which the moment you land an attack you get a brief window of time, highlighted by a small orange gauge next to the combo counter, that shows how much time you've got left before the enemy will simply fall out of your possible combo. It certainly is a... unique idea, I'm not quite sure if I liked it to be honest.
There's a third gauge, besides your life bar and energy bar, which would be a super gauge, and you can use stocks from this gauge to either enhance your attacks for a short while, by pressing L2, or spend your stocks on your ultimate move by pressing R2. Overall, it's adequate for an anime fighter. It's not very deep, but it looks relatively stylish, although not as crazy as Naruto would eventually get. That said, the PS4 version suffers from some really awful input delay, making tilt-attacks and parries(Which require tilting the analog stick) a bit harder to perform. Considering it's an anime fighter, I don't think it's a deal breaker, but the game doesn't play as smoothly as it looks.
Besides the VS mode you get a training Mode, that features challenges for each character, and CC2's trademark Story Mode. With Naruto, CC2 took quite a lot of liberties to make fights more epic than they were in the source material, which I think was one of the series' strengths. For Kimetsu no Yaiba they went for a straight adaptation. In their defense, KnY's fights are way more stylish than the fights in Naruto. And the game faithfully adapts the entire first season of the anime plus the movie, Mugen Train, they kept a lot of details in which really surprised me. Oh! And unlike Naruto, they kept the blood in! The Story Mode has some forced-walking sections in-between fights, and some dumb 'side missions', which consist of interacting with stuff you'd have to try hard to miss. Regardless, as an adaptation of the series, it's a 9/10. I would've cut back on some of the needless wandering, but as needless as it was... I also think it added some charm to the game. I also would've liked if they tried making things even more epic, like they did with Naruto, but then again, making Naruto's fights flashier was much easier considering the source material. Kimetsu no Yaiba's fights were SO good that they might've risked making them worse.
Sadly, while it knocked the story mode out of the park.... the game's roster is pathetic. I love a good adaptation, and the game lets you play the first season and the movie, and it's quite thorough, but... it's barely got any meaty content. The game only has 18 playable characters, none of them being the demons. Sure, they are coming as free DLC... but those are extra downloads, they are not in the disc, now, are they? Of those 18 characters, 6 are glorified "Kimetsu Academy" costumes that only change the ultimate attack animation, everything else is shared with their basic counterparts. And three of those 18 characters are Tanjiros, you get Tanjiro, you get Fire Dance Tanjiro(who, at least, has a different moveset) and you get Kimetsu Academy Tanjiro. So all in all, only 12 original characters. That's pathetic. And some of the character choices? Sabito I understand. He barely showed any abilities, but he was Tanjiro's first roadblock. But why is Makomo here? Why is friggin' Murata, a joke character, here? No playable Kanao is a darn travesty. So not only is the roster 18 characters small, not only is a third of those characters made up of clones, but of the 12 'unique' characters, some of those are terrible, terrible choices.
As great a job as it did adapting the series... Once players finish it they'll spend most of their time in VS mode, but, sadly, what mattered the most in an anime fighter, a large character roster, is sorely lacking. I can only hope that just like they did with My Hero One's Justice, they'll take this base and build up on it for the next game, more than doubling this lackluster character roster. That said, it feels like this game is completely skippable until the next one comes.
5.0
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