A historical dark-spirits adventure starring an English sailor in a land of real warlords, mission maps, and loot rarity, and the blend should not work as well as it does. The genre mix is the identity: Souls-like stamina combat with three stances per weapon, layered with action-RPG systems of reforging, soul matching and set bonuses that most entries in the genre never attempt. Historical framing runs deeper than window dressing; mission narrations name real locations like Edo’s road to becoming Tokyo and figures like Nobunaga and Mitsunari, and the period detail extends into side missions. Predicting which warlord returns as a boss two regions early is a plausible trick, which says something about how legible the writing is.
The Odachi and Tonfa pairing is the combat’s high-water mark. Stance-switching between the two covers every range, guard-breaking tools shred armoured foes, and the kit carries the whole campaign from mid-game to credits. Three stances per weapon give every tool a light, medium and heavy posture, and mastering the flow between them turns encounters into dance. The sickle chain, spear, dual swords and standard sword all coexist in the arsenal, and spreading skill points across every weapon early is a mistake the respecialisation system exists to fix, and fixing it transforms the game.
Deep systems reward patience. Reforging rolls gear modifiers, soul matching fuses equipment levels, and a mid-game revelation that the mechanics had been fundamentally misunderstood is the kind of mistake this game’s opacity invites, though the systems themselves reward the study. Guardian spirits bond passive bonuses and living weapon transformations, talismans of devigorate, weakness and sloth become standard loadouts, and dojo mastery for every weapon type gives progression a structure pure Souls-likes never offer. Kodama collectibles and shortcuts make each mission map worth exploring shrine to shrine.
Enemy design favours combinations over bosses. The Raven Tengu hits like a truck, Wheel Monks punish proximity with contact damage, and gestures can appease Nurikabe and mimics, a delightful peace option few games bother with. The genuine fights come from terrible enemy pairings rather than the bosses themselves, which are mostly fair and spectacular: a giant frog, a skeletal Titan, an eight-headed serpent, and a castle-sized finale, with a returning warlord arriving exactly where the narrations hinted. The spectacle escalation from dark-spirits adventure to full-on theatre is deliberate and earns its scale.
The DLC campaigns are the balance’s black mark. Tuned for players already deep into New Game Plus, they one-shot repeatedly until grinding and farming push the level past 156, at which point they click and become genuinely enjoyable. The design itself is the problem: taking the player’s current equipment and level into account would have fixed it, and the requirement to farm a previous difficulty first is an odd gate for paid content. Duo boss fights are worse, unbalanced and unfair even as optional content, and they represent the one persistent complaint that never flips.
Small frictions recur throughout. Backstabs fail to stun, the camera struggles on large enemies, and mission-level requirements confuse more than they inform. Living weapons are easy to forget in the heat of combat, a system the UI never quite surfaces. None of these break the loop, and roughly 34 hours across the base campaign and DLC rewards the investment with dojo mastery and full exploration.
Overall, this is a demanding, occasionally unfair but thoroughly enjoyable action RPG whose stance-based combat, loot-driven build depth and historical world-building outweigh DLC balance missteps, unbalanced duo boss fights and scattered mechanical niggles. Very fun, and very much worth the study its systems demand.
