Repeating is part of the process with regard to certain types of action Roguelike. While that’s not inherently bad, Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade commits the basic sin of not reinforcing the same thing over and over again under an interesting story told by a character who can’t wait to hear. Instead, some attempts of drama and humor miss out on more than hits, and its decent combat and interesting weapons are disappointed in the room after a room with weak monsters and weak levels of design.
The “legend” part of the title is literal, and Yasha’s story is told and retold in three campaigns with different playable protagonists. Each story remixes the roles of several key characters that are almost similar to the theatre troupe that plays multiple shows with the same small cast. The old man, Jengo, goes from the village elder to the adoptive father, for example, to the Merciful King in three stories. But this idea may be the most interesting thing about these stories. Otherwise they will be filled with some well-used ratios, like those chosen, such as soldiers who are shrouded in mystery or who are just trying to protect the honor of their patronage in the face of a certain annihilation. The problem isn’t just that they’re not super original. Reused structures can still entertain fiction. All three are stuffed with mediocre writing as much (or more) as compelling dialogue. The overwhelming moments of self-reflection and bad attempts at humor quickly exaggerate their welcome with a trio of motionless, meaningful trioes.
Yasha’s structure doesn’t help to provide the story very well. It attempts a Hades-like approach that weaves dialogue between boss fights at the end of three stages of each dungeon run, but does not generate memorable moments between the selected character and its enemies, or even good or consistent reasons to follow the path. Once you finish the run, the chapters change, there is little change in the structure, and everything goes back. While traveling the Gauntlet, the village is filled with people you think are fighting to protect, and features a considerable amount of townsfolk to talk to. All the rinsing and repetitive natures make a story that is already in the middle.
For their own reasons, each hero takes off on a journey pursuing the dastardly fox demons, spreading his dark influence and causing chaos throughout the land. These trips involve chopping up and shooting the same three locations. A beach where crabs have been invaded, a forest full of demons and angry wildlife, and a frigid castle packed with enemy soldiers. The run itself is largely static and predictable, as the stage layout, enemy breeds, and spawn patterns remain almost the same each time they pass through the dungeon. The monsters are slightly stronger and the rooms form differently when you reach the next chapter, but that’s about it.
These areas are clean, but not too dynamic. Only the last castle area has features like destructible walls and floor traps that can hinder progress outside the monster itself. This helps you to acquire muscle memory and learn the best ways to deal with challenges from run to run, but most of the battles felt trivial about standard difficulty. I was consistently challenged by the last couple boss. They have a healthy pool that is so big you can’t kill them aggressively quickly, so they don’t even have the opportunity to damage you.
Yasha is very easy, but it can still be fun, thanks to Snappy Combat and how different each of the three playable characters are from each other. All fighters can continue to live with dashes and parries (which can turn successful ones into large damage counter attacks), combining light and fierce attacks. Shigure’s sword swing balances offensive and defensive strategies that rely on these counters. This balances offensive and defensive strategies that rely on all counters about overwhelming enemies, with a patient distance strategy of creating enemy distances with naturally empowered dash attacks and patient distance strategies, and packing enemies to create powerful meri options from AFAR. It’s all pretty basic, but crunchy and crunchy. Like a good, oni flavored potato chip.
Weapon selections are abundant with around 7 options per character, two of which can travel through the dungeon. They are all quite different from each other, and you start to notice that they are swords that get stronger each time the enemy sets on fire or uses a certain type of attack, and that they don’t deviate much across the character. And because most enemies are so easy, it was less encouraged to try more interesting weapons anyway when they don’t need a lot of strategies to beat them.
The only true randomness in Yasha is in the orb buffs of the various souls that can be acquired for weapons after each room of the enemy, enhancing and changing abilities. The former is where almost all my brains have been spent and I am trying to guess how new abilities work in conjunction with what I already have. As many of these abilities work similarly between weapons like weapons for each character, we spent most of the run on all three warriors who simply focused on one particular build to defeat the frustrating power spikes of the final boss. As the proverb says: If it’s broken, don’t fix it.
Every time you run, win or lose, you can spend the money earned on some passive abilities to enhance your damage and health, and give bonuses when certain conditions are met. Whether you’d invest in these talents or choose to use those resources to upgrade your favorite weapons, I always felt strongly when I went down the rabbit hole. None of the things that really changed the way I play significantly, but they made everything I planned to work a little better than last time.
Complete the character’s storyline gives you the ability to add modifiers to future executions that become more difficult on the surface. This adds any pushback that runs much faster, giving you access to special items that allow you to upgrade your weapons further, but after the main campaign became a button, you quickly pushed it into the limits of this game and ran out of steam. It took about 21 hours with three characters, and I saw the exact same area and enemies over and over again, and couldn’t worry about traveling any more through the Devil’s Gate.
