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There are times in life when it’s hard not to form an opinion of something before you’ve seen it. For myself, an RPG I didn’t even know about was being made for an animé I’ve watched all of one episode of was one of those times. My hopes weren’t exactly high. Not surprisingly, Inuyasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask fulfilled these expectations.
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For some reason, when I started up InuYasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask for the first time, I was expecting some flashy graphics and other shiny things. However, what is actually there is closer to Dreamcast games, slightly blocky and lacking in facial detail. This stands out all the more because of the game's frequent use of hand-drawn stills of the characters--the contrast between the two images of the characters is rather off-putting.
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Fortunately, the same is not true of the music. Then again, it was hard to take much note of the music due to how distracting the voice acting was. Indeed, one of the game's selling points, it claims, is the use of voice actors from the InuYasha series. Yet, however good their television performances might be, the bulk of the voice work in InuYasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask is fairly bland, and only the titular character stood out.
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Nothing stood out about the story. Our hero, or heroine if you’re so inclined, falls into a hole that deposits them in feudal Japan. They quickly encounter Inuyasha, who introduces them to Kagome, a girl who also came from modern times. She develops an interest in the situation and
decides to help them discover why they have come, and find a way home. Now, a bland setup like this can be worthwhile if the characters or setting
are sufficiently developed. InuYasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask does seem to have both, but also seems to assume the player is already familiar with it. Since pretty much everything in terms of character quirks, villains, and the like is all mentioned in passing, it's more a reminder than a real
explanation. The story and characters here will likely only be enjoyed by those familiar with InuYasha.
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The battle system doesn’t help matters. Combat starts by showing icons for each character and enemy along a flat ring. Get to the front, take a turn. Special attacks hold you back in the ‘wait’ region, and taking or dealing damage builds Energy used for delivering particularly nasty blows. All in all, a perfectly solid system. The trouble is doing any sort of action requires using 3 or 4 menus, which is okay in itself, but in InuYasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask, each menu takes twice as long as it needs to, dragging the battles horridly. Combined with a fairly high encounter rate, it seems to take forever to accomplish anything.
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The only interesting aspect is combo attacks. At many points, the party will take a day off, allowing them to break up into groups of two, which in turn allows those two characters to build their affinity. So long as they have good affinity, characters will learn combos once they and the partner have the proper special attacks. Not really original, but the break sequences and the combo animations are generally entertaining, so it stands out against the rest of the game.
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In the end, some of the problems I see in the game probably stem from not really being the game’s target audience. If you’re an InuYasha fan, this isn’t a bad game and you may well like it. If you’re not an InuYasha fan, it’s still not a bad game, but you’ll probably be best off not picking this one up.
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