Genji: Days of the Blade is actually a sequel to Genji: Dawn of the Samurai originally released for the PlayStation 2 (Click Here for that review). The game was a short-but-sweet tale of honor and samurai warriors set in feudal Japan, and Days of the Blade takes place a few years after the last chapter of that PS2 original. They somehow label the game's setting as "historic", but considering that magical fighting powers and giant creatures or crabs of that sort don't really exist, I'm guessing they didn't exactly mean "historically accurate". Regardless, Game Republic has a pretty decent sense of style and it trickles over to the game's fairly interesting, if convoluted, plot.

As a launch title for a new next-gen console, Genji holds it together graphically pretty well. The game has an attractive certain look and feel to it, maybe due to the dramatic lighting and color choices, that sets it apart from your typical samurai action title. The environments range from small, enclosed underground tunnels with a handful of enemies to large fully animated battlefields with several dozen warring characters, all the while maintaining a mostly solid 30fps - even with some impressive lighting and effects being tossed around. Many of the setings also feature a considerable amount of interactivity involved as well, with a good amount of objects within the environments being destructible. In general Genji is a nice enough looking game, but it's also inconsistent. If you don't bother playing past some of the generic Japanese temple settings you would never even know how incredible the game can look, as it ramps up considerably from there. For example, the lush forest section, complete with detailed animated foliage, waterfalls and well-textured and organic rock structures is absolutely eye popping. The character models seems pretty average at first as well, but upon closer inspection, they actually feature some pretty detailed and ornate outfits. The animation, especially those of the main characters, are impressive in a similar way. To push the story along Genji uses in game cut scenes, along with some pre-rendered scenes made to look like they could be realtime; They look nice enough, and basically do their job and not much beyond that.

Like the original Genji, Days of the Blade is unique when it comes to audio. There is no real background "music" per se and instead the game relies on traditional Japanese style drumbeats with a few instrumental pieces along with ambient sound effects. The incessant pounding bass and repetitive loops can get on the nerves during certain portions of the game, but it's different and it works in this case. The voiceovers aren't absolutely horrible, nor particularly good, they are "different". A portion of the cast speaks with what sounds like British or other European accents though with great Japanese pronunciation, and something about the combo sounds weird yet interesting.

Genji is mostly your typical samurai action game when it comes to gameplay. Run, jump, hack and slash is the name of the game and the four playable characters in your control all have their typical strengths and weaknesses. Yoshitsune, the main character, is the all-around, combo crazy, ass kicking type, while Benkei, his warrior monk buddy from Genji 1, is the slow but strong guy. Lady Shizuka, the long range priestess fighter and Buson, the powerful undead warrior round out the cast. The game features "real time character and weapon switching" meaning at any time, you can swap one character/weapon for another, even in mid-combo. It sounds better on paper than in actual execution, and there are a few moments when it works how you would expect it to. There are a few segments of the game where one character in particular is needed to solve a puzzle or make forward progress, though it is a feature that goes largely unused. As a result, you'll find yourself sticking with whichever character you prefer playing as. Besides the typical fighting moves, your characters can launch into "Kamui mode" once their gauge fills up. This Kamui super move freezes time all around your character and allows you to perform powerful, rhythmic button-pressing attacks on a group of enemies for a certain period of time. Defeating certain enemies during the game yields Amahagane crystals and essence of Amahagane that can be utilized to upgrade your weapons and character stats, respectively. Besides being pretty typical of the genre, the gameplay feels on the slow side especially in the beginning when using anyone other than Yoshitsune. It is something you get accustomed to after a couple hours of play time, so it doesn't really become as much of an issue as I expected it to.

One of Genji's major issues lies in the game's level design and flow. There are too many times when the game offers little to no hints on how to solve certain puzzles or what to do proceed, so you end up wasting time revisiting areas and running around like a fool until you stumble across the not-so-obvious solution. The game is very much action-based, so these annoying bits really kill the excitement. Secondly, the non-controllable camera system is a problem a lot of the time. Game Republic decided that a low to the ground, sometimes-skewed point of view was more cinematic, and they were probably right, but it does not work well for an action game like Genji. Often you'll be attacked by enemies you cannot see or miss critical jumps thanks to the weird perspective. The last major gripe with Days of the Blade is related to the archaic save system. If I spend 15 minutes fighting through a difficult battle only to be blindsided by a group of enemies the camera won't let me see, at least have the decency to offer some type of checkpoint system. Instead you have to reload your last saved game, possibly endure or skip a cut scene or two, and then fight it out again and hope the same doesn't happen again. Some of the large-scale battles are tough and it's definitely an aggravating waste of time when it happens once, let alone twice or more. For a slash-em-up action/adventure game Genji is a little longer than average (~10 hours) - no thanks to unforgiving camera, and the lack of checkpoints or save system, of course. Afterwards, there is pretty much nothing left to do than to play the game on a higher difficulty level.

As a PlayStation 3 launch title, Genji: Days of the Blade fills a much needed non-FPS action game void. It has some really nice HD visuals and a keen sense of style, but some fairly typical current-gen gameplay and game design annoyances to go along with them. It's overall a very average launch game that has its moments, and for $59.99, I'd expect most gamers may want a little more for their money.