This Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade review has been tested and played on Nintendo Switch 2. Priced at $29.99 US (€29,99), it is available digitally on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
It takes some courage to take on the competition in the overly crowded roguelike genre. We seem to mention competition every time a roguelike review key ends up in our mailbox. Its not a factor to ignore though, as the genre, when done well and creatively, can add much to the video game landscape but has much more chance to land flat on its face. Let’s find out where Yasha: Legends of the Demon blade settled itself.
Long ago, the blade of Yasha was said to hold the power to bind warring clans and drive back the spirits of the dead. That age ended in betrayal, leaving the sword broken and its fragments scattered across a land now ruled by warlords and haunted by spectral remnants. As one of three swordsmen with no master, you set out to recover the pieces and restore what was lost.
Roguelike
Your means of fending off the horrors of the world revolve around one of three playable characters. Each character works best when played according to their specific fighting style, with speed and damage output being the main differences between them. All three playable characters have a unique set of weapons. Yasha, in contrary to many roguelikes, is not procedurally generated. In every run the stages, sequences and bosses are the same. Of course, between levels RNG fuels the level of competency with which you’ll be able to take on this world full of mythical ghouls. You’ll receive random power ups like additional HP and every section grants you the choice of three weapon enhancements. Once you die, these enhancements will reset. Each weapon power up you buy in the town, to which you return after a run, are permanent. Anyone familiar with roguelikes should know the drill.
Rice paper painting
While the game does manage to encapsulate the Edo era rice paper painting esthetique, it still feels a bit “been there, done that”. While the hand drawn visual style is simply gorgeous, I can’t shake the feeling that 7QUARK are trying ride the mythological Far East hype train of the moment. It is littered with tropes on all levels. The story surely is an offender as well. That said, some of the bosses are wildly original. One of the first bosses is a giant Kaiju like octopus, which aggressively slaps his tentacles around and squirts water and ink around.
For a Shao-lin like you, your meta is very clumsy!
The buffs you find by defeating sections within the world differ widely in the amount of impact they have on your run. Most of them have such a technical and ‘meta’ description that it’s hardly understandable for a non-typical roguelike player like me. Some are very basic like “10% additional damage for one of the weapons you carry”. Others are very specific for one of the special attacks your weapon has or one of its specific stats.
Maybe there is a more verbose but clearer way to describe what will happen or maybe the buffs are just too specific. While it depends on the player, I find little appeal in exploring the deeper meta. I naturally gravitate toward the most basic buffs, just to get a grip on the flow of the run.
You snooze, you loose
The combat in Yasha is fairly basic. Parries stuns enemies, bosses included, if timed well. This gives you ample time to dish out a lot of damage. There are heavy and light attacks and the weapon variety shifts some of the nuances of your attack capabilities without really turning you into either a hypothetical tank or a ranger. The top down view with twin stick combat is solid and does its best to involve you as to trigger you to aggressively approach the stages. Being too precarious will invite the enemies to close in on you, probably resulting in you taking a lot more chip damage than you need to. Then again, the game spawns enemies based on you entering spawn zones. As long as you do not run around the stage like a headless chicken you should be up for a balanced and fair challenge.
The game’s parry feels a bit underutilized, though. I never really got the impression that using parries brought me anything other than a higher change of getting hit. Yes, it’ll stun your opponent, but aggressively charging your enemies with your gigantic span of almost all your weapons, does the trick much better in my experience.
The lack of procedural element to enemy encounters adds to an unexpected element I’ve never before noticed while reviewing a roguelike; Yasha does not offer you a way to excel in a run. As with the strict sequence of enemies and no real loot drop from them, you rarely get to a really distinctive character build within a run.
Bosses
Then again, the bosses really demand you to utilize your parry skills to the best of your ability. Bosses react more strongly to stuns and give you significantly more time to deal serious damage. Trying to slay a boss without parry will take much more time and opens you up to much more damage which is completely contrary to regular enemies. The dodge move, which is also a part of your combat abilities, is largely utilized for getting around the stage quickly and not so much as an offensive skill. As I said, most of the creativity of the team went into the creation of the bosses. I haven’t researched all of them, but some have some mythological backing in Japan’s huge library of folklore characters. They have somewhat interesting attack sequences as well, that let them stand out as the distinct highlight of the game.
Taiko no-nothing special
Much like the visual style, the soundtrack leans heavily on familiar tropes. It’s a rehash of what we’ve heard countless times before. It’s quality stuff, but it lacks memorable hooks or adrenaline-pumping tracks.. I do think that the stage music could be a bit more involved and the lack there of, adds to the overall mundanity of the game.
That pivots me from that closing argument into my general thought about Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade. All elements add up to a mundane exercise in roguelikes without anything really interesting going on. It is technically completely sound and I have no gripes with the combat, certainly not in any technical fashion.
But I feel there is a bit of a ‘chicken or the egg’-thing going on here. Is it the complacent approach to the roguelike genre that is holding it back? Or is it the dissonance within the production. It looks all nice and dandy, but the lackluster story deliverance, largely done through utterly boring dialogue box sequences, is so boring that it literally cast a sleeping spell on me on more than one occasion. The rehashing of the same stages every run, that aren’t special to begin with, gets old really quick and does not hold any lasting appeal to whatsoever.
Within the purist category of roguelike players, there are certainly those who enjoy a non-procedural, grind-heavy game with methodical and steady progression. For those players, Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade might be worth a try. For more casual players, abandoning the game before the end might be the most realistic scenario.
Be sure to check out our other Nintendo Switch (2) reviews!
Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade is a technically well-made game, with a very appealing look and overall production. The lack of added value to the strict roguelite gameplay, with no procedurally generated levels or enemy encounters and no real way to excel within each run, makes Yasha a game whose initial veneer wears off extremely quickly. The mundane story delivery does not help to motivate you to power through to get any satisfaction in the end, making it a mediocre experience at best.
