• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS

A Book by Its Cover

Inuyasha ~TAMASHI~ is a game made with the RPG Maker XP engine. As the name implies, the game is about the popular anime title Inuyasha. Consequently, this game took a lot of heat and criticism by people who never even tried it.

I chose to play and write about this game because around the time I was looking for a game to review, I was re-watching some of the old episodes of Inuyasha and thought it might be fun to give it a try. I wondered if all the mocking and criticism was deserved. Let’s find out.

When I started playing the game, I was impressed by the title screen. I was a pretty animated screen with pleasant music and a link to a gallery. The Gallery was a nice feature with interesting page transitions but it was hard for me to figure out what to do or how to do it since you couldn’t click on the commands or move your cursor over them. Instead, you had to guess that it was page-up/down and esc.

Next I played the intro. The intro was fast and difficult to read and follow along at first. The text format was odd at times. If I remember correctly it also had a spelling error(s) ie. I don’t think it’s supposed to be Pine Moutan (or maybe it is?)

If I remember correctly, the gameplay timer said that it was about 7 minutes into play when I gained control of my character. I’m not going to say that’s a good or bad thing since I don’t really share the sentiment that a player must have immediate control that is espoused by so many game-makers. I’ll let you, the reader decide how you feel about that bit of information.

At this point, I wasn’t really pleased with the dialogue. Again, not because I think 7 minutes is too long. But because I just didn’t enjoy what they were saying. The graphics (shots from the anime) were nice but what the people were saying took away from the experience.

Once in control, I decided to check out the menus and interface. They were nice and visually appealing. I liked the diamond-shaped graphical representation of the player’s capabilities. Unfortunately, they were untranslated.

Having checked out all of the menus, I decided to go for a little stroll. That is when I learned about the battle system. Inuyasha ~Tamashi~ has a random side-view battle system that I discovered by stumbling across two birds in the woods. In battle, I liked the menu for making your battle choices and the bar that displays turn order. Again, everything is very graphically pleasing.

Walking around, I also took noticed that the map graphics and details are nice. For example, a waterfall makes sound as you approach it. However, that enjoyment is dashed by all the walking that you have to do on the map going from place to place. This is particularly bothersome since you can’t run. You are stuck walking all over creation and as far as I know, there is no way to speed it up. Couple this with the fact that you have no idea where you are supposed to go and you really lose a lot of the fun factor.

Doors and roads have little arrows to let you know where you can go but that doesn’t mean it’s the direction that you’re supposed to go. Let me reiterate can go vs supposed to go. While you are in town, there is a lot to enjoy like the Asian tileset, interesting sprites ie. a man sitting cross –legged smoking a pipe, and amusing npc dialogue ie. the woman who commented on being robbed in the past and how I look honest and wouldn’t do that. Notice this was right after I had just looted her stash.

But when you are out in the forest you walk from intersection to intersection with no real way of knowing which direction you are supposed to go. Each one spiders off into a million different directions and you start to realize that most of the ways you go take you to either another intersection or a chest with some random junk in it. At first, I thought it was poorly made with maps named A-1, B-1, etc. However, after wandering around in the forest for a lifetime you just keep moving to the maps that have higher letters/numbers in hopes that you are getting farther from your start town and closer to your target. At one point in my wandering I wrote the following note to myself for later review writing consideration:

“Forest maze + random battles = sapping will to live”

After wandering forever I eventually came back to the start town. Facepalm. For no particular reason I click on what looks like a birdhouse only to learn (and this makes sense and is probably my own fault) that the birdhouse looking thing is actually a (Japanese style?) sign. It says go back through the maze. It says go East. Now, one would think that this would be fine and solve all my earlier aimless wandering problems but it doesn’t. There are a dozen or so intersections to the east and not all of them have an East direction. Some only have a West, South, and North option.

At this point my biggest driving force, my motivation to continue was primarily a desire to fight a demon but so far everything I encountered were random weak creatures. Then, all of a sudden…

“Shit it’s a bear …and he knows karate!” Yeah I don’t know, it’s what I scribbled in my notes reflecting what was going through my head when it happened. What can I say? It was scary after fighting all that boring stuff. Shut up.. only the lord can judge me. Anyway, I’ve never been so excited to see such a lowly monster. A karate chopping bear was a million times more exciting than the critters I had faced up that point.

35 minutes in and I was fighting monkeys that could heal and still doing too much walking. Finally, I reached my first objective and found Miroku on the mountain. The cut scene that followed reminded me how much I dislike the cut scene dialogue.

Next up was a neat little mini-game where you have to work your way up a mountain. You hop from ledge to ledge collecting little jewels. Each time you land on another ledge you are presented with a few arrows indicating which directions you press to jump. If you don’t press one quickly enough, you fall. I fell a few times but it wasn’t bad and the whole thing actually added to the gameplay enjoyment.

Once up the mountain I found a partner and made it to the next village. Finally! If this dead villager and all the talk of a snake demon was any indication, I was going to fight a demon soon! Or was I? Apparently before I did that I had to fight a million status inflicting bats during random encounters.

However, while I was moving through the cave looking for the demon another interesting feature was introduced. This time it was a scent detection system. By pressing “S” the player is able to use one sp point to sniff for the scent of the snake demon. When you do that it makes the direction of the demon glow at the edge of the screen.

Having successfully navigated my way through the scent detection area, I moved on to the next. Little did I know that this would be the game-killer for me. Let me preface the next few lines by saying that I don’t like this kind of switch puzzle. In fact, I hate this kind of feature.

If I remember correctly there were 4 levers and 9 floors. Some random combination of having levers up/down may or may not open up the passage to the left side of one of those floors. However, in order to use the switches, you have to switch party members to control your team mate.

This is how it works. You are Inuyasha. You are trapped in the mines. You have 9 floors that you can travel but there’s nothing really on them except for the status inflicting bats that you now have to fight alone since your partner is up at the switches.

To switch to your partner, some floors have a little arrow that you can click on to change. You then have to try some random order oh I don’t know up down down down, or maybe up, up, down down, or maybe up, up, up, down, or maybe up, up, up up, or maybe down, up, down, down, or maybe down, up, up, down, or maybe down, up, up, up, or maybe down, down, up, down, or maybe down, down, up, up, or maybe down, down, down, up, or maybe you know what f-it. I quit.

Maybe someone else will like this kind of puzzle but I just can’t enjoy it. I don’t want to have to get a piece of paper and write down every possible combination. Not to mention the fact that you can’t just switch each combination to see what works. You also have to switch characters every time you do it, do it, switch back to Inuyasha, AND check every single floor to see if the rock blocking each floors’ western tunnel moved.

I solved it probably 3 times (meaning I found lever combinations to open those floors’ West tunnel) and each of the ones I solved opened a tunnel to some chest with an item (that I think were 1 time use). And that’s where this game suffers. It happened in the forest maze too. You walk for miles in the wrong direction (slowly at that) while fighting random battles and then hit a dead end with an 8 dollar potion in a chest at the end of it.

If there was some sort of cheat or spoiler or even some mechanism to surrender and move on with a penalty I probably would have kept playing for a long time but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend any more time trying random combinations on the switches.

My final notes to myself for the purpose of writing this review:

alone

status ailments

unable to save

get one open leads to chest instead of exit
get one open leads to chest instead of exit

call it. time of death 1:24 hrs in.

This game was a mixed bag. There were things about it that I really liked and things that I really didn’t. In the end I don’t think that the game deserved the guff it took but it could use some gameplay improvement to address the above issues. Ideally this game should have been received without all the attitude. If people could have given tips to improve it by fixing those problem areas it might have been a lot better game. I don’t doubt that there’s a ton of fun stuff past the levers but unfortunately I don’t have the patience to find it.

3/5

Thanks for the game doranikofu!