3.5/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles.

Platform: PS5 Time Played: 22 hours Status: Completed I really enjoyed the first season of Demon Slayer, along with the movie Mugen Train when I watched them both in the spring of last year, so you can imagine my excitement when I saw the announcement and gameplay for a new Demon Slayer game in the style of most modern anime games, with absolutely stunning visuals. And now having spent the time 100% completing the game, I can say that this game is truly only worth it if you've already seen the source material, and you want to review it in a new context, which is what I did myself. Majority of my time playing the game was with its Story Mode, a recap of the series' events from the beginning until the end of the Mugen Train arc. The in-game cutscenes are for the most part absolutely stunning, and extremely accurate to the anime, when it chooses to be... There are other times where the characters will stand around speaking, and I couldn't help but want there to be a consistency when it came to the visuals. But, I really must say, when really great and memorable scenes from the show are shown, the cutscenes really do them justice. Otherwise, the story mode is a pretty condensed version of the main events, with the story starting near the end of Tanjiro's training at the start of the show, so you can delve right into the combat at the start. I immediately knew the issue that this would prevent. The rest of the story that isn't told by the game's story is told in slideshow cutscenes of stills from the anime, which definitely got irritating to watch over time. The overworld in between fights was hit or miss as well. It was fun exploring areas near the start of the story, with new wooded areas to explore and find hidden collectibles in, but near the end of the game where all you're exploring is Butterfly Mansion, it got boring and tedious very quickly. The walking speed during a majority of these segments dragged them out much longer than they needed to be as well. Chapters 6: Hashira Meeting and Chapter 7: Butteryfly Mansion, were extremely short chapters, with Chapter 6 essentially being just cutscenes, and Chapter 7 being just cutscenes with two minigames. I feel like these two definitely could've been combined into one chapter, and having more than a normal and hard version of the two minigames would've made the overall experience a bit more fulfilling. Besides that, the game has an extraordinarily similar feeling to the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series, which makes a lot of sense as both games were developed by the same team, CyberConnect2. This can be seen in the overworld gameplay, the combat, and quick time events during key fights. This can sometimes be jarring, but it's not entirely a bad thing. The overworld is definitely better than any of the overworlds from the Storm games, but for me, that isn't saying much. The combat on the other hand, I don't mind, as they have finetuned it to fit perfectly with Demon Slayer's cast of characters. The combat feels cohesive and fun to control and play, and defeating difficult bosses with the highest rank possible feels incredibly rewarding majority of the time, which was something I appreciated, difficult bosses. I can also tell that the game can be very fun to play alongside friends, although I haven't had enough experience with that yet. One minor nitpick I have when it comes to trying to complete the game, is that I wish there was a fight reset option in the pause menu for story fights. Sure there is a reset option, but only for arena fights, like in Versus Mode or the Special Missions from Story Mode. Having a reset option during story battles would've cut down on time spent tremendously, as every time you loose too much health in order to get an S Rank, you have to back out to the mission menu, and reload the fight, and skip the cutscene every time, and it gets very annoying. I don't recall the Storm games having this be an issue. Another nitpick for completion is Training Mode. In this mode, you get to to train with Demon Slayers from the game's roster of fighters, but I found this mode incredibly boring to playthrough, as it's just fight after fight with the same character ten times, each time with inconvenient conditions you have to meet before moving onto the next round. Thankfully you only have to complete ten of the twelve of these to get the achievement. All in all, Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles is a fairly decent game, with a decent story mode, and great fighting gameplay, alongside great graphics and visuals when the game decides to have them. Besides that, there isn't much else to say about the game. Not to say that if they were to add future storylines to the game as DLC that I wouldn’t play said DLC, in fact I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing the Entertainment District Arc added to the game. Akin to how more story was added to Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 as DLC, unlike the Ninja Storm games. This game also got me thinking of other animes I’d like to see in this style, for example the upcoming Fullmetal Alchemist Mobile, or a Jujutsu Kaisen game for instance, which I feel is only a matter of time, as every popular Shounen anime gets a game adaptation at some point. To get back on topic, The Hinokami Chronicles is passible, and definitely fun at times, but as I've said before, I can really only recommend it to fans of the Demon Slayer franchise.