There’s not a lot of preamble to getting into what makes Musashi vs Cthulhu work or not work as a concept. After all, simple games of this nature have been in existence forever, with One Finger Death Punch probably doing it the best. Once you realize that people love to zone out and game while also doing some other activity (watching movies, listening to podcasts, attending children’s recitals), then the possibilities are endless. In the past, we’ve seen titles like Kung Fury: Street Rage emulate a similar concept but with different graphics, and you’re getting the same mechanics with this new 2D, dual-bladed, reflex action title.

Don’t even bother trying to figure out the how or the why of Musashi vs Cthulhu. You’re a samurai dude, named Musashi, and Cthulhu and his eldritch horrors are attacking feudal Japan, so you need to fend them off. You get to do it in waves, with the enemies getting gradually craftier and more difficult to dispatch, and you…never see a weapon or skill upgrade whatsoever.

It’s a curious thing, in today’s age of gaming, to see a game give you the entirety of what you need in order to win from the very beginning and then simply set you on your way. It reminded me of classic arcade titles, for even NES games would evolve in some way (Milon’s Secret Castle certainly had plenty of gear), but a machine eager to take your quarters would give you fair odds whether you’d played it one time or a hundred times: just get through to the end.

That’s the same thing here, where players have mere milliseconds to determine if they can hit the oncoming enemies either in the top, middle, or bottom of their bodies in order to sustain damage. Enemies, ranging from giant insects to reality-tearing raiders, all have different spots of weakness and might need to be hit once, twice, or more, depending. For reasons that need no real explanation, cosmic horrors beyond understanding are susceptible to Nippon steel, so stabbing is fine regardless of your belief structure. By the way, I think this is the first game with Cthulhu in the title where I don’t also have to worry about my madness or losing my sanity or whatever, so I think that speaks to Musashi’s ability to calmly recognize a threat, regardless of comprehension, and stab it accordingly.

There is one wrinkle in the Musashi vs Cthulhu presentation, and that is the saving barrier that you can build up over time. If you land enough successful blows, Musashi can taunt the enemy (a rather risky two seconds of animation) and gain the ability to fend off one blow without taking damage (but still interrupting his combo). This ability is rather nifty, but it also comes with a bit of a weird price tag.

Besides needing to taunt before it implements, you also cannot stack the protections, so you always have, at most, one in play. Subsequent barriers take longer combinations to fill up, so it doesn’t really become much of a safety net if you’re playing well. When I encountered the dimensionally challenged rift beasts, they promptly struck me dead after three successful attacks in spite of my perfect 100+ combo beforehand. Meaning all my careful precision was for naught; death still came with little fanfare.

It’s an addicting experience, I can give you that. While the ingenuity is a path well trod, the execution is still tight and satisfying. It takes only a moment to identify where the next strike is going to land, and the six-button mapping system – three on each side of the Nintendo Switch – becomes reflexive. Once you get into a groove, you can easily, nearly mindlessly, do the first few waves, gradually adjusting to multi-hit enemies, phasing enemies and enemies who bring more to the table overall. It’s perfect in an arcade sort of way, and sometimes that’s all you need.

The visuals are perfectly serviceable, though not something I’d consider stellar or spectacular. Keeping in the whole “Edo period meets dark and twisted,” everything is very black, with grimy colors of all monsters and blood. To minimize variety and keep things from getting convoluted, the sprites are similar with just a difference in blood-red strike zones to help players know where to swing. The landscape, the tonality, and even the same eerie soundtrack never truly change between runs, just more of the same. Perfect if you’re trying to trick kids out of quarters in the early 90s, but less enticing when you’ve got several Cthulhu titles already available, many of which are more involved.

Yet, once you’ve gotten the core of Musashi vs Cthulhu down pat, that’s really all there is, and trying to find more to entice additional gameplay flakes away in seconds. There are some piddly achievements that amount to nothing more than “kill this thing so many times.” There’s also “kill things so many times” and “get so many points,” which gives you nothing in terms of additional content or incentive outside of a centralized trophy room. Once again, eight years down the line, this would be a title that would, conceivably, benefit from a Nintendo achievement system to get hunters on board with an otherwise lackluster title, but no such luck. We’ll probably see something for the next Nintendo console, officially launching just shy of twenty years after Microsoft did the whole thing first. 

Musashi vs Cthulhu would do well from having something more to it – there’s apparently talk of a story mode or multiple characters – but it does okay for what it professes to be. A simple, repetitive, and ultimately points-driven game of fast fingers and split-second decisions. I feel like it’s not a bad pickup to make, but know what you’re getting, and be ready to put it down and probably forget about it the second you finish. There’s nothing wrong with that, but this is definitely one game where the excitement of monster slaying wears off in a flash of steel.

 

Graphics: 6.5 Rather standard horror sprites, the animations for some movements are good, the design is decent, and everything else just sort of ticks boxes.	Gameplay: 5.0 Push button, swing sword. Push other button, swing sword other way. If you can’t figure this out in the first two seconds, this game is absolutely not for you. On the other hand, you figure it out in two seconds and then repeat…ad infinitum.
Sound: 3.5 Some gooshy sound effects, a low-toned, droning track of Asian horror, and some mild magical whooshing when you get hit and do a pushback. Forgettable entirely.	Fun Factor: 6.0 Simple and repetitive though it may be, there’s something to be said for a fun, mindless assault with no higher motive than “kill everything and then the boss.” I’m here for it.
Final Verdict: 5.5

Musashi vs Cthulhu is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Musashi vs Cthulhu was provided by the publisher.