Musashi vs Cthulhu Review

Musashi vs Cthulhu puts players in the proverbial shoes of Musashi, a famous feudal warrior, fighting for his survival. The protagonist is a victim of a curse that makes him the target for unspeakable monsters so he’ll have to fight for his life or be overwhelmed.

Musashi vs Cthulhu is a 2D arcade/”action” (I use that term loosely) game that draws inspiration from rhythm based games. Unlike traditional action games, as Musashi you can’t move and dodge. You’re stuck in place and need to fight off enemies coming from both sides.

The reason I say it’s drawing inspiration from rhythm based games is that each enemy has a weak point and you need to press the proper button in a timed manner. Enemies have three weak points: up, middle and low. If enemies are coming from the left, you need to press up, left or down or if they are from the right, press Y, B or X to match the weak point.

If you press the wrong button, you’ll temporarily push enemies away to give you a chance to breath and try again, but after three hit your dead. Also, you cannot instantly try again in the sense that if you press the wrong button, you temporarily lose control of the character until after he waves away enemies, so no consecutive hits.

The game looks dark and drab. There isn’t much change in the environment; it all looks the same: majorly dark background with enemies colored with darker shade of green, red for example. Enemy design varies slightly, but nothing really unique or out of the ordinary. Soundtrack wise, it’s pretty tame. Given it’s Japanese inspired theme, the score features familiar Japanese effects, but it’s pretty much non existent.

I can’t really pinpoint a single fault here. It’s just generally boring and giving an action game a rhythm based like gameplay is like trying to fit a square shape into a round shape, if that makes sense. It’s hard to get into a proper groove without a decent and enticing soundtrack.

Unless you’re into mundane and boring gaming experience, Musashi vs Cthulhu will be right up your alley. While the idea of combining combat with rhythm based gameplay sounds like a novel idea, not having the proper soundtrack to give the game life (so to speak) is a huge miss. I can’t same a single redeeming feature for this game; there’s so many better action games, Musashi vs Cthulhu gets an A for effort but it’s an easy pass.