For quite some time, almost from the time of Playstation 2, games based on anime series were acquiring a graphic quality and playability that made the fans feel really inside the series they were emulating. This trend was improving and taking advantage of the possibilities of the new teams more and more, and of course current games tend to be wonderful experiences for every fan, with graphics that even surpass their animated counterparts and many times the inclusion of additions that make that we are practically controlling the series.
KIMETSU NO YAIBA-THE HINOKAMI CHRONICLES it is, for better or for worse, a carbon copy of the animation, down to the smallest detail.
KIMETSU NO YAIBA-THE HINOKAMI CHRONICLES is available for Playstation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC.
BROTHERS BE UNITED
The game follows the plot of the animated series perfectly, with practically no detail left out, so the story is already well known to anyone who is up to speed on it. The plot revolves around Tanjiro Kamado, a young man who is the eldest son of a family of charcoal burners living in the mountains, during the Taisho Era (1912-1926) in Japan. The boy has no father and lives with his mother and five younger brothers, and he goes out every day to sell coal to a nearby town to support his family. But one day, when he returns from doing his errands, he discovers that his entire family has been murdered, except for his sister Nezuko, who is badly injured. The person responsible for such atrocity has been a demon, and while Tanjiro tries to reach the town in search of help with his dying sister behind him, Nezuko ends up turning into a demon also due to his injuries.
While fighting for his life against his sister, the boys are intercepted by Giyuu Tomioka, a Demon Hunter, who tries to eliminate Nezuko, but changes his mind when he sees the ferocity with which Tanjiro defends her despite no longer being a human. Giyuu advises the brothers to find Urokodaki, an old master who lives in the mountains and will be able to help them with their situation.
From this moment begins the story of Tanjiro, who will begin his training to become a Demon Hunter as well, not only to locate and defeat the demon that killed his family and transformed Nezuko, but also to try to find the cure. and to be able to return his sister to her human state. Of course, during your journey you will meet many other characters, both allies to your cause and enemies, and will have dozens of epic battles full of superpowers, like any good product of the shonen genre that boasts.
LEAVING THE COMFORT ZONE
You don’t have to think much to realize that absolutely all fighting anime series end up turned (except for the odd isolated or unknown product) into, obviously, a fighting game. But KIMETSU NO YAIBA-THE HINOKAMI CHRONICLES It is much more than that. Of course, it has its fighting game component. The fighting is frantic, full of special techniques and amazing powers. All the characters have a set of basic techniques, a set of more advanced techniques and a finishing touch, which not only does a lot of damage to the opponent, but they are always very colorful and with a long and very nice animation to appreciate. Depending on which mode we are playing in, the matches can be carried out in two different ways. If it is during Story Mode, the character we control will be predetermined as well as the enemy we face, according to the point in the plot where the combat takes place. These fights usually end in a very spectacular way, with movements that require quick button presses like QTEs and with endings that emulate scenes from the anime, and not all the characters that appear here are eligible in another mode. In addition, in this mode we will have to perform some special actions in the middle of fights to counteract the enemy’s movements. For example, in the confrontation against Yahaba, the demon who shoots arrows that push us to hit the walls, we must perform techniques that make us advance to the opposite side. When we meet Kyogai, who has the ability to move the walls and ceiling of the stage, we have to quickly press a button to land on our feet and not hurt ourselves. These small details greatly increase the immersion and the resemblance to the series.
In Battle Mode, things are more straightforward and simple. We can choose any of the available characters (most of them have to be unlocked previously by playing Story Mode) and face them as we want. In addition, if we choose characters that are part of the group of “good” in the story, we can choose up to two at the same time so that they can help each other or even exchange in the middle of the battle, an option that demonic characters do not have.
As I said before, KIMETSU NO YAIBA-THE HINOKAMI CHRONICLES it is not limited to its combat component only. As the level of detail in the series is so extensive, much of the content of the original story is also playable but not in a fight format. During the missions, we can freely roam towns, huge cities, forests and mountains, while collecting collectibles, talking with other characters and gathering information about the current mission, all with an open-world gameplay. While some arenas are relatively tight and small, this playable change brings freshness and novelty to combat. In addition, at other times some scenes from the anime will be reproduced through minigames, which involve sequences of buttons with precision or speed.
With all this, it was tried that all the content is as interactive as possible and that we do not spend a lot of time in the story without having something to do.
YOU ARE SO CUTE
Within the technical department, the game is impeccable. The graphics are wonderful and they have nothing to envy those of the series, which also has superb animation. All the moments have been recreated with great love for the product, without leaving aside any moment, joke, epic or important scene. The fights are full of lights and effects, and the special moves are all spectacular to watch. Despite being made in cell-shading, no face or change of expression of the characters was left out, who look like they have an enviable “life”. Of course, always talking about the main characters, which is not the case with the NPCs. Unfortunately these have a minimal variety, limited to a handful of models that are repeated ad nauseam. And unfortunately this plays very different from the open-world aspect included in various sections of the game, where seeing the same face every 3 steps in a city full of people is not fun at all.
The sound, meanwhile, is excellently done. All the Japanese voice actors return to lend their voices for the dialogue of the game, which not only repeats lines with the chapters of the series but there is a lot of new material recorded, so it is appreciated that in that aspect they have paid so much attention. The entire soundtrack is also taken from the animated version, and although there are some other songs that are missing (such as the opening, which is really strange), we also had the wisdom to keep others, such as the superb “Kamado Tanjiro no Uta” , which made us cry so much in chapter 19 of the anime.
And to make fans even happier, the game brings many extras, such as the ability to listen to music and lines of dialogue from the characters, see images or even scenes taken directly from the animation.
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the game adapts everything animated until its release date, so not only will we be able to enjoy all the events of the first season but also the second, the Infinity Train arc, which was first released as a movie and later re-released as a 7-episode miniseries. The anime started its third season a few days ago, so it is not bad to dream of an early update with the new events and characters, right?
THE DREAM OF A FAN
It is obvious that my analysis is full of fanaticism, and yes, why deny it, I am a huge fan of KIMETSU NO YAIBA, so I forgave the game over there, or they didn’t bother me so much, some little things out there not so cool. If I have to try to be objective, I can also say that the game is too short, and while it strives to fill all the time with playable stretches almost any moment in the series perhaps it was not that important, sometimes this feels as a “forced stretch” so that the thing does not end even faster. On top of that, the sections that we play are the least careful of the title, with sometimes very small and closed environments and very repetitive NPCs, as I mentioned earlier. Also, for a (mostly) fighting game, we have few playable characters. About twenty, which seems like a decent number until we realize that a quarter of them are characters already repeated with another skin and some minimal change in some movement. In addition to the limited variety of fight scenarios, it makes us soon dominate the game and it tends to be repetitive. However, the character selection screen seems to be set up in such a way that there is room to add new combatants, which may happen in a future update at some point.
In sum, KIMETSU NO YAIBA-THE HINOKAMI CHRONICLES ends up having more good than bad. For the fans, it is a gift made with a lot of love and they will really enjoy everything that the title offers. The others, they take a more than decent game, with many good ideas in pursuit of a constant playable variety, but that does not end up closing round because of the odd annoying little detail. So more than recommended.