With addictive combat, intense boss battles, and an anime-like aesthetic, there’s a lot to love about Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade. Unfortunately, that’s all undercut by a frustrating lack of variety and an upgrade system that is far too grindy.
The game opens on a kick-ass anime-inspired cinematic, introducing the three playable characters, giving off a real Demon Slayer vibe. Set in mythical Japan, the isometric roguelite has a great visual style; beautiful character art, flashy attack animations, and colours that pop off the screen.
Demon Blade
Combat is the highlight of the game. It’s fast and fluid, growing increasingly challenging as the run goes on. You zip around the battlefield, dealing out light and heavy attacks, and charging up your passive abilities to unleash big damage.
The three characters each have unique weapons and combat styles. Shigure carries two katana that she can switch between, Sara wields two daggers at once, and Taketora alternates between bows. Each character has multiple weapons to unlock, which can be mixed and matched to create interesting ability synergies.
While playing as Shigure, my favourite katana to pair together were the Sakura Blossom and Crimson Autumn. Attacking with one katana would release ‘sakura bombs’ onto the battlefield, I’d then switch to my other sword and ignite the bombs, dealing extra burn damage to enemies.
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Enemy AI isn’t particularly smart in the game, but the dodge-focused, bullet-hell bosses were pretty cool — though few in number. The giant Kraken, clinging to a torii gate, was my favourite; the beast whips up torrents of water and lashes out with its tentacles, trying to drown and/or crush you to death.
The Spice of Life
Being a roguelite, I expected a level of repetition in Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade. Each ‘run’ you embark on has you battling through linear areas, temporarily upgrading your abilities and stats for that run, fighting the occasional boss, and purchasing upgrades and buffs in a safe zone. When you die, your progress is reset, you upgrade whatever you can afford to, and then try all over again.
But while games like Hades and Slay the Spire have crafted gameplay loops that are addictive and moreish, Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade simply lacks the variety to keep you hooked. The only choices you really make are which flavour of weapon to equip and which of the few abilities on offer to unlock and upgrade. The pathway you follow is almost always the same, with no divergent paths or the option to plot your own course.
It basically boils down to [room of enemies] > [room of enemies] > [Boss battle] > [Rest area]. Rinse and repeat.
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Because they’ve split the weapon types between the three characters — which require their own separate save slot to play — they’ve walled off and severely limited the variety on offer. There are no ‘bow runs’ with Shigure, or ‘Katana builds’ for Sara; you’re stuck with different varieties of the same weapon. Across the three character playthroughs, the levels, enemies, and boss fights are almost identical, just framed a little differently by their individual stories.
Legends
Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade takes a very interesting approach to its story, with a unique narrative for each of its three playable characters: Shigure, Sara, and Taketora. Interestingly, even though the locations, levels, and bosses are near identical, the stories are completely unrelated to each other.
Even the character backstories are different. In one story, Shigure is an orphan raised by a samurai, while in another, she is a princess, and that samurai is now her Grandpa.
I played through the entirety of Shigure’s story, which was surprisingly good — even though the dialogue was a bit dull — and had a few unexpected twists. However, I couldn’t get through more than a few runs with the other characters; not because their stories were bad, but because I’d already had more than my fill of the exact same maps and enemies.
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On The Grind
The most frustrating part of the game is the grindy upgrade system. Defeating enemies and bosses nets you souls to spend on acquiring and upgrading dozens of stats and passive abilities, but those souls are collected at a miserly pace. Your weapons also cost (a large amount of) the same currency to upgrade, meaning you’ll need to choose between improving your stats or your weapons, making progress feel slow.
The system wouldn’t be as irritating if there was more variety to the game’s levels and enemies, but in combination, it made for a boring and frustrating grind.
You need to create a new save for each character, so your stats (and progress) don’t carry over. I was hoping for at least some shared upgrades — especially as there were both ‘Common Talent’ and ‘Shigure’ specific upgrade pages — but instead, you’re left starting back at square one.
The grind wore me down on the game before I had even finished one characters’ story, leaving me no desire to go through it all again to experience the other storylines — despite me finding out that Sara is an absolute beast, with the best weapon and fighting style of the three.
Should you buy Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade?
Indie developer 7QUARK nail some key areas with Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade; it has a great visual style with fast and flashy combat and thrilling boss fights. But it misses the mark with its upgrade system and lacks variety across the board, resulting in a slow, frustrating grind.
Fans of roguelites will find a lot to love here, but for those new to the genre, it’s probably not the best for a first foray.
Quest Daily scores Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade:
7/10
Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade is coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on May 15th.
Quest Daily was supplied with an early review copy of Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade thanks to the publisher.
