REVIEW: DEMON SLAYER: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles (PS4) — From The Screen To The Consoles

STORY

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles’ story mode is a retelling of the first season of the anime up until the events in Mugen Train. If you are unfamiliar with Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba, The Hinokami Chronicles is a good alternative to start if you don’t have time to finish the anime. Demon Slayer is the story of Tanjiro Kamado, a young boy whose family was slaughtered by a vampire and his sister Nezuko Kamado turned into a demon. Tanjiro had made it his life quest to find the demon responsible and transform his sister back into a human. Along the way, he meets other demon slayers and they venture into different missions to get rid of vampires and help him with his quest. The game had successfully captured the game in 8 beautiful chapters. The story mode itself looks like a visual novel with cut scenes in-between to show the significant moments in the game.  It is a linear adventure game that lets you travel in a straightforward map picking rewards such as in-game currency and additional cut scenes. Enemy encounters triggers a fight scene that transports the character into a 1v1 battle arena for both regular enemies and boss fights. Over time, this process tends to get tiresome and would eventually force you to skip the cut scenes if you have already watched the anime.

GAMEPLAY

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles offers different game modes such as the Story, Versus, Rewards, Training, Archives, and Tutorials.  In addition to what we’ve discussed in the Story, this mode also offers an interesting game mechanic called Final Clashes, a timed event that is a finishing move in any enemy encounter. In regular enemy encounters, once you’ve lowered the enemy’s health, a thread would appear on the screen and would ask you to press the triangle button to execute the enemy. The boss battle differs a bit depending on the cut scene. Sometimes it may ask you to do a simple button press or rapidly press a button to execute the characters finishing move or ultimate art. These Final Clashes are a thing of beauty as it recreates some of the iconic fight scenes from the anime. Versus mode is where you’ll spend most of the time in this game. Upon completing the Story mode, it would unlock the game’s 18 character roster. However, only 12 of these are unique characters while the remaining 6 are Academy versions or alternates. These Academy versions are humorous editions of their original counterparts with different ultimate arts. Versus mode offers both online and offline modes. I’ve tried the online mode and it is surprisingly good as compared to most online games on the PS4. Given our countries state of internet service, The Hinokami Chronicles offers a stable online connection with little to no delay. Match making is also a breeze. The only issue I have is that there are a lot of great players online. I have yet to win a match as of this writing. The game’s combat controls are simple and limited to a few buttons. There are no down, forward,  + punch button on this game. Everything is mapped into a single button or a combination of two buttons for attack, special, block, dash, parry, power ups, and ultimate art. All of which could be learned and mastered in the Training mode.  Completing the training earns you 500 in-game currency that allows you to purchase alternate costumes, maps, in-game music and unlock characters in the Rewards mode. The Archives is a collection of in-game music and cut scenes while the tutorial is the basic training for the command list of the game.

VISUALS AND PERFORMANCE

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles shines most in the visual aspect of the game. It has really captured the beauty of the anime. The cell shaded characters looks like their anime counterparts. My favorite part of this game are the Ultimate Arts. The animation is at par and even some are better than the anime. The game runs perfectly fine on the PS4. However, there is no noticeable difference when we played it on the PS5.  Good thing though is that the game is so simple that it is kind of easy to learn and fun to master kind of game. You can survive on button smashing alone but you’ll be amazed when you start executing combos. I’m not really good at fighting games (as shown by winless record) but I feel that I can go up against seasoned players online.

VERDICT

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles is not a ground breaking game. In fact, this game is in the same genre as the Naruto and Dragon Ball games.  The strength of this game is how they have faithfully captured and adapted the anime into a fighting game. It is more than a novelty but a service to the fans of the Demon Slayer franchise. It is definitely a game made for the fans and to new gamers who would like to join the hype train.  The fighting mechanics are simple to which both casual and seasoned gamers would definitely enjoy.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles is now available on Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

[This review is based on a retail copy of  the game provided by the publisher]