Review: Murasaki Mist: Akara’s Journey – PS Vita (4.5/10)

I love Diablo and the many Diablo like games trying to capture the style and action so I was excited about Murasaki Mist: Akara’s Journey. The joy soon ended when seeing the animations and weird hit affect of sliding around the screen when a range attack hits you.

The story of Murasaki Mist: Akara’s Journey is complex and feels out of place but to sum it up quickly: one guy wants power and makes a deal with the devil and all hell breaks loose engulfing the world into a poison mist.

The gloom is there I just wish a map would be too because finding enemies became a chore at first since areas feel much bigger than they should be and while some look decent, the character models look like a low budget PS1 game but with cell shading added.

The game feels like this was built with being on PS Mobile in mind since this was shown in 2014 and went silent for awhile. I do feel like the developers tried though and wanted it out but with bad wording in the story and animation being as skippy as it is, maybe a few more months wouldn’t have been a bad thing.

Boss battles are the worst as they move so choppy and feel cheap just you hit the circle button and keep using your special and heal rinse and repeat until they die which seems to be forever. Damage output doesn’t matter because enemies have no life bar or show the damage done so you can use whatever weapon and it takes the same amount of time to kill an enemy.

Your team members use the same weapons and you can’t change them at all but it doesn’t matter because for the most time they just stand around and do nothing. The only map you have is the level map – I would say select but you can select an area to go to and just go with the story but you do revisit some in your travels.

Another issue is that the main character’s name is all in caps while everyone else looks normal which is not bad just makes it look weird. You can equip rings and weapons though most look the same but do have characteristics like bloodsuck which heals you while you attack them but it was hard to notice the others.

One boss fight I found to be the worst because they all had guns all 16 of them and I bounced around like a hackey sack which wasn’t as fun as that sounds because physics go out the window with this game.

I did find the characters’ 2-D hand drawn face a neat aspect when they talk and that was the best part. The music is out of place in most spots but some it goes great, you just have to get there. Loading takes awhile and there is a lot of it though I guess that is the good part with having big worlds.

Conclusion

Would I suggest getting this game? If you like Diablo but you only have a PS Vita to play games on. Murasaki Mist: Akara’s Journey lacks in a lot of areas though decent in a few, it will feel like a bad grind getting to see the good. If it’s baked in the oven somemore I bet it would have been a decent title but as it is, it’s just a little undercooked and missing something on the side.

The review was written and provided by Chris. All screenshots are taken from the PS Vita version.