When a game format or formula is explosively successful, there are bound to be a lot of copycats. We’ve seen this happen with MOBAs, Auto Chess, Dark Souls, and rougelites. Many of them maybe get close but do not really deliver, some of them get there to some level of success. 7QUARK made Yasha – Legends of the Demon Blade with some pretty clear inspirations directly lifted from Hades. Indeed, there’s quite a bit of overlap, isometric action with a limited amount of dashes, powerups and a permanent upgrade system, and even the gameplay loop clocking at around 20 minutes. But I do think their take on the system does have enough material to chew on, giving us three combat styles and several types of weapons to further customize a synergy of our liking. I do think that dismissing it as a clone of another game I think is taking it a step too far. While it does make use of another game as sort of a template, it does go the distance to build something unique out of it, and to be honest I appreciated the final result.

 

 

I’ve had my hands on this game during their demos at the Tokyo Game Show in the past year or so, and the combat I experienced through those vertical game slices was something I really wanted more of. So we finally have it here and after giving it a good 16 hours of play to have a close look at the review copy they’ve provided. I’m here to tell you what I’ve found so far, and to help you figure out if this game title is a fit for what you want in your isometric anime rougelite combat games.

 

 

Production (3.5 / 5)

 

 

Yasha presents itself as an anime action game during the times of the old, where people, demons, and gods interact and influence the realms they reside in. Blending 2D art with 3D graphics is about where you would expect it, mixing in some traditional painting style effects for good measure. I’d say the game looks good and vibrant enough to play. I wouldn’t really say that the designs are original, but they at least look unique enough from each other and are pretty telling of what styles they employ in combat.

Shigure’s elegant style suggests she takes on opponents head-on and aims to take down enemies in quick, singular strikes. Sara, seen to be a dual-wielding demon, can sweep through the battlefield with agility, and ensure chaos with rapid strikes that can hit multiple enemies. While Tora suggests he’s a much slower-moving bowman that can stand his ground and snipe at enemies from a distance. The same can be said for enemies, being able to guess what they’re supposed to be doing. Demons with swords lunge at you, others with knives shoot at you, and other demons are ones you’ll quickly figure out after a few seconds of watching them.

 

 

Yasha gets you through 3 stages mainly composed of a coast, a forest, and a castle. Each of them feels consistent with the other in terms of visual style. The general vibe that the characters, the enemies, and the stages carry makes me think of anime and games that are a match for teenagers and young adults like Disgaea, Touhou, and to a lesser degree, Vanillaware’s Muramasa.

As for how things animate and how easy it is to discern what’s going on with the screen, at least before you start taking on challenge runs. But the most important parry indicator always stands out, which is the key for you to manage mobs regardless of number.

The audio dimension of this title may get the passing mark, initially at least. Vocal tracks in the game are appreciated, and the voice lines during battle do the job. However with the many visual-novel-style cutscenes in the game. I really would’ve appreciated some voice-overs, especially at the more dramatic moments. The BGM during fights doesn’t stand out in my opinion, which is kind of a shame.

 

 

Mechanics (4 / 5)

 

 

If you’ve been exposed to these isometric action games before, then you’d know that this is mostly about attacking from safe zones or generally while dodging enemy attacks. Where Yasha has one pretty fun mechanic of parrying enemy charge attacks, which can result in big splash damage happening across the screen or around the demon you just parried. I literally invested in making builds centered around this one parry mechanic that makes ridiculous damage for the mystic art that you can use as a follow-up.

Another thing that’s a bit unique about this title is how you can carry two weapons around. Ideally to build a synergy between them. What I would typically do is have one weapon that specializes in parrying, while another is generally for doing good damage while using regular attacks. An example of this is Shigure’s Red Crane can be set up so that it builds more damage with buff stacks, and is alternated with the fire sword that’s great at burning everything nearby so long as the immolation status is active. I build attack buff stacks, and the fire sword can stack debuffs, which can also help amplify damage. So if I align things just right, I can make 10,000-15,000 damage per parry if I have the correct skills, buffs, amulets, and more enabled. For reference, you don’t normally go higher than 500 attack damage per swing.

 

 

What I was secretly hoping for was some secret final form that could be unlocked through these runs by combining the two weapons you have. It was also a bit frustrating how you can’t influence which sorts of buffs come out, and how much it would cost to get a few resets enabled.

You see, you can actually upgrade a lot of stats and abilities permanently whenever you get back to the starting point. That’s how most games like these work. Upgrading your HP, Attack, number of dashes available, and more. There’s so much to upgrade, and all their effects feel quite substantial. However, it’s unattractive to cap them out, as even mid-way the amount of resource the game demands jumps pretty sharply, and trying to farm more of this resource isn’t easy. But to be fair, you hardly need your stats to be more than decent to be able to clear non-challenge runs for Yasha.

 

 

Content (3.5 / 5)

 

 

Yasha – Legends of the Demon Blade actually has three separate characters that have their own respective stories. Some more light-hearted, some more dramatic. But all of them appear to be unrelated to each other, albeit there are characters reused in each of their respective stories. You might want to think that they’re stories at different points of time, or even timelines since some events in one character’s story simply wouldn’t align with the events of another. So I guess you should consider it an anthology.

The writing takes some swings at being humorous to gradually build up stakes to something more serious, and I think they were all right to play through. The most interesting one would be Shigure’s story, but the one I was most entertained by was Sara’s. I can also tell that the localization had taken quite some liberties with Sara’s 4th wall breaks, which I think are totally fine to have.

The other thing about these three separate characters is how they have fundamentally different gameplay. Where again, Sara’s dual wielding stood out the most since building a synergy with both weapons active at the same time was fun. This variety in character styles was much needed since the weapon archetypes presented to you through each of these characters are pretty similar, meaning I had similar setups for all three of them.

What truly needed more variety was the level design, where there were maybe 2 variants of each stage for you to go through. And the pattern was constantly “dungeon-dungeon-rest-dungeon-boss” The lack of areas to go through and farm was particularly frustrating for me, since it could get difficult to the soul orbs I wanted to have before I got to a boss.

 

 

Rest areas could provide what you’re looking for, provided you can pay for them, and the relevant shops are present. You could buy weapon upgrades, amulets, food buffs, and even take on a one-time challenge that can give you a free amulet or two. These challenges, along with the bosses, are probably the more interesting content that the game offers. And it’s a little sad that the bosses don’t really change even when you start turning on challenges. The worst part about the bosses is how the final two bosses aren’t all that fun, as they take away what was fun about the combat in the beginning.

 

 

Features (3.5 / 5)

 

 

Yasha – Legends of the Demon Blade can let you see its cutscenes whenever you like from the title, provided you’ve gotten past that point.

In rougelite tradition, once you’re finished with the canon story, you unlock challenge mode where you can make enemies tougher, or more dense, or make your defense weaker, and more. The prize you win for doing this is that you win more gold, and more importantly spirit for that run as a result. This can be accessed once you’ve finished the final boss of the game, which requires you to finish the game about three times.

The thing is I don’t see a point in doing that, if the bosses don’t get more interesting if I’m not clearing some secret quest, if I’m not building towards some new weapon, why do that? I don’t mind making upgrades that are simply stat improvements, but if that’s all that’s left, is that really interesting? I don’t think so.

Finally, there are some minor bugs within the game, sometimes it’s hard to see if you still have rerolls available for whatever you’re trying. On rare occasions, enemies still hit you even if you’re supposed to be invincible. However, I find these problems pretty minor and don’t really ruin my experience with the game.

 

 

Conclusion 

 

 

While I may not sing Yasha’s praises, it’s the sort of game that has a solid core when it comes to combat. If you manage to get me to sit in front of this game I’ll likely try to get a few runs in to see how close I can get to a build I want to make. It’s a shame that the challenge mode doesn’t really unlock anything new like boss patterns or alternate upgrades. And the grind to match that is quite the wall to climb. Maybe if the game had sidequests or other smaller short-term goals to achieve while playing through it, grinding wouldn’t feel as monotonous.

It might have been better to unify character saves under one as well, so that I wouldn’t feel like I’m starting back from zero when picking up a new character. I cleared the game’s three stories to see if they all dovetail into one big end-game but it didn’t look like that was the case.

However, there’s still a lot to like here, the character designs are appealing, and the combat and movement are snappy and satisfying. The bosses are interesting and how they can be approached in different ways is also worthy of praise. And maybe if it had a better post-game, I’d be sinking much more time into it. Still, I was satisfied with the time I got to put into Yasha. For a price of about 50 USD the Nintendo Switch and much,  much cheaper on Steam. I think it’s a worthwhile pick-up, especially if you’re looking for a roguelike fix.

 

Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade is an okay adventure – Scoring a 3.5 / 5

 

 

Available on PC, PS4/5, XBX/S, and Nintendo Switch.