Up until this point we have had little else in our gaming cornucopia other than general side-scrolling beat-em-ups. The genre lends itself to the ninja aesthetic; ninjas don’t want to waste any time kicking ass, and side-scrolling action games are the quickest means to that end. But sometimes you simply want to slow things down a touch, maybe travel to a new town or have a nice conversation in the down time between freaking out and killing dudes. Well if that’s the case, then brace your pants for Brave Fencer Musashi.

At its core, Musashi is an action game with a heavy dose of RPG elements. You get to run around – in amazing 3D! – with your two swords (yeah, that’s right, TWO) to deal massive damage to several peoples’ weak points. The game incorporates an interesting day/night system, which makes our hero, Musashi, either more or less fatigued based on what time of day he is out smashing heads. Other than that, you are tasked with gathering scrolls and leveling up, RPG style. And you also might consider getting some of the Legendary Armor, you know, if you want to double jump or climb walls and stuff.

I don’t really have the ability to make fun of the story, so I will let you formulate your own thoughts:

A boy known as Musashi, reincarnated from the legendary Brave Fencer Musashi who saved the Allucaneet Kingdom from a monster called the Wizard of Darkness 150 years before, is summoned to the Allucaneet by its Princess — named Fillet — to save it from the invading Thirstquencher Empire.

And you thought you had it bad; these people are being invaded by the Thirstquencher Empire. Gatorade missed an amazing product placement opportunity.

Currently Brave Fencer Musashi is scheduled to be played pretty much all day Friday starting at 8:00am. Simply because this game has the potential to be long, we may, in fact, use the help of a handy guide.

Plot synopses from Wikipedia.