#Dororo and Hyakimaru | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

everydaydg · 11 months ago

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45. Blood Will Tell: Tezuka Osamu's Dororo (PS2, 2004)

Well, well! what a pleasant surprise this game was.

You will see a pattern of me going into games blind and just walking out loving them... this is another one of those.

Blood Will Tell is a great character action game and a fun take on Tezuka's Dororo!

I actually have to thank this game for getting me to read the original Dororo!

While it does deviate from its source material, I believe it’s a good adaptation of the story that has a lot of satisfying twists around the latter half of it.

So! Let’s start with the story!

The story starts with 48 Fiends. The 48 fiends sensed that a new human with the power to slay them was coming, they could not harm the child no matter what they tried... but they could corrupt its makers. In order to stop it they tempted his father, Kagemitsu Daigo, a man seeking to be lord of the land. He made a deal with the 48 fiends after being tempted by voices for a long time. The fiends asked for his first son in exchange for limitless power to conquer the nation.

Daigo accepted and when his first son came, the fiends arrived and each one took one part of his body, leaving one blob of flesh.

Daigo horrified by this sent the boy down the river in a basket in order to never see it again. The boy was saved by a local doctor, Jyukai.

To his surprise, Jyukai could telepathically speak with the boy, so they could communicate despite it not having a mouth. Jyukai taught the boy a lot of things till he was 3 years old. At that age Jyukai chose to operate on the boy.

Jyukai created a wooden body for the boy. Prosthetics to give the child arms, legs, eyes, ears...

After the operation was done, the boy had a complete body for once... and he was given the name Hyakimaru

Alright sidenote, while I do get why they didn’t do this in the game (to save time and all of that), I still wonder why they didn’t spent some time explaining that Hyaki had a sixth sense type of deal where he could hear without ears, see without eyes and even eat without a mouth as the manga explained it. It makes some things like Hyaki understanding what people say... kinda stupid without the extra context. Funny story, I was genuinely confused as to how he could understand anything while being deaf and blind for the longest time in my run. It took me till I read the manga mid game to understand how that works...

So, the years went by and the boy learned how to use his new body. as the years went on more demons haunted the doctor and Hyaki.

At the age of 18 Hyakimaru got a message when praying at a temple.

48 Fiends took his body, slay the 48 fiends and reclaim what is yours.

the message also said that the fiends and used his body to create a new human.

Slay the 48 fiends of their creation to be whole once again.

When he returned home, he spoke with Jyukai about all of this and the doctor decided to let Hyaki fight.

Before he embarked on his journey, Jyukai did one final operation on Hyaki to provide him with powerful weapons.

Two swords in his arms, a machine gun in his right arm and a powerful canon in his right leg

(that’s immediately the first deviation from the manga but MAN DO I EVEN CARE IF ITS SICK AS FUCK???? DUDE JUST GOES "DIE" AND PULLS OUT A MACHINEGUN FROM HIS ARM FROM THEN ON AND IT RULES)

and from there Hyakimaru goes on to challenge the 48 fiends.

And that’s the basic gist of it! in his travels he meets a young girl called Dororo that seeks to be the greatest thief in the land. The girl travels with Hyaki for the rest of the story. The two go on to hunt the fiends

Okay... I am going to skip a whole lot from here as it’s not too relevant, it’s just Hyaki killing fiends and so on, play the game, read the manga. see how things play out ;)

I will be focusing on the latter half of the game from here on out

Big spoiler warning for the original Dororo and Blood Will Tell

Skip to the next big bolded text to go on to the gameplay and combat section of the review.

This is here for whoever wants to read about the game and still have the surprise of the twists in the story.

Alright.

Here we go

So, Blood Will Tell follows the story pretty straight up to a certain point... let’s start with Hyaki's brother.

I apologize as from here on out I will be talking about some changes out of order.

I absolutely love what Blood Will Tell does with Hyaki's brother Tahoumaru, instead of him dying in the battle at the big wall (like on the manga), he lives for quite a while and grows to be an ally after realizing what Daigo is doing is wrong!!

He dies sacrificing himself to save Dororo which happens... at the end of the story. It makes his death hit much more because we get to see his redemption, we get to spend time with him. I love that change!

and speaking of the end of the story, the manga's ending fucking sucks. Hyaki just leaves Dororo and the manga goes "and so nobody knew what the fuck happened to Hyakimaru" and it fucking sucks, he doesn’t slay the 48 fiends in the manga. It was so refreshing seeing that BWT doesn’t do this and in fact has a solution for this while still incorporating Hyaki leaving.

Ok so after this reveal Hyaki realizes that his final body part is inside Dororo. Dororo was the child born from Hyaki's parts. Hyakimaru, not wanting to kill his friend, goes on a quest to find a way to kill the fiend inside her.

You do need to get EVERY SINGULAR FIEND to get to the next part (which takes a bit honestly but does lead to some fantastic encounters)

but once you do, this leads to a time skip where Hyaki meets a grown-up Dororo years later as he finds a method to kill the fiend.

And then this goes on to one of my favorite secret final bosses EVER!!

The 48th fiend is such a satisfying reward for clearing everything.

BWT set up of 48 unlockable body parts, leads to the story actually having a satisfying end as we get to see Hyaki challenge every singular one. We get to see Hyaki grow complete and IM STILL MAD THAT THE MANGA DIDNT DO THIS- The manga is great but that ending makes me so sad...

What else what else. Daigo actually grows to be good at the end which is quite nice.

Alot of gags from the Manga don’t make it over which is understandable

Stuff like Hyaki taking off his fake eyes or even the nose bomb... I genuinely wonder why they didn’t do the nose bomb

The treasure map plot is completely gone from the main story BUT is utilized on a side mode.

I get why they didn’t include that on the main thing and they didn’t have to use it in any way but it’s nice seeing how they actually did! even if it wasn’t through Dororo having a tattoo on their back

The massacre that Dororo when cursed by the evil blade was cut (understandable)

aaand a few other things were altered.

Anyway, I’m going to stop pointing out changes now, it goes on and on. Most you need to know is that the changes are fun! Blood Will Tell its fun for people new to the story and for returning fans who are familiar with the manga

The changes give the game its own flavor over the original and its nice!

If you are looking for Dororo with a bit of spice and some fun changes. Blood Will Tell will be a great time for you!

END OF SPOILERS

Alright so what about that gameplay. You play as Hyakimaru of course, main box art boy.

Blood Will Tell chooses to go for a simple approach to its combat, instead of shooting for what DMC did, having special attacks that are triggered by holding the analog stick in a certain way and then pressing a button, BWT goes for simple two button combos.

This here is as simple as it gets.

square square triangle. square square square square triangle

Despite this sounding like a negative, BWT does a great job making the combat engaging and fun by punishing the player for mashing

You need to press the square button the right amount to use certain moves.

Every special move helps in different situations, as expected.

Its great getting at a certain point where you can easily pull off whatever move you need without hesitation or counting how many square inputs you have going on. Mastering both swords is rewarding and fun

Oh yeah, the swords! BWT has two sword stances, dual wielding and single sword, one focuses on high-speed low damaging strikes while the other focuses on slow blows that deal immense damage and it works out rather well! You constantly switch between modes to deal big damage and its great.

I would like to acknowledge that at the start, the single sword is kinda useless for a good chunk of the game because you keep getting swords that just... don’t level up which is dumb. you have to wait till a certain point in the story to get a blade that levels up when used constantly... So, for a good chunk of the game, you are just stuck with swords that grow too weak past a certain point. You do get a sword that levels up eventually (The Genbu) but it is rather late in the game.

There is a special meter in the game that charges up with a special item and by pressing triangle and square, it releases a huge attack that does a lot of damage. You can one shot a lot of bosses if you hit it right lmao

In the middle of all of this, BWT also has guns! The gun management in BWT mixes well with the general swordplay.

You have a machine gun in your arm and a canon in your leg with limited ammo (as described before). You don’t get ammo at every possible opportunity so you have to think of what situations its worth using all your ammo which adds a certain level of management to the whole gameplay loop, I liked it a lot!

It’s so much fun shredding through enemies HP with the machine gun arm (even if it is... really damm weak by endgame, that was a huge shame. I love the machineguns but they do way too little damage past a certain point)

Thats pretty much it in terms of combat. You do have a charge attack that starts a small QTE chain, the more inputs you hit correctly, the better items you will get out of it. It does help out a ton but it isn’t much, there is an AI partner that is rather useful and has infinite HP, that being Dororo.

They are a nice inclusion, they do extra damage, pick up items for you and so on. Its’s nice but not much to talk about... what is more to talk about it are the dedicated Dororo sections.

So BWT's gameplay is usually one of two things, combat with the protagonist and puzzle exploration segments with Dororo.

These segments have some of the funniest fucking combat in the game as you have this 8 year old child beating up demons with their bare hands.

It’s amazing.

That aside, they break up the combat nicely! I like the Dororo segments a whole lot.

The only section that annoyed me a bit was the one at the mountain where you keep switching characters and blegh. Just let me stick to Hyaki for a while, man.

So, the gameplay is quite good... what about the presentation.

... eh.

I’ve seen worse but I’ve seen better but it does have its highlights

The gritty artstyle can work out to make some nice looking environments

Alot of structures have a great sense of scale but a lot are rather low poly (houses come to mind).

Itssss... okay, could be worse.

Character models are just fine, not great but fine.

It’s not an ugly game but its certainly not the most impressive out there.

Where the game really shines is in the designs of the demons and fiends!

Blood Will Tell has INCREDIBLE designs for the creatures!

Def the highlight of the whole game. Some fiend designs are reused a few times for some recolored fights (which is worse for the demons as there are several recolors) sadly but mind you, that’s the minority. most have completely unique designs

I haven’t unlocked all the concept art but from what I’ve seen... GOD it’s so good.

Heres a few demons!

While the environment are not the nicest looking. the designs are sick as hell which saves it for me...

Oh yeah.

I have to talk about the elephant in the room... the voice acting and cutscene presentation...

I uhhh... listen I love this game and its story for being a fun take on Dororo before the 2019 reboot... but uhhhhh

Its straight ass man. It don’t get any better than this.

Please consider listening to the game with the JP voice acting because the ENG dub is just... bad.

I love it because it’s so garbage.

"Dunno"

At least the game does have beautiful pre rendered cutscenes, like seriously they are fantastic and its a shame I cant have two videos in one tumblr post to show one.

Anyway, in conclusion

Blood Will Tell is def worth your time! it’s one of the better character action games on the PS2 presenting a fun adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's story, sick original designs, fun combat and hilariously bad voice acting.

I had so much fun I went for the secret final boss.

8/10

#Blood Will Tell #PS2 #game review #Man I had some luck finding this game and bujingai #both have become some of my favorite character action games ever

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