Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade review – We have Hades at home

Games being inspired by what has come before is nothing new. A lack of originality is far from a bad thing, as long as the final result is a decent game that still stands up on its own. Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade clearly takes a lot of inspiration from a certain 2020 indie darling, and on paper that would be fine. Unfortunately, it also understands very little of why that game is so liked in the first place.

Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade takes place during the Edo period of Japan, one that’s also filled with demons. Humans and demons are unsurprisingly at odds with one another, leading to numerous conflicts across the land.

A simple setup, but things take a weird turn early on. You’re able to choose from one of three characters, each having a completely unrelated storyline. And I don’t just mean they happen in different places or times; they literally cannot take place in the same world.

Shigure’s seems to be the only one that actually connects to the game’s subtitle, with the other two characters almost coming across as an afterthought. You can’t even use all three characters in a single save file, forced to restart everything each time you want to try someone new.

As for the actual stories, they’re serviceable at best. As I mentioned before, Shigure seems to be the main focus of Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade. She’s a young warrior that finds herself making use of a nameless blade (amongst others) to find her missing master.

Taketora, a tiger demon, has an okay story too, though again it’s unrelated Shigure’s. Despite generally using the same names, characters that show up in both have different backstories and motivations — this oddly includes Shigure herself.

Outside of this strange way of handling multiple characters, the main issue with Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade’s story comes down to poor writing.

Unlike Hades, where story is interspersed both during each run and in the hub area, Yasha splits story content into chapters. You get a cutscene at the start of a chapter, sometimes before and after bosses for the first time, and at the end of a completed run. It’s very little time to get to know the main cast, especially when everyone is going to act different once you switch to another character.

Part of the hook in Hades is that, regardless of how a run goes, you’ll still get some new dialogue or info on the game’s world. In Yasha, there’s barely enough to cover three full runs per character before the story dries up entirely.

What also doesn’t help this is what seems like a poor localisation, with lots of stilted lines and direct translations. Combined with the lack of voice acting and disconnected plots, you get a story that just isn’t engaging. But it’s not just the story where Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade fails to understand how Hades keeps players engaged.

Each run in Yasha has you picking two weapons, each with its own meter or passive effect. All characters have access to light and heavy combos, a recharging dash, and a chargeable parry.

Combat is relatively fluid, with the dash offering plenty of invincibility frames to dodge attacks with. The parry also allows you to block specific attacks, following up with a powerful encounter.

Defeating bosses allows you to choose an upgrade for your weapons, with each holding up to three at a time. Each upgrade can also be stacked three times, powering up their effects. The general goal of a run is to power up the three upgrades that you want for each weapon, and you’ll usually be able to do so unless you’re incredibly unlucky.

Shops found after bosses also act as ways to purchase weapon upgrades, healing, or more general upgrades that apply regardless of the weapon type. In theory, this could have lead to build variety between runs as you stack up specific upgrade types.

The problem here is that the weapons and upgrades you choose barely change up how the game is played. They all have the same movesets at best — some actually lock light or heavy attacks entirely — with their gimmicks often amounting to little more than passive benefits.

Build variety in general is incredibly lacking. Most upgrades and items amount to little more than percentage damage increases. I also found very little reason to make use of weapon switching, instead opting to take upgrades that lets me use the second weapon’s effect on my main one.

Every run is almost identical, especially after you’ve completed the meagre story content. You fight the same bosses with the same movesets, go through the same few rooms and biomes, against a small selection of enemies. It’s just so dull, and something that changing characters doesn’t improve at all.

Speaking of changing characters, I mentioned earlier that you have to play each character on a separate save file. This also means that upgrades are not shared at all, which seems unnecessary when most of the upgrades are just generic between all three characters anyway.

In general, there’s a fundamental lack of understanding for the roguelite genre (and of course Hades specifically). The story lacks an interesting hook and is delivered in the most uninteresting way possible, while each run plays the same due to a lack of variety and build potential.

Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade Review – Final Thoughts

Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade is, at best, an incredibly average roguelite. It works, but fumbles its story, gameplay, and meta progression. Even if you prefer the Japanese setting over Greek mythology, there’s just nothing here that Hades (or even Hades 2 in Early Access) doesn’t do far better.

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Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade was reviewed on PC via Steam using a key provided by the publisher.

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