Adam’s Video Game Review: Brave Fencer Musashi (1998)

Resident NWA recapper Adam Balaz dives into his video game library to review PlayStation Classic Brace Fencer Musashi!

Today, we have Adam’s first review of an older PlayStation Classic, Brave Fencer Musashi. Compared to some of the legendary games, most notably the Legend of Zelda games, Musashi is still a beloved by many and one of the rare games you can only find in the first PlayStation console. Will I think it’s the classic people say it is or will I think differently? Let’s find out! What do you think, Musashi?

Brave Fencer Musashi

• Systems: PlayStation 1
• Release Date: July 16, 1998
• Style: Action Role Playing – Single Player
• Developer: Square Enix
• Publisher: Square Enix

CONCEPT/STORY

A child by the name of Musashi is the reincarnation of the Legendary Japanese Swordsman, Musashi Miyamoto, who saved the Kingdom years ago. Musashi goes on to find the legendary sword, Lumina that can control the five major elements of Wind, Fire, Earth, Water and Heaven to stop the invading Thirstquencher Empire. After the Empire kidnaps the Princess, they find the boy has Lumina and tries to stop Musashi in every way to obtain the power of Lumina and resurrect the evil that attacked the Kingdom from years past to overthrow the Allucaneet Kingdom.

ENTERTAINMENT / PLAYABILITY

As you go through the game, you will have to free the imprisoned citizens of Allucaneet from the crystals known as Bincho Fields to get stronger on your quest. Going through each dungeon and puzzle is always fun and sometimes frustrating along with an increased level of difficulty from obtaining the five elements as you progress through the game. Each new area and dungeon has something unique to it with their puzzles like pattern matching, hitting the right amount of things or simply just powering through the area like a battering ram. The main thing that they hammer in is that the main character, Musashi, is an eight year old boy. He’s going to act a little rude, disrespectful, or flat out just insult people because… well… He’s a kid. He just was on a quest for the sword, not all of this extra junk that was dropped on his lap.

Also one other thing that you need to be ready for, if you are a fan of puns or find them humorous, this is your type of game whether you dust off the old PlayStation or find an emulator and play it on a device because this game is NOTHING BUT FOOD AND DRINK PUNS. Allucaneet (pronounced All-You-Can-Eat) Kingdom, Thirstquencher Empire, even the citizens of the Kingdom and Empire are food based like Musician Beef-Clef, Cook Mary-Nade, Colonel Capriccola (a dig on Coca-Cola), Flatski and, the best one in my opinion, Janitor Sloppy-Joe!

GRAPHICS/SOUND

Being a mid-late 90’s PlayStation game, it’s going to look a little blocky but, it’s still an amazing nostalgia feel to it. Each different area that you go to has a unique music to it, whether it’s the forest, the waterfall area or a boss fight, there is about two hours of unique music in this video game alone. It really does bring the good old adventure games that PlayStation had and makes it feel unique and special than any other game.

OVERALL

I knew this would get a good score from me personally. When I was a kid, I had random demo discs for the PlayStation and the two that I had both had Brave Fencer Musashi in them and now that I’ve finally gotten a copy of the real game, it’s everything I remembered when I was a kid with the demo discs and more. The music is what you’d expect out of SquareSoft, special to the game and never out of place. The puns got some getting used to, not going to lie but, even if you aren’t a fan of puns, this is still a great game if you enjoy adventurous types of games.