History VideoGame / MuramasaTheDemonBlade

* {{Gonk}}: The Monk enemies have vertically long jaws.

* AmbidextrousSprite: Tries to justify it for characters in cutscenes by giving them turning animations in which they swap whatever they're holding to their other hand. Out of cutscenes, though, everyone does this, with the major exception being Arashimaru, whose DistinguishingMark changes shoulders when he turns around while shirtless in the hot springs.

** [[spoiler:Another possibility was Amaterasu, who was the one who sealed the gate to Heaven in Ise after Jinkuro beat Raijin. You'd expect the Sun Goddess to take matters in her own hands when Jinkuro tries to enter Heaven again, but unfortunately you do not get to battle her.]]

* PensieveFlashback: How Kisuke [[spoiler:recovers his memories. After fighting the exorcist Sayo, he sees himself in a memory of when he made a deal with Oboroya Senjyu in exchange for having a second chance at life.

** Kurozaru has a striking resemblance with Michaelangelo from ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' – Starting with the iconic orange bandanna over white eyes, a stout build, bald head, greenish body, and a yellow plate armor in his chest. The differences are that Korozaru doesn't have a turtle shell on his back. And he fights using two [[FuumaShuriken large ninja stars]] instead of nunchucks.

** Korozaru has a striking resemblance with Michaelangelo from ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' – Starting with the iconic orange bandanna over white eyes, a stout build, bald head, greenish body, and a yellow plate armor in his chest. The differences are that Korozaru doesn't have a turtle shell on his back. And he fights using two [[FuumaShuriken large ninja stars]] instead of nunchucks.

* MacGuffin: Momohime Jinkuro's story focuses on finding the whereabouts of his lost sword Kuromitsu.

* DoppelgangerAttack: Kisuke's Haze and Phantom Secret Arts and Momohime's Flash Secret Art.

* EverythingsBetterWithSpinning: The vertical spin (Cyclone, Gale, Wind, Whirldwind) and horizontal spin (Hell Spinner, Dragonfly, Swallow Saw) Secret Arts.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: No matter where your character gets flung to after a blade breaks, the lower half of the weapon will always land near your character, allowing them to quickly pick the weapon on the spot.

* EverythingsBetterWithSpinning: The vertical spin (Cyclone, Gale, Wind) and horizontal spin (Hell Spinner, Dragonfly, Swallow Saw) Secret Arts.

* RazorWind: There are Secret Arts that allow you to create a moving wind slash in front of your character, such as Crescent and Waning Moon. At higher levels, the latter can even stagger some bosses.

* SpamAttack: The Earth Hornet series of specials, consisting of rapid stabs as can be expected from the sword variety. Stronger versions of the attack can be extended by mashing attack repeatedly, which also propels them forward at impressive speeds. The final sword's special also qualifies, combining it with lots of shadow clones that shoot out pretty much every other type of projectile from other types of specials, finishing it all off with the user shooting out a huge SwordBeam.

* SwordBeam: Not quite as many types as others, mostly limited to the Cresent type specials as others generally take the form of projectiles and shockwaves.

* FlashStep: The characters can perform a blurred dash if the player double-taps (on Wii) or presses the stick (on Vita) left or right while holding the attack button. It can also be done mid-air. This mechanic also doubles as a DashAttack as the characters will slash through any enemies they come in contact with during the dash.

* ParryingBullets: Enemy projectiles can be deflected back at them with a proper timing of the attack button. Some ghost enemies can only be defeated by sending their "Flames of Rancor" projectiles back at them, and the game explicitly mentions this tactic.

* RazorWind: The Waning Moon Secret Art makes a moving wind slash in front of your character. At higher levels, it can even stagger some bosses.

* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: This happens during several scenes that require the player to speak with every NPC in the area before the story will continue. Many times the character the player controls is not the main character of the story.

* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: Momohime's fourth boss, Ippondatara. You have to fight his giant foot first (which refers to a legend regarding one of Kyoto's mansions), then his huge body. From time to time he will turn into the harmless Inosasao (a giant boar with bamboo leaves on his back).

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Momohime's second ending is this. Jinkuro and Kisuke score a MutualKill on each other in the final battle and Jinkuro uses the soul fusion art to save Momohime's life. Months later Momohime is shown living a quiet life in the country with an elderly couple, alive and healthy but stricken with IdentityAmnesia -- [[NeverForgottenSkill and possessing instinctive mastery of the Oboro style.]] [[AndTheAdventureContinues She proceeds to leave on a journey to discover who she was after rediscovering her skills.]]]]

%% * BonusBoss
* BonusDungeon: There are several dead end paths that serve this purpose. When you beat the game once with both characters, all boss dungeons are available, turning them into this. Finally, the enemy lairs are bonus dungeons, including the aptly named level 92 Enemy Lair "Total Pandemonium/Night of Absolute Chaos." You have to fight through multiple waves of almost every type of enemy in the game. This includes some of the bosses [[spoiler:as well as clones of the player characters]].
* BossInMooksClothing: Onis and horse and bull demons, with huge amounts of hit points, high [[NoSell combat resistance]] and plenty of attacks that can instantly break your sword. The green ones are even worse, as they take longer to stun than the red or blue ones.

** [[spoiler:Jinkuro and Rankai appear in Miike's first ending; Jinkuro is one of the people hired to try and take care of her when she haunts the Wakamiya clan in her rampage of DisproportionateRetribution. Being Jinkuro, he Curbstomps her with ease and winds up cutting her tails off, rendering her powerless... But not before she curses him with illness and inevitable death, which is what lead to Momohime's storyline. Rankai, WalkingTheEarth after Monohime's first ending, shows up in the scene afterwards. Kongiku also appears in the hot spring.]]

* CuteMonsterGirl: We're talking a game set in [[JidaiGeki Feudal Japan]]. [[{{Kitsune}} Kongiku and Yuzuruha]] are standouts here. Raijin ([[{{Beastess}} who resembles an oni]]) is quite attractive, but her beauty is mostly overshadowed by her brash and aggresive nature (almost to [[TheLadette Ladette]] levels, [[{{Tsundere}} go figure]]). The only times it surfaces is when she's knocked out of the sky (she lands on her rump and takes a moment to tend to her rear in a typical CuteClumsyGirl fashion; notably, her voice raises from sultrily deep and tough to innocuously cute) and briefly after the BossBattle with her when Fujin calms her down. And once you beat her, she is just adorable. More are added for ''Rebirth''; the first main character is Miike, a female [[CatGirl Nekomata]] in the form of her human master Okoi, and the second is Rajyaki, a small Oni girl. Meanwhile, Gonbe is assisted by his wife's still-attractive ghost, while Arashimaru's snake familiar is actually a shapeshifting minor deity out for his blood.

* DamageSpongeBoss: Several.

* DemonicPossession: Technically he's human, but Jinkuro's (accidental) possession of Momohime's body counts as this. [[spoiler:Averted for Kisuke; he was granted his knowledge of the style by Jinkuro's master, Senju, but the technique used is more like a spiritual FusionDance, essentially causing Senju to cease existing but imparting ALL his knowledge and abilities to Kisuke, whose personality isn't changed to any significant degree.]] There's also [[spoiler:The Shogun, who is possessed by the Inugami... Though since he DID want the sword the Inugami was sealed into in the first place, and we never see his personality before you fight him, the extent of the possession is a bit muddled...]]

* EndgamePlus:
** Once you beat a character's final boss and go through the ending, you'll be taken to before the boss fight the next time you load, but additional features and weapons will unlock depending on which ending you viewed:
*** Beating the game the first time will net the player the "The Threads of Fate" sword (for Kisuke) and "Descent Into Misery" (for Momohime), which can break the white barriers and are required to get both second endings. Both characters also unlock the ability to warp between all the shrines in the game, and can refight their bosses plus each other's bosses.
*** Beating both character's alternate final bosses will get them another sword: "Shimmering New Moon" for Kisuke and "Blade of Tortured Souls" for Momohime.
** Additionally, beating both character's stories will merge their sword collections, which is vital for getting all of the swords, as some can only be forged on a combined sword chart.
* EvenTheGirlsWantHer: Raijin makes a curious remark to Momohime about seducing her and Fujin with her "pretty looks." [[AmbiguouslyBi Given the romantic relationship between Raijin and Fujin already...]] Then there's Kongiku's infatuation with Jinkuro, who is currently inhabiting Momohime's body.

* FullBoarAction: The boss Ippon-Datara has two forms: a giant demon whose foot is larger than the player, and an enormous boar named Inosazao. Momohime's interactions with him in a hot spring after the fight indicate that the latter is his true form.

* GiantFootOfStomping: The first part of the Ippon-Datara boss fight involves you having to avoid his giant foot while attacking it and eventually riding it up into the clouds where the actual boss is.

* HyperactiveMetabolism: Eating restores health and grants you "Spirit," necessary for forging swords. Subverted in that you do need to wait in between eating anything for them to get hungry again, but it never takes you any longer than maybe 30 seconds to digest a whole bowl of noodles and be ready to keep eating (and the Mad Tummy/Rapid Digestion skills given by certain swords and accessories can further reduce that time).

** The second ending of "A Spirited Seven Nights' Haunting" ties into Kisuke's third ending, [[spoiler:with Hiroyuki/Jiraiya and Tsunadehime seeking him out to learn the Oboro Style after he returns to Japan.]]
* MergerOfSouls: The technique Senjyu uses to resurrect Kisuke.

* MultipleEndings: Three each for Kisuke and Momohime. The second ending for both characters involves [[spoiler:fighting the other character to more or less a stalemate instead of their usual final boss]], while the third [[spoiler:uses the ultimate sword's ability to "cut even fate itself" to return both characters back to the moment in time when their story would've normally begun, but with all their memories up until that point intact as well as carrying the eponymous Oboro Muramasa. For Jinkuro, this isn't a particulary good deal, since the reason he used the body possession skill to begin with was because his own body was close to dying anyway... which he does soon afterwards. However, it is heavily implied that he took over Yukinojo's body before he died to be married to Momohime. Between him acting differently, all of a sudden disagreeing with his father, and naming his "new" fighting style (which is actually just Oboro style) Izuna style, Izuna being Jinkuro's last name. In the end he fooled EVERYONE, even most gamers. Not bad for an old guy.]] DLC characters get two each.

** After failing to find the Kuromitsu Blade in Hell, Jinkuro assaults Heaven in order to obtain immortality.
** [[spoiler:Kisuke impulsively plans to cut Amitabha (the reigning Buddhist deity, basically) in his normal ending, but quickly abandons the idea as futile once he actually meets him in person.]] Likewise, Momohime's path consists mostly of Jinkuro hacking his way through the Japanese pantheon [[spoiler:until Heaven gets annoyed enough to send down one of the Thirteen Buddhas to tell him to cut that shit out.]]

* SceneryPorn: To be expected of rural Japan. Then again, this is by the same developers as ''VideoGame/OdinSphere.''

* SecretAIMoves: The attack [[spoiler:both characters rarely use on you when you fight against them in the second ending]], which is unblockable and works more or less like a melee version of the spam attack described below. Considering how few human-sized opponents with large amounts of HP the game has (and the few it does fall easily to repeated spamming of the GameBreaker special attacks described above the second you knock them down), being unable to use it isn't that much of a loss from gameplay perspective. Not that it wouldn't be nice if you could...

* {{Shoryuken}}: The Phantom and Meteor series of specials. The former is of the normal, single-hit sword variety with an increasing amount of shadow clones for higher levels of the move performing it simultaneously, up to covering pretty much the entire screen horizonally with them, while Meteor is a quickly repeated multihit variety that also creates a geyser of energy with each attack.

** The Vita trophy for getting a 999-hit combo is called "[[VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors Hours, Persons, Doors]]."

* SpinAttack: Lots of varieties. The vertical ones are by far one of the best specials in the game, as they have a large damage area, are easy to use, can be used repeatedly without breaking the sword, grant a long perioid of invincibility and one variety of them also has full horizontal control during its activation.

* UptownGirl: Torahime (high family), Kisuke (common ninja).

** There are people and boaters who will take you to other regions for a fee. Additionally, once you see a story's ending, you gain the ability to warp between shrines with that character.

* BagOfSharing: Once you beat both Kisuke and Momohime's stories on a file, their separate sword inventories will combine into a shared collection of all the blades the both of them own, regardless of when, where, or on whose story you acquired them from. For all intents and purposes, there is a branching tree interface from the Forge menu, showing you the blades obtainable through story-progression from the two characters. To elaborate further, you can use Momohime's Soul and Spirit points to craft available blades from Kisuke's branches. And once the blade is crafted, either of them will be able to equip the blade since it is already recorded in the same inventory.

* OneHundredAndEight: The total number of blades to obtain and forge.

* BagOfSharing: The game keeps track of a single inventory of all blades regardless of when, where, or on whose story have you acquired them from. For all intents and purposes, there is a branching tree interface from the Forge menu, showing you the blades obtainable through story-progression from the two characters. To elaborate further, you can use Momohime's Soul and Spirit points to craft available blades from Kisuke's branches. And once the blade is crafted, either of them will be able to equip the blade since it is already recorded in the same inventory.

* EndgamePlus: Once you beat the last boss and see an ending, you'll be taken to before the boss fight the next time you load, but additional features and weapons will unlock depending on which ending you viewed.

* FlashStep: The characters can perform a blurred dash if the player double-taps a specific direction while holding the attack button. It can also be done mid-air. This mechanic also doubles as a DashAttack as the characters will slash through any enemies they come in contact with during the dash.
* FoodPorn: The food that you can buy at any of the restaurants or cook yourself. And then eat via repeated presses of the A button. This game will make you ''hungry.''

** The bosses of both character's second endings: [[spoiler:[[DuelingPlayerCharacters each other]]. Aside from an optional hot spring interaction or two, Kisuke and Momohime don't interact with each other at all, and nothing that either of them do in their stories has any effect on anything the other character does, right until the moment where they appear in the other character's pre-boss cutscene]].

* SmokeOut: Some of the aforementioned Mook ninjas do this, although they usually use it to reappear back to their original spawning location on the screen. Those same ones also tend to carry regular bombs. Can be done by yourself to escape battles you don't feel like fighting.

* StockholmSyndrome: Momohime suffers from it big time, to the point where [[spoiler:her first ending has her become a nun for Jinkuro, despite a fair portion of the plot being his fault and him possessing Momohime because she took the hit intended for her fiance.]]
* StringyHairedGhostGirl: Kisuke and Momohime encounter the ghosts of murdered women as [=NPCs=]. Skull-headed onryo also appear as enemies and launch "Flames of Rancor" that can be deflected back at them.

* SwordBeam: Not quite as many types as others, mostly limited to the Cresent type specials as others generally take the form of projectiles and shockwave.

* {{Tsundere}}: Raijin (go figure) is a fair example, though she's a lot more "tsun" than some others listed on that page.

* {{Yandere}}: Kongiku, who on one occasion threatened to tear apart Momohime's soul if Jinkuro got too fond of her.

* ZipMode: There are people and boaters who will take you to other regions for a fee. Additionally, once you see a story's ending, you gain the ability to warp between shrines with that character.

* FlashStep: The characters can sometimes perform a blurred dash if the player moves a specific direction while attacking an enemy. It can also be done mid-air.

* ToHellAndBack: Also known as the point the enemies become dicks.