As a child, Yori Takenaka witnessed an evil swordsman, Ichiro, cutting down his father and taking over the family's lands. 15 years later, Yori returns to Hitoshima to gather allies and overthrow Ichiro's tyrannical regime, but he will have to make many moral choices along the way. These choices will shape his motive for fighting Ichiro, as he can seek honor for his father, ruthlessly seek revenge at all costs, or seek a goal somewhere in-between.
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This game contains examples of:
- Big Bad: Ichiro is the main antagonist who killed Akio Takenaka in order to claim the latter's territory and rule over it with an iron fist. He also enables the Wicked Witch, Chiyo, to turn people into zombified slaves to further cement his rule.
- Boring, but Practical: Haruki starts battle in the balanced stance, but he can change to a more offensive one in exchange for weakened healing ability. For bosses, it's safer to remain in the balanced stance, since changing stances eats up a turn and therefore can make it difficult to return to the balanced stance in time to heal allies.
- Counter-Attack: Yori has the ability to counterattack a limited number of melee attacks per round. Some enemies can also counterattack against melee, making it safer to use ranged attacks against them.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Haruki has powerful skills for offense and healing, but they all consume items and he lacks a normal attack. If the player doesn't spare the first bandit group to get a discount on crystal bundles, it can be difficult to sustain the resources for Haruki's skills.
- Cycle of Revenge: Yori seeks to defeat Ichiro, and on the neutral route, he's doing it both to preserve his family honor and seek revenge for his father. In both endings of the neutral route, Ichiro's son Genji will seek revenge against whoever kills his father. In the ending where Yori deals the finishing blow, Genji kills Kenzou and goes into hiding to look for an opportunity to kill Yori. In the ending where Haruki kills Ichirou, Haruki allows Genji to kill him in order to end the cycle.
- Demonic Possession: The Tortured Soul boss will attempt to possess Yori after their boss battle. The player has the choice to accept the possession or resist. In the revenge path, if Yori loses the first round against the rest of the party, the Tortured Soul gather's Chiyo's dark energy to give Yori a Superpowered Evil Side.
- Discard and Draw: Haruki is known as a Master Swordsman, but in order to obtain Sennin powers, he has to refrain from using any physical attack whatsoever, or he'll lose his Sennin powers forever. He's forced to use his staff to kill Ichiro in the true ending when the latter tries to kill Yori.
- Draw Aggro: If Kenzou's barrier percentage is at 80% or more, he can increase enemy aggro on himself. However, this only works for single-target melee attacks.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Ichiro may be a power-hungry dictator, but in the honor ending, he's willing to commit seppuku so that the party will spare and evacuate his son, Genji.
- Frame-Up: Tsuru was once a respected ninja, but after Ichiro took over Hitoshima, he framed her and the other ninjas as thieves so that the town guards have a justification to purge them.
- Guide Dang It!: There's no way to predict the long-term consequences of choices and it's hard to tell if they will end up as honorable or dishonorable choices. This is especially true for the choice to spare the first group of bandits, where sparing them results in lower crystal prices while killing them results in immediate loot but higher crystal prices. Crystals aren't buyable until late in the game, meaning the player won't realize their mistake until it's too late.
- He Who Fights Monsters: If Yori decides to kill Ichiro out of vengeance, he does so in front of the latter's son Genji, mirroring how Ichiro killed Yori's father in front of him. He also seeks to kill Genji to complete the cycle of revenge, which is exactly what Ichiro wanted to do to Yori. If he accepts the Tortured Soul's power, releases Chiyo's dark energy, and loses to his friends, he gains a Superpowered Evil Side similar to Ichiro's.
- Heel–Face Turn: If the player chooses to spare the bandits at the training grounds, one of them, Kioshi, can later be rescued and recruited as a crystal miner. This will allow the player to buy crystals at 100 G instead of 300.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: At the desert entrance, Haruki will challenge the party up to three times, but he will always end the battle by spamming a powerful AOE. Showing patience after each loss results in the honorable choice being taken.
- Item Caddy: Haruki's skills sacrifice consumable items for greater effects than when using them normally. He can also use up crystals to deal magic damage and is the only one who can use them. He can also take stances to focus on either healing or damage, which the player needs to consider to make item usage more efficient. However, he lacks any form of offense without items, meaning he has no choice but to use the defend command if the player needs to save on items.
- Karma Meter: Yori's choices can determine the ending he gets based on the number of honorable or dishonorable choices made throughout the game, though the choices also affect skills and minor events. In the progression tab, left-side choices are considered honorable while right-side choices are considered dishonorable.
- Killed Offscreen:
- The Tsuru who helped Yori escape Hitoshima is not the same as the one who joins the party. The former trained the latter to succeed her, but got killed while protecting her apprentice.
- If the player tells the bandit leader Jun'ichi to flee to the pier and escape Hitoshima, there will be a bloodstain at the pier indicating that he was killed by Ichiro's forces.
- Legalized Evil: After taking over Hitoshima, Ichiro allows bandits to roam the Takenaka lands in order to slow down Yori in case he returns.
- Long-Range Fighter: Tsuru can equip crossbows or guns, allowing her to hit backrow enemies. However, she gets fewer ninja actions when using a gun.
- Mercy Kill: Chiyo placed a curse on Kenzo that slowly turns his body grey, starting from his left hand. Haruki reveals that this is a curse that will eventually zombify Kenzou, so Kenzou asks Yori to kill him in the future before he can fully turn. If Yori refuses, Tsuru will offer to do the deed instead.
- Mirror Boss: In the desert, the party has to face illusionary versions of themselves as a group, except for Haruki. These enemies not only have the same actions as the party, but also their passive skills like Yori's guaranteed counterattack against melee attacks.
- More Despicable Minion: While Ichiro is already a vile feudal lord, he at least cares enough about his son that he'll commit seppuku to save the latter. In contrast, his servant Chiyo has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and has a more sadistic streak, since she zombifies people as opposed to killing them.
- Multiple Endings: There are six endings according to the Steam description, though hints for acquiring them aren't given until the player sees one ending.
- If the player defeats Ichiro while having mostly honorable choices, Yori will offer Ichiro the chance to reclaim his honor by committing Seppuku while Haruki promises to take Ichiro's son Genji to the mainland.
- On the opposite side of the spectrum, if the player has mostly ruthless and dark actions, Yori will take vengeance on Ichiro without any player input. He'll go after Genji as well, causing the rest of the party to fight him. He kills everyone in the room and becomes no better than Ichiro. There are two variations to this ending, one where he kills them in the first round, and one where he wins the second round due to using the power of the Tortured Soul and Chiyo's released darkness.
- On the revenge route, if Yori loses the first round to his party and/or loses the second round despite gaining dark powers, the party will bury him. However, if he has the dark powers, his evil spirit continues haunting the Takenaka family graveyard.
- There is a common ending for losing to Ichiro himself, where Ichiro falsely promises to only kill Yori, only to kill the rest of the party too.
- If the player has equal choices for honor and revenge, but chooses to kill Ichiro, Genji tries a sneak attack on Yori, only for Kenzou to jump in the way and die instead. Genji flees and dedicates his life to taking revenge on Yori.
- If the player has equal choices for honor and revenge, but chooses to imprison Ichiro, Ichiro attempts to kill Yori, but Haruki strikes Ichiro down with his staff. Haruki loses his Sennin powers and allows Genji to kill him in order to end the cycle of revenge. This is considered the canon ending of the game.
- New Game Plus: After beating the game, the player can do another run with all their items and no random encounters, making it easier to get the other endings. Additionally, the game will make sure to increase the player's levels to an appropriate amount and make the mandatory enemies less tanky, making new runs even faster.
- Resignations Not Accepted:
- If the player spares the bandits at the training grounds, the bandit Kioshi will try to turn over a new leaf. Unfortunately, his former comrades imprison him in their camp as retribution.
- The bandits are working for Ichiro out of both greed and fear. If the player convinces the bandit leader Jun'ichi to evacuate Hitoshima, the bandit will attempt to board a ship at the pier, only to be killed on Ichiro's orders.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: One of the honor choices is to trap Chiyo in another dimension, since killing her would just cause her dark energy to spread throughout Hitoshima. However, the party acknowledges that she will likely escape her prison someday.
- Seppuku: If the player performed mostly honorable actions, Yori convinces Ichiro to commit ritualistic suicide to reclaim his honor rather than go to prison for life.
- Stone Wall: Kenzou has less physical attack than Yori, but he has high defense growth and can generate a barrier around himself.
- Video Game Time: The herb farm, potion-making furnace, thief service, and mining service all take real time to work, albeit less than what one would expect in real life. However, the more of an item the player has, the longer it takes to farm that item.
- Villainous Valor: Ichiro's castle guards show a lot of courage despite working for an Evil Overlord. The duo that guards the entrance room will destroy the stairs with their dying breath in order to prevent the party from quickly reaching Ichiro. The final named servant, Tadao, will fight the party so that Ichiro's son, Genji, can retreat to his father.
- Wolfpack Boss: The boss of the desert consists of illusionary versions of Yori, Kenzou, and Tsuru. If one of them takes fatal damage before the others, they will continue living with 1 HP, but any damage dealt to them is converted to AOE damage on the other enemies.
