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This game lets you interact with the cast? I'm interested!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 53 / 58
Date: September 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I must say, Bandai does have my interest. A game that lets you create your own character and meet the Inuyasha cast, building relationships with them? Sounds pretty good. The story involves the original character you can control, who you pick is male or female, winds up getting transported to the feudal era and encountering none other than everyone's favorite dog-demon. Shortly afterwards you team up with the regular cast of the show, including Kagome, Shippo, Miroku, and Sango. Having played the demo, I can confirm the game will feature the English Dub cast, such as Richard Cox, Moneca Stori, Jillian Michaels, and the rest. Inuyasha also follows you around on the game map, similar to, say, how Pikachu follows Ash in Pokemon Yellow. Although the graphics are nothing ground-breaking, they are at least okay to look at, despite the fact that the characters are in a super-deformed style similar to the older Final Fantasy games, but you must admit seeing a chibi Inuyasha running around isn't boring, to say the least. Sadly, I wasn't able to experience combat yet, but the game does seem to be satisfying on the most part. Apparently this game will also include the many aspects of the series, including the action(boss battles) romance(relationship forming... hmm....), and humor(...... if you've seen the series you'll probably have an idea), so the game looks to be at least satisfying to the Inuyasha fans, like me. I wouldn't know about the casual RPG fans yet, though. But still, being an Inuyasha fan I can must say I am looking forward a lot to this title. See you in November for a full review.

ANTICIPATION: 5/5

A solid RPG based on one of the finest anime/manga series out there

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 19 / 22
Date: July 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Inuyasha: The Secret Of The Cursed Mask (2004.) The second Inuyasha video game for a console.

One of the greatest anime/manga series in existance is Inuyasha. I used to be an anime fan but kind of abandoned it in favor of my interest in music, but Inuyasha is the series that reawakened by interest in anime. The series was created by the legendary Rumiko Takahashi, also notable for creating the Ranma 1/2 series. In Japan Inuyasha was wildly popular, and its popularity has more than caught on in the states. In 2003, a fighting game based on the series was released for the Playstation One. The following year, an RPG based on the series entitled The Secret Of The Cursed Mask arrived on the Playstation Two. Does the RPG do Takahashi's series justice, or is it just another RPG? Read on for my review of this game.

Overall, The Secret Of The Cursed Mask is a very good RPG for the Playstation Two. The game is nothing revolutionary for the role playing genre, but that's not to say it's not an excellent game in its own right. By far the best thing going for this game is that it has a storyline unique to the game. You play the role of an all-new character created by Takahashi exclusively for the game (it can be either a boy or a girl, your choice), and through an odd twist of fate, you wind up in the feudal era, where all of the action in the Inuyasha series takes place. Once you arrive there you meet up with the characters you know and love, including Inuyasha, Kagome, Shippo, Miroku, Sango, and many others. The game plays like a standard RPG, for the most part, meaning it's easy to pick up if you're not an RPG veteran. Easy-to-learn RPGs are always a good thing, since their sheer complexity often keeps be from giving them a chance. Not a problem here. There are full-motion video sequences, and in these sequences, the animation is true to the anime. In the still dialogue scenes, the dialogue is also great. The game has the same drama, humor, and overall charm as the anime/manga. To make things even better, the voice actors from the English dub version of the series do the voices in the game! If you're a fan of both traditional RPGs and of Inuyasha, you'll probably really enjoy this game. But like any game, this one has its share of problems. A major one is the graphics on the field and in battle. In these sequences, your characters are drawn in a cutesy, super-deformed style. Why didn't they do cel-shading instead, with the proper proportions? That would have been a much better move graphically, in my opinion. Another flaw is that the in-battle dialogue gets old REALLY fast. I've only had the game a few days and already I find myself wanting to mute the television during the combat sequences. The last big flaw worth mentioning is the fact that this is really nothing revolutionary in the world of RPGs. For the most part, it's a straightforward, bare bones, down-to-earth roleplaying experience. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as overdoing it with complexity and so-called innovation has as much potential to hurt a game as to help it. In the end, we're left with a solid game. Any fan of RPGs and/or Inuyasha will get a kick out of this one.

Sadly, this game and its Playstation One fighting game predecessor are now out of print in America. With Inuyasha having reach a high in popularity moreso than anything before, I am very surprised to see that these games remain out of print. Hopefully, as time progresses and the series retains its popularity. There's no excuse for these (damn good) games to be out of print!

Well, I don't think there's anything else worth saying. If you're a fan of Inuyasha and/or RPGs, The Secret Of The Cursed Mask will be a pleasant diversion from the pain and suffering that is your everyday life. If you want a roleplaying revolution, go look someplace else. But if you just want a pleasant, simplistic roleplaying experience based on one of the finest series there is, give this game a whirl. Four out of five stars. Recommended.

Inuyasha Fans Will Be Proud

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: October 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Inuyasha: Secret of the Cursed Mask is one of my most highly anticipated games! If you haven't heard already, it's an action/adventure RPG created by Bandai in which you journey with the cast of Inuyasha! As if that alone weren't enough to make a fan foam from the mouth, the game also allows you to form relationships with the characters, battle alongside them, and wander through the beautiful environments created by Rumiko Takahashi. The plot, created just for the game, maintains a nice, anime feel. A young boy or girl (whichever one you like more) falls down a wormhole and into feudal Japan. There, he/she is met by Inuyasha, a dog demon with a quick temper, who introduces him/her to the rest of the cast. Your character will meet Kagome, a cheerful schoolgirl from present day, Miroku, a (...) wise monk, Sango, a fierce demon slayer, and Shippo, a cute fox boy who isn't above the occasional trick. Inuyasha and friends agree to help him/her find his/her way home on one condition: that he/she help them find the Cursed Mask. The game is voiced by the American cast, so you can expect to enjoy the vocals of Richard Cox, Moneca Stori, Kirby Morrow, Kelly Sheridan, and Jillian Michaels. The graphics are also true anime style, bubbly and childish. Personally, I really don't see what's wrong with them (I think they're actually very cute). But hardcore RPG fans might be put off with the game for that precise quality, which is unfortunate for them. Basically, if you are a true blooded Inuyasha fan, you'll LOVE this game. If you aren't one, you might not find it completely up to par.

Is this really for PS2?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: January 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Inu Yasha has never been my absolute favorite--a mild interest, but never transcending that. However, good RPGs are hard to come by, unless you're talking about SqareSoft Games *coughFinalFantasycough*, and I was glad to find out that Inu Yasha had an RPG out. The manga was beautiful, but the anime left something to be desired, especially the despicable English dubbed version. Thus, I purchased the game.

STORY:
There are so many things wrong with this game! Firstly, the storyline is completely unoriginal. Yes, there are two "new" character "created specifically for the game by Rumiko Takahashi herself".

Too bad they're completely lacking any personality. The game developers were too uncreative to come up with a new plot using the original Inu Yasha characters, so they decided to make up new characters and simply replay the original story: Kid has traditionalistic Japanese background -- Kid accidentally travels back to Feudal Era -- Kid needs to get back to original time. Oooh. Talk about uniqueness.

DIALOGUE:
Secondly, the dialogue is laughable. Do they really expect me to quiver in fear when a loin cloth-clad demon hobbles over to me and exclaimes, "I'm gonna eat you! Blarg-har-har!". What does your character do? Threaten him with his cell phone. Wow, Takahashi's new characters are certainly lacking common sense. Later in the game, when your character is informed that Sango is a demon slayer, he/she asks: "A Demon Slayer? What's that?" Be careful you don't hurt yourself over that answer.

When main characters talk, an anime cut-out picture of them appears on the screen, and the dialouge appears underneath while the voice-over plays. The voice-overs, I feel, were horribly done. In one scene, Kagome will unleash an ear-splitting shriek of horror, however, in another scene she dully 'screams' out "Ahh." An exclamation mark isn't even included. The lines are dull, and many times, lines like "I see", "Oh", or "These enemies are all talk" (a personal favorite, since none of the monsters utter a word in battle) are over used and wasted.

Also, for the historical context of the game, the dialogue of the NPCs is completely out of place. Obviously the people of Feudal Japan did not speak the same as us. At some points, it sticks true to history; for example, one man refers to the village headman as "M'lord", but most of the people speak completely out of context. I don't know about you, but phrases like "Dude", "Bummer", and "Bring it on" don't exactly remind me of Feudal Japan. However, this might simply be a translational flaw.

GRAPHICS:
"This game can't possibly be a PS2 game," I thought while playing it. The only three-dimensional aspect of this game are the character designs--which, I might mention, other than the Inu Yasha cast, all the other people look exactly the same with different colored clothing. Even the characters aren't very detailed. Granted, they're in "chibi" form,(super-deformed, whatever you want to call it; basically a child-like redition of the original character) the character designs are too block-like and chunky.

The scenery, much to my horror, although lovely, was completely two-dimensional. Meaning, you were only able to walk on a water-color painted path. Many times, because of the horrendous lack of much-needed adjustable camera angles, it was excruciatingly frustrating to figure out where paths began and end, which doorways could be entered, and simply, WHERE THE HECK YOUR CHARACTER WAS! The screen would stay stationary as you became a wandering dot in the distance traveling down the path. If the game designers were too lazy to design the scenery, the least they could do was give you some control over what you saw with camera angling.

MUSIC:
Some pieces in the game are pleasant, if existent. The major problem with the music was that most of the time, it simply wasn't there. Traveling through long, nearly un-navigatable paths call for some pleasant background music to take your mind of the fact that this game has absolutely NO MAPS, save your simplistic "World Map".

I guarantee you will be ready to feed this game to your dog after trying to figure out where the heck you are without a field map. But back to music, the only sounds while traveling across the field is a loop of tweeting bird noises. Very engaging, yes? Battle music is obnoxious after your tenth battle, and battles are stifflingly frequent. While a few songs are engaging, the music plainly stinks because of lack of variety. Almost every village has the exact same song, and it becomes boring very quickly.

BATTLE:
Trying to seperate itself from the "random battle" system of many earlier RPGs, the game designates hazy purple clouds as "high encounter areas" where your character is more likely to enter battle. The only way to "reduce" these encounters is to walk, and walking is slower that a tranquilized slug saturated in molasses. Battles occur much too frequently, and they're turn-based, as opposed to the Zelda "hack-and-slash" battles.

The battle system quickly bored me, but what bothered me most was the unimaginative monster designs. Like our handsome little loin cloth demon in the beginning, the monsters in the game run along the lines of "Rabid Badger Monks", and such. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to take on a religious badger in battle. In all, there are probably 10 different monster types, but depending on which area you're traveling in, they all look the same but have different colors and names.

Bats, wolves, ghosts; these are not Rumiko Takahashi's creative and beautifully horrifying demons I fell in (figurative) love with. These are your typical RPG monsters, and not even very good ones at that. They're names aren't very creative either. "Death Mask" and "Rabid Wolf" don't strike much fear in my heart, but occasionally the designers decide to get fancy and throw out some unpronouncable "Japanese" sounding name, just because they can.

SOUND EFFECTS:
To put it quite simply, there are none. In fact, the designers actually wrote in the battle sound effects. "Whack", "Dong", "Boom"; you get the idea. Magic spells, or any other attacks that aren't directly offensive get a little more technical, but not much more. Your character, harnessing the powers of the "Shikigami", (another one of those wtf Japanese-sounding words)says virtually the same thing whenever summoning the power. Perhaps the most technical sound effect in the entire game is the ever-engaging twittering bird-loop. And that was sarcasm.

INTERACTIVITY:
Wow! Your own original character can interact with the Inu Yasha cast!! It's like a dream come true! Oh my god, I'm hyperventilating with joy!

Sorry, it's not exactly like that.
To be quite blunt, other than walking, battle, and choosing what character you spend your "days off" with, there is absolutely no level of interactivity in this game whatsoever. Nada. Zip. Everything you say is predetermined (and often very degrading to your character's reputation, since most of the time whatever he or she says is stupid or senseless) and there's nothing you can do about it.

The humorous thing, however, is that it almost appears that the Inu Yasha cast realizes your character's evident stupidity, and none of them really enjoy your company. My personal opinion is that they'd be overjoyed when you return to your own time, and are only "assisting" you to get you out of their hair.

OVERVIEW:
Overall, it seemed like the only purpose of this game was to get it out onto the market as quickly as possible while Inu Yasha was still popular. It's completely lacking the imagination of Takahashi's series and the beautiful music from the anime.

For future reference:

A field map would be greatly GREATLY appreciated. Not knowing where you're going and high monster encounter frequencies are not a good combination, especially when the only places where the game can be saved is on the World Map, or an occassional random "save cat". (Go figure that one out.)

Like transfering a book to a movie, when adapting a series into a game, it's wise to stick with the original storyline. Fans feel save in familiar territory, and it gives newbies a feeling of security when they talk to fans. Throwing in new major characters can be successful, but only when done well.

Keep things in one dimension. If they wanted it two-dimensional, the designers should have gone the "Paper Mario" way. Mixing 2-D and 3-D produced a confusing and unpleasant hybrid to the eye.

Music is a vital part to a video game, especially field music. Traveling through tedious fields isn't so bad if the background music is relaxing or engaging; bird-loops are simplistic and dull.

Overall, I'd avoid this game regardless of whether or not you're a fan. Fans will be appalled with the unimaginative character dialogue and flat plot line. Newbies will be baffled by character references (If you don't know who Naraku is, the Inu Yasha characters will make sure you feel plenty stupid) For gamers (RPG hardcore or not), the flaws are too apparent not to notice and are a serious handicap to the enjoyability of the game. You're best off waiting for something better to come along.

Fan Be Preped

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 16
Date: August 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Well this game has the grafics of Final Fantasy X2, The fighting system is awsome, You get to here all off the theme songs( so the music is awsome), and if you love inyuasha you will love this game

Inuyasha on the PS2!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: August 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Well my dad bought it from Japan and I got a taste of it. I LOVED IT!!! Inuyasha fans will love it! The story is: In the begining, you chose either a boy or girl who's...YOU! (doesn't effect story) The boy/girl somehow breaks a sacred seal and ends up in Feudal Japan. The person's confused and walks around, sees some villages, they think your person's a demon, you meet a demon and run. Then you meet Inuyasha! Later on you meet Kagome and Shippo and your adventure begins! This is a 1-player game. The battling doen't come for a bit but it's GREAT! It's same type of battle mode as Final Fantasy and 3D! The only reason for 4 stars is because in one place the battle mode gets annoying a tiny bit but a true Inuyasha fan won't get super annoyed and stop. (My dad did.)
~TZ (I'm NOT a 'kid'!)

InuYasha; a fan favorite, and an interesting game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: September 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I find Inuyasha: The Cursed Mask, an overall excellent game, and a much needed improvement to the InuYasha game series. Compared to the original, playstation game InuYasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale, this one provides graphics far beyond that of the original.

Story: As a young boy/girl with the surname Kururugi, ventures into the store house behind their shrine, they fall into a time rip and are transported into the Feudal Era. Immediately, they are faced with InuYasha, the half-demon dog. Soon enough you are introduced to Kagome,Shippou, and later on, Sango and Miroku. The main character accompanies the group, on their journey, encountering evils they never would have dreamed imaginable.

Gameplay: I played as the girl character, so the boy might be a bit different. Overall, it was an easy gameplay with a very likeable, and original story. Although the many battles against random demons proved a bit "tiresome" and annoying, the game itself made me forget about those petty things. The fact that you can bond with the other characters is quite interesting, and the events that take place with them are enjoyable, and very in-character. Speaking of in-character, all the cast in this game is, if you watch or read the series. They react just how you'd think they would with a new person; Kagome instantly reacting kindly, understanding the situation for the character, InuYasha; at first a bit brash, but soon becomes good friends, Shippou; acting as though he were tougher than he was, but all-in-all a great kid, Miroku; flirtatious as ever, even asking "the" question to the girl, Sango; at first a little wary, considering that the character is getting hit on by Miroku, but understands later and starts to trust her. The boss battles can be a bit hard if you don't fight many of the lesser battles and level up.

Graphics: Very nice, 8/10. The characters are all chibi though, which you may find is nice, or just kind of weird... (I love it though!)

Difficulty: 8/10. The gameplay wasn't all that difficult, but it was easy to get lost in castles, and not find certain items.

Entertainment: 10/10. I loved the entire game, considering it brought "you" into the adventure. Also a lot of the humor that you find in the series was included.

Story: 10/10 Very original, and kept in canon with the series. It seemed like one of the InuYasha movies; taking place away from the series, but still making sense.

All in all, I thought it was an excellent game, where the player, a fan of the series or new to it, can easily understand and enjoy the game.

inuyasha

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: November 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I just began playing the game but so far nothing really wow me. It could be due to me expecting too much from it in the beginning but for the most part, this game isn't really interesting (and for me, a huge fan of inuyasha, to say that mean a lot!). The plot was ok but the dialogues were too reparative (you just have to say 'i'm scare' once/twice to get the pt across, not 5x!). The fighting sceens weren't too great ethier. It's mostly just taking turns: u hit me, i hit u, u miss, i hit u and win. skills have nothing to do w/ it, just plain luck!

I'm not saying the game is all bad. The Inuyasha characters are really cute!!! ^^ soooo chibii!! *hug* If u are a really die hard Inuyasha fan then i would reconmend it but if you're just look for a good action RPG then this isn't 4 u.

ummm this game is so-so

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: November 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I just beat the game today and i have to admit i had a lot of fun but i wish the ending was better. In this game you can choose many different things much like the Final Fantasy RPG's and your choices reflect greatly on the outcome or ending. I beat the game as the Female character and got the miroku ending it wasn't as good as i expected though. When you first start the game it can be really boring but don't let that fool you it gets really exciting and the anime scenes are great.So give the game a chance though the graphics are chibi kinda of like harvest moon games there are kewl anime battle scenes that make up for it. [...]

not very far in... jury still out

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 13
Date: November 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Well, I was very excited about this game so I pre-ordered even though I didn't own a PS2 (remedied very shortly thereafter). I've only been playing a couple of days, so I'm still undecided as to if I can recommend this game to people.

Positives: interaction with established characters, nice RPG fights, cute characters, cool techniques, great anime bits.

Negatives: railroading! (I haven't been able to do or say anything other than the one choice given to me at every step, including dialog! Maybe this comes later, but I've been wondering why I have to keep pressing a button after each character speaks!) slow pace, slow plot development, extraneuos screens to move thru that have no real purpose (other than different camera angle).

Summary: Fans will love it for being Inuyasha, the characters are cute. Those who play the TCG (me!) will like the promo card. If you feel like better fighting action, pick up the PS1 IY:Feudal Fairytale. If you have the patience of a rock, play this game :)

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