Do you want to know what’s satisfying? A simple concept executed to the top tier of its potential. When you sit there and look at a piece of media and go “You know what? No notes.” That is what Arashi Gaiden hits for me, gameplay-wise at least.
Arashi Gaiden describes itself as a turn-based action game, but I’d honestly compare it more to a puzzle game. You control a ninja and you get dropped into a grid. You have to cut through every enemy in that grid and then hit the exit gate. The catch? It’s got that sliding ice puzzle that you might know from Pokemon ice gyms (but I know from Kickle Cubicle, Ed). Once you start in a direction, you don’t stop till you hit a wall. Oh, and the enemies aren’t waiting around to be sliced up either. They move after you, and if you end up in a space adjacent to them at the end of the turn, they hit back.
This means that each level becomes a dance of positioning, slick kills, and quick brain work. As you kill enemies, you start a combo that ticks down in real time, encouraging you to think on your feet to get the best score at the end of the level. Levels are grouped into acts, and you can retry acts from the hub world.
The gameplay doesn’t remain stagnant either. You can unlock up to three abilities which use mana, but don’t take up turns. Suddenly you don’t just have to kill every enemy, you also have to hit timed switches (based on turns taken), or dodge explosives, you get the idea. It all boils down to the same basic concept, but it gets expanded regularly without becoming overly complicated.
Through my current playtime, I only have two major issues. One, the lighting in the first act involves sporadic flashing lights that gave me a headache, seemingly without the option to disable them in some form of accessibility setting. Two, within the first hour of gameplay it crashed out twice, forcing me to fully reset the software. Sure, checkpoints are plentiful so I didn’t lose much progress, but it’s still something that should have been ironed out before release. For information purposes, there’s a seemingly random chance on any death, especially if multiple actions are processed at a time, that you simply don’t respawn at all.
Back to the positives though. The pixel art style is gorgeous, the story is pretty well written but it doesn’t get in the way, animation is fluid. The audio is… fine. It’s not going to win awards (other than the opening theme, that frigging rocks), but it isn’t too jarring. That art though, I’m pretty sure I’ve lost score purely from stopping to appreciate how good the damn thing looks, especially in motion.
Acts are topped off with boss fights, filled with unique mechanics and truly testing your mastery of what you learnt in the proceeding levels. Whilst all the enemy design is fun, boss design is absolutely top tier, and well worth playing through the game for.
I’ll put it simply, if you play video games, try Arashi Gaiden. The price is inoffensive, the gameplay is addictive, and you’ll figure out pretty quickly if it’s for you or not. No game is for every gamer, but this comes darn close to it.
Arashi Gaiden was reviewed on Xbox Series X, but is also available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.