Over six years after his debut on the PSX, everyone's favorite samurai is set to make a return appearance on the PS2. Musashi Samurai Legend tells the tale of a world enthralled by a corporation's greed, and the hope of one princess to call a samurai to save them. Enter our hero Musashi, whose looks have been updated from his PSX appearance. This time the graphics in the game have a cel-shaded look dubbed "Manga shading" by Square-Enix. The graphics and character designs are colorful, and look somewhat similar in appearance to last year's cell-shaded adventure Dark Cloud 2. Game development for Musashi was headed by a creative team that includes Tetsuya Nomura, character designer of the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series.

The in-game camera has shifted from the overhead view used in the old PSX adventure to a new third-person camera complete with a targeting system to improve combat. Said combat features a double attack system, with one hand wielding a large slow sword and the other hand carrying a fast yet weaker sword. One returning feature will be Musashi's ability to pick up NPCs and enemies. From there, he can swing them or toss them as weapons. Look for things to get interesting when he needs to carry someone to safety. During these times, he can only use one hand to attack, or he can toss the carried person in the air while quickly unleashing a full attack. Players should be careful to time this carefully lest Musashi fail to catch the other character on the way back down, necessitating a restart of the sequence. Musashi will be able to acquire battle skills from enemies by holding down the targeting button (R1). Look for this to be a frequently used and integral feature of the game. Musashi can also gain powerful magic spells from certain weapons as you obtain them throughout the game. And since Musashi Samurai Legend is an Action RPG after all, he will gain levels to increase his stats after defeating a certain amount of enemies. Adding a good deal of customization to the game, the player will be able to choose which of Musashi's stats increase after a level up.

In an interesting twist, some of the music for the game was performed by the Surf Coasters, a popular surf guitar band. Also noteworthy is the fact that Gainax of anime fame will be producing the intro movie for the game. Musashi fans and those new to the series alike should look for the game when it comes out in North America on 3/15/05.

More screenshots below. Click to view.

• Check out the sword
• A nice view
• Blitz Attack
• Questions
• Combat
• The man on his throne
• Conversation