• Publisher: SCEA
  • Release Date: Nov 14, 2006
User Score
5.5 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 20 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 20
  2. Negative: 7 out of 20

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  1. MarkK.
    Dec 29, 2007
    6
    Quiet dated for a PS3 game. So dated it may as wel have been on PS2. The terrible camera Still, if you get a good handle on the combat you may enjoy this 12th centuary Japanese slasher.
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  2. ErichS.
    Jan 14, 2007
    8
    I am a fairly demanding gamer and own all the major systems except a Wii (can't find one). I have to say that the reviewers got this one wrong. This is a great game, especially if you like the Devil May Cry series. The graphics are stunning (I'm not sure the 8800GTX in my PC could equal this game) and the game play is incredibly fun. Buy it -- you'll be amazed I think.
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  3. RezA.
    Jan 4, 2007
    9
    I will be honest, the camera angles may not be the best but thats one thing I like about it. Even on normal its challenging, which I like. Tthe visuals are amazing and I personally find gameplay not bad. The story and graphics already have me, so what if the camera angles aren't that great.
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  4. IanI.
    Jan 29, 2007
    6
    You REALLY need to fight hard to like this game. Its sad because under the horrible controls, camera system and mini map the combat is actualy quite fun. Slapping the analog stick to quickly dart out of the way of an incoming atack and then flipping backwards to attack an enemy behind you in mid air is extremely fun. Unfortunately...very rarely do you see a player behind you or an enemy about to strike because the camera system is in my opinion the worst I have EVER seen on any game on any platform. The game has other minor glitches and could use a quick save and mission log feature as the instructions given on screen are not always the best. How can a company poor soo much money into the graphical side of a game and then never play it to see what problems hide good game under the surface. I'm tempted to score this a 0 because of how horribly they messed up a game that was good underneath...but it seems everyone did score it low so I will say there are some enjoyable aspects here...its actually quite fun if you can take the camera system in stride. Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  5. ThomasM.
    Feb 11, 2008
    6
    I really wanted to like this game, I mean I REALLY wanted to like it, but the developers make you crawl through the dirt before you can even remotely start to like it. The Camera angle is absolutely horrible, it craps out on you in the most precious of times which are of course boss battles. Most of the time you find yourself hitting into the camera just swinging away and the only thing guiding you is your minimap/radar which is still pretty useless as it only tracks movements and attacks it seems. What I did like about Genji, is the beautiful graphics and being a launch title, extremely impressive graphics show casing the PS3, the dodge system is impressive (rotating R3 to perform dodges). Long story short, your not missing much if you choose to avoid this title, other than crabs. Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  6. ChocoboSandwich
    Sep 18, 2009
    3
    For a launch PS3 game, this game is absolutely atrocious on many levels. For one, all those people lauding about the visuals, there are many PS2 games that beat this game to a pulp (Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII, God of War, Resident Evil 4, Shadow of the Colossus). There is absolutely nothing HD about the graphics. The textures are blurry as well as the character models, maybe due to them trying to give it a "dream-like" feel, or to hide how low-res their textures are. On one occasion I got frustrated trying to find a place to a put a certain object to activate something, when it turns out that blurry thing on the side of a platform (with 3 other identical ones around it) was where I was suppose to put it in, and it was basically a flat ugly texture. Unlike later PS3 games, this being a launch title, many of the games cutscenes are not fully rendered on the PS3 but instead are pre-rendered video with jarring visual differences between in-game and cutscene graphics. This was the norm last gen, but even basing the cutscenes off the pre-rendered videos, older games like Dynasty Warriors and Onimusha are much better looking. The enemies and bosses are mostly uninspired demon possessed samurai with glowing eyes and mouths and have a nasty, grimy look to them that mask any real detail. Overall, this game really looks like a PS2 port more than anything. The game also borrows heavy from Legacy of Kain: Defiance in visual cues, game mechanics, and other things. There’s one in particular where you are sent to the afterlife plane. The green ghostly look, the glowing, bendy moving enemies, and even the very bad stomachache background noises are there. LoK Defiance even looks better, for a game that precedes this one by three years on a last gen system. The game mechanics can drive you insane. For one, the worst part of them all, is the terrible camera angles, probably the worst in existence since 3D games came into existence. Each small section of the map is a fixed camera angle, meaning if you step over a certain arbitrary boundary, the camera will switch positions without notice, and doesn’t like following behind you. This is done to try to achieve a cinematic effect, but it is the worst implementation I have ever seen and does absolutely nothing good for the look or the gameplay. It borrows this heavily from LoK Defiance, but that game actually looked nice and implemented the cinematic camera with some good results. Genji just zooms the camera in so close that 99% of the time, your character takes up a third or half the screen, and it is angled from a low perspective, like a perverted rodent following the movements of each characters crotch and rear. You can’t see most of the monsters unless they are in your face, and the worst ones are those just offscreen, literally behind the camera, that make for a lot of cheap deaths when you have someone weak like Shizuka running around. The level designs are basically square boxes with rectangular corridors attached. A 2 year old can make better designs. To frustrate you even more is that within that constrictive box are lots of invisible walls and railings. You feel like a mime trapped in a box with a straitjacket on. And with all this poor design and an absolutely horrible camera, they dare add platforming elements to the game. You don’t know what you’re jumping into most of the time, and then plummet into the abyss to fight in a challenge room for the umpteenth time. Even simple things, like trying to climb a few steps, is difficult because you can’t even jump from the side of it because of an invisible railing. There is this particular part with a mountain pass where you had to climb a half dozen rock looking steps in order to get to a higher level, or that’s what you are supposed to do. After about two minutes of trying to walk up it, jump up it, wall run up it, and constantly being pushed back by an invisible wall that the steps are literally a part of, I cheated by jumping close to the edge on the opposite side of a large gap, which wouldn’t have done anything if the game didn’t have this giant trigger area for a cutscene that later planted me squarely at the point I was trying to get to in the first place, and then I was able to move down the steps like it was nothing but unable to get back up. The levels themselves are pretty small, but all these “features” will keep you entertained for many more hours than anticipated within each level. The fighting system actually isn’t that bad, but later in the game it gets very very tedious as each monster tends to take dozens of hits to fall and the game sadistically lets you whack at a dead monster for a good dozen whacks after you’ve already killed it, wasting a lot of time and button presses on something that was already dead to begin with. The optional monster life bars are no help as they sometimes disappear or go off camera. Later on, the number of monsters onscreen swoons to almost Dynasty Warrior level numbers and there is no real way to defend yourself against a horde (or being surrounded) as the fighting system isn’t very robust and you can’t kill anything without getting killed since there is absolutely no room to maneuver or go toe to toe with only one monster. The only way is to use Kamui, which requires you to charge by hitting monsters in the first place, so it is a terrible catch-22. The only character that seems remotely decent for anything more than a 1 on 1 encounter is Benkei, who you will lose as a playable character for a portion of the game. The fighting is tedious to a fault and the game tends to string long sequences of fights and boss battles (bland, crappy ones), especially in “defend the camp” scenarios, that have multiple objectives. There is no saving in these scenarios and no waypoints after completing each objective, so you can lose an hour’s worth of work at a time with Genji’s archaic save system and all the cheap deaths and monsters. Even more frustrating is when they mix in platform elements along with triple boss fights and when you die, you start ALL OVER at the save point over an hour ago and none of your upgrades or items found are saved. If you were playing this game for the story, I suggest you look somewhere else. It really doesn’t have one. The characters are very one dimensional, the cutscenes are terrible, and there are multiple points that seem like the game would end and you just beat the end boss, only to have someone stronger and more sinister pop up, and then another one pop up, and then another. It’s basically as shallow as the small interludes they put in fighting games between fights when you play the story mode. The Genji history part of the game is only in name form and nothing else. It’s as generic as generic can be, and worse. So pretty much I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone. Why is this game not getting a zero? Because there are actually worse games than this. Games that I can’t even stand to complete. Since I bought it and I am able to beat it (with some praying for my sanity at certain intervals), I was able to finish it. Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  7. May 24, 2012
    0
    This game is flat out awful. One of the worst games I've ever played. Bad graphics. Terrible voice acting, so atrociously bad and goes along perfectly with the incredibly bad story. It's your basic action game with a slight RPG-eqsue system to build up your characters. The camera angle sucks sometimes you can be off screen with your character. This is a game you recommend to someone to torture them. It's repetitive gameplay mixed with graphics that I don't even believe are in true HD form the perfect pile of awfulness within this bad title. Expand
  8. Dec 1, 2010
    5
    Genji: Days of the Blade is a game of great potential with game hindering problems that turn it into a really bad experience all the way to the very end. The game starts off impressing the players with beautiful cinematics and in-game graphics with an authentic feeling of traditional Japanese themed background music, but is soon dominated over by the gameplay and progression of the story. Without the frustrating fixed camera angles, clunky controls, and mundane level designs, Genji: Days of the Blade could have been an excellent hack and slash action game. Expand
Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 46 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 46
  2. Negative: 8 out of 46
  1. 65
    Next-gen looks that plays like a last-gen title.
  2. Genji is best played, and possibly enjoyed with patience, in chunks. [Jan. 2007, p.72]
  3. Finally, the vague puzzles and unhelpful map also had me questioning whether this was next-gen. [Jan. 2007, p.78]