Review: Asura's Wrath

Asura’s Wrath is a series of cutscenes and quick time events masquerading as an action game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was developed by CyberConnect2.

The main character, Asura, in one of his calmer moments.

On the planet Gaea, the Eight Guardian Generals have defeated the planet’s enemies, the Gohma. The youngest of the generals, Asura, returns home to find that the emperor has been murdered by the rest of the Guardian Generals and he’s been framed for it, before the Generals murder his wife and kidnap his daughter. Burning with a rage only a god could muster, Asura sets out to rescue his daughter and kill the Generals, now calling themselves the Seven Great Deities of Gaia.

Asura’s Wrath is not a game, it is a cartoon with game bits in the middle. It is divided into three acts, with around five episodes per act. Each episode has between three to ten minutes of cutscenes and quick time events, followed by a part you can actually control for a couple of minutes, followed by more cutscenes and quick time events.

In the part of Asura’s Wrath you can actually control, you fight a bunch of enemies or a boss in one area. Asura has a punch attack, a slightly stronger area attack, and a projectile attack. He can also jump and dodge. There is a large bar that fills up when you cause damage; when the bar fills up you activate it, which usually ends the fight or sends it to the next part, with plenty of cutscenes and quick time events in between.

Fighting regular enemies is boring thanks to easiness, and a lack of variety in the enemies, their attacks, or Asura’s attacks. Boss fights are better because they have more fighting moves and put up a bit more of a challenge, though both kinds of fights are pretty easy on Normal mode.

Your most common enemy.

The quick time events that make up most of the gameplay are of the “press one button quickly” variety instead of a multi button sequence press. They often have timers on them too, though from what I saw failing to press them on time did not do anything to the game, it just affected what rank you got at the end of the episode.

There are also a few levels where Asura flies around and shoots down flying enemies. These are even easier than the regular levels to the point that the player might as well not be involved at all.

You do not even have to shoot anything, you can just dodge until the next scene.

The story is nothing more than Asura going from one Deity to the next, screaming and acting needlessly angry nonstop. This is fine, since it is an action show, but it makes me wish so much time was not spent on the Deities going on and on about how what they are doing is good for the planet and the fight against the Gohma, or just acting like power-crazed jerks. I do not need the story to beat me over the head with their hypocrisy. Speaking of the characters, they are one-emotion, two-dimensional characters. The world is fleshed out a bit better in supplementary material you unlock when you complete levels, but a lot of it does not affect the main story. The worst thing though, is that you need to pay extra to see the ending.

The most interesting thing to watch is Asura getting more pissed as the game goes on and destroying bigger things. Since Asura is a demi-god whose rage grants him godly strength, this results in a lot of things getting blown up or otherwise destroyed in jaw-dropping ways. Those are fun to watch, once.

Like Asura totally owning this guy.

Fights are not well choreographed. Like I said before, it is cool to see Asura utterly destroy things, but the rest of the fights are not that good. They rely on repeated use of lazy gimmicks, like both sides punching each other too fast to see without landing a hit, or running up to someone and punching their face in extreme slow motion; nothing creative or detailed until the big finish.

Expect to see this shot a lot.

There is also a problem of the fights looking too effortless on Asura’s part. It is not exciting when it does not look like Asura is under pressure. Until the inevitable point when Asura is suddenly outmatched and gets his ass kicked for no good reason, even with characters you have spent the past couple of minutes kicking the crap out of.

The setting takes inspiration from Hindu mythology mixed with science fiction, which looks cool for the character designs and some of the space ships. Too bad that does not carry over to the actual level design, which are green or brown fields or, if you are lucky, silver space ships.

Asura’s Wrath is an okay show, but a terrible game. Save yourself some money and watch the whole thing on YouTube, it is a better medium for it anyway.