Worthy try, but no quite there...
The games takes place mainly in Kyoto, and you play as **** one of the last people in the Genji clan, and you're fighting against the Heishii clan....that's probably about all you'll catch, as the combat is the only thing that anyone should care about...and that's about the best part of it...and it's not that great.
First off, the graphics and sound quality. Nothin' special, it's got the graphics of it's clone/counterpart Devil May Cry, and Onimusha, so it's hard to classify them as good or bad without being biased. The sound's good, the hacking, slashing, and organ splitting sound cool, and ARE cool. Come on, who doesn't love samurai?
Genji is a button masher at heart, there's no remembering the special combos, as the square button is your best friend. The off the wall violence and super-slashing is shamefully fun, and it's so sweet to completely chop up the enemy. The coolest is the Kumai mode(think that's what it's called), which let's you slow time down to Matrix speed, and you actually have to TIME things right, and hit square right before the enemy hits you, and hack them up into a glory gore.
That's about all the fun you'll get. That's ALL you do, jump, kill, kumai, repeat. There's some occasional going into town and getting a new weapon, but there's no point if you're good at mashing on the square button. Another huge problem is that the game is way too easy, and short. Those don't mix well together. For being a game with a fast-paced hack-n-slash-samurai-are-freaking-awesome system, it's too short. I beat the game in less than 4 hours. There is a new game + feature, but the only new thing you get is a special tough dungeon...hmm...sounds familiar as well...
Overall, it's not a bad game, in fact, it had a lot of good things going for it. It's just too repetitive, too easy, and too short to be hailed as a good game. It