Bushido Blade 2

About Bushido Blade 2

Bushido Blade 2 (1998) is Lightweight's one-hit-kill sword-fighting sequel, pitting the rival assassin schools Narukagami and Shainto against each other and adding dual-sword attacks.

Bushido Blade 2 in Depth

The story and characters now revolve around two rival schools of assassins: the Narukagami, mostly made up of characters from the first game, and the Shainto. Depending on the character, the player fights either to recover a legendary sword or to destroy the opposing school. The story mode changes from one large connected level to a series of skirmishes on different maps, each a run of generic ninja followed by a boss, one of the playable characters from the other school. Support characters appear along the way, and finishing a stage as one unlocks them for all modes.

Dual-sword attacks are new, and characters fight with swords or polearms of various types; weapons shared by both schools, such as the katana, look slightly different for each. Two exceptions are Tsubame and Katze, who carry guns and are sworn to opposing schools, offering a different challenge, though their shots can be parried with melee weapons. Most weapons return from the first game, but the yari and the M16 are gone, along with the rapier, sledgehammer, ninjato and the boss-only Double-Bladed Sword-Staff and Special Sabre, while the yugiri, wielded by the first game's final boss Hanzaki, becomes selectable only in the final battle against the unarmed "last member of the Kagami clan".

Making Bushido Blade 2

Lightweight developed it and Square published it for the PlayStation in 1998. It expanded some aspects of the original while limiting or removing others, and received favourable reviews according to GameRankings, Next Generation giving Square "kudos" for trying such a different approach.