Burning a hole in your pocket

With your hard earned riches, you can head to the store to buy (or sell) equipment. Aside from purchasing new weapons, magic, and accessories, you'll also be spending gold on repairing your existing weapons (yes, the game takes weapon wear-and-tear into account). While using the biggest, baddest swords, spells, and protective accessories is sometimes the only way to get the job done, the extra weight means that your jumping ability and speed are decreased. A lighter Raikoh means quicker and more damaging light attacks, whereas more weight will make heavy attacks more devastating. As if that wasn't enough to consider before jumping into a new area, you'll also have to carefully select all your equipment, as you can only take one item from each category with you. Some equipment is far more effective in some areas than others, so knowing when to use what is vital to advancing through Otogi.

Deep beauty

Otogi is one gorgeous game. Much of the game takes place in darker conditions, emphasizing Otogi's soft-lighting effects. Weapon slash effects, smoke and dust clouds, elemental effects, and the destruction of environment are all impressive. But what makes Otogi gorgeous isn't just the fancy special effects, but rather the inspired art direction. It feels as though everything was designed with artistic purpose instead of just making things look cool or demonic. Sure, demons still look like demons, but they're truly unique. Even the design of the protagonist isn't quite like anything we've seen before.

Just as beautiful as the graphics is the soundtrack. Layered with moody, traditional Japanese instruments, the music of Otogi is wonderfully haunting -- perfectly fitting the game's themes. The sound effects aren't particularly strong or aggressive, but that just leaves more room for the visuals and music to work together.