Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles (Xbox Series X)
An issue that arises in many anime video game adaptations is an unwillingness to provide the proper context or details for the story to come across well. If you are not familiar with the full breadth of the source material, attempts to retell certain parts feel hollow, rushed, or confusing, meaning while these games often want you to “feel like you’re playing the anime”, you’re getting a pretty spotty representation of it. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles circumvents this common issue though, because not only is it incredibly faithful, it adapts the source material so closely that even if you had never heard of the series before playing this video game, it will provide you with enough details that it can serve as a full-on replacement for watching the show or reading the manga.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles is technically a fighting game, you and the enemy both have health bars at the top of the screen you’re trying to deplete and the multiplayer focuses on winning rounds in a one on one format, but the fighting system feels like it is built to facilitate the game’s story mode first and foremost. With most of the adventure comprising of reproduced events from the anime, it feels appropriate to evaluate the plot’s contents rather than just brushing over this video game as a pure adaptation. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles covers a bit more than the first season of the anime, starting from the very beginning and continuing on until the battle aboard Mugen Train, a suitable stopping point considering the rise in stakes and shift in the way long-term goals are viewed at that point in the series. Demon Slayer is primarily the story of Tanjiro Kamado and his sister Nezuko. Tanjiro was a simple charcoal seller when his family was attacked by a demon while he was away, the boy finding his family brutally slain save for his sister who was turned into a demon herself. However, Tanjiro is able to keep her from giving into her desire to eat human flesh, heading out into the world to try and find a cure. Most people are incredibly hostile towards demons because of their cruelty and ravenous hungers, Tanjiro finding he must train to become a demon slayer himself in his search for answers, the only hope for his sister’s redemption lying in taking on the most powerful demons in battle.
Nezuko is mostly a witness to events rather than an active player, she’ll participate in a few fights but she has to constantly keep a piece of bamboo clenched in her teeth to fight her urges so she can barely ever speak. Tanjiro though is a nice focal character for the plot, particularly because his sympathy for the demons allows for the enemies to have greater depth. The existence of demons is often a tragedy, Tanjiro’s sympathy not sparing them the blade, but he tries to give them peace in death rather than viewing things as an extermination. That kindness leads to some wholesome interactions with others who he trains with and befriends, Tanjiro’s politeness and manners rather refreshing in a plot that can sometimes be bleak or cruel. However, his two main companions beyond his sister are meant to add some levity. Inosuke is the more effective of the two, the battle-crazy young man wearing a boar’s head having little human contact before being a demon slayer. At times he is an over-the-top egotist who wants to fight everything, but seeing him learn the bright sides of being around others can be just as amusing. Zenitsu comes off horribly at first, constantly shouting and screaming when you first meet him. He’s an incredible coward and womanizer, and while he does get toned down a bit, it’s never something he grows out of fully. There are even parts of the story where you play as him wandering around and screaming as he gets frightened by small things, his shtick really suffering from being repetitive and loud. He does start to get a few new jokes that come from his character concept that can actually be funny though, such as when misreads a situation and thinks a young boy somehow saved him from a demon, much to the kid’s chagrin as Zenitsu begins to almost worship him.
Zenitsu isn’t always that prominent thankfully so you can instead focus on a story that primarily exists to move you to new locations for battles with demons. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles does technically do a bit of trimming when it comes to specific moments from the source material, but not in terms of removing them outright. The story mode wants to at least have somewhat frequent action and already can have lengthy stretches where all you’re doing is watching cutscenes or walking around an area to look at things. The exploration does help it feel less like a string of battles, and there are little pick-ups to grab by looking around these areas beyond their purpose of talking to characters or navigating eerie demon lairs. However, the map also tells you exactly where all side objectives and items can be found, which makes it easier to get through if you don’t care for the exploration that is not too engaging as a gameplay task. However, this is where you can find memories, these pretty crucial in filling out parts of the story. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles will skip past comedic moments or quieter character focused scenes, but the memories allow you to view them later. These can add some extra context, present an amusing scenario without breaking the flow of action, or allow the game to relegate some character interactions to flashbacks so that you can reach the fighting faster. Story isn’t sacrificed this way, so while you get some information out of order compared to the show or manga, you are again getting such a complete adaptation thanks to these memories that you could likely hold a fairly accurate in-depth discussion with anyone who has made it up to the end of Mugen Train in the source material.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles does adapt the most famous and important battles of the anime, but it also sprinkles in some smaller demons during those exploration bits to add some more action between tentpole moments. The demons, whether they be normal enemies, bosses, or even characters you can play as in multiplayer, all are built differently from what you’d expect out of a normal fighting game. Demons tend to have specific attacks that can hit large areas of the battlefield, indicators giving you time to respond by moving out of the way or attempting to block or parry. Demons can sometimes power through your attacks without flinching, meaning you need to properly identify when to move in and execute your attack combos. Your combos aren’t that complex, you have a basic attack as well as a few special moves that are easy enough to activate and usually tie to your character’s specific branch of breathing techniques that give the demon slayers nearly supernatural fighting power. These are the moves that set fighters apart but also unite a few of them, characters who use similar styles like Water Breathing having a few shared moves for example. On the other hand, the way you link together your techniques is where the fighting becomes more interesting, especially when you start having allies you can summon to help fairly regularly to unleash an attack of their own. Identifying the moments to strike, figuring out the smoothest and most powerful combos, or utilizing techniques like Zenitsu’s lightning-bolt inspired dashes to account for enemy placement help the fights be about more than waiting out the incoming attacks for a chance to strike.
Notably, the Demon Slayer anime’s most distinct element has to be its representation of the techniques the characters use, Ufotable able to animate gorgeous and striking effects that match the themes behind each demon slayer’s attacks like those who use Water Breathing seeming to create waves with the movements of their blades. These are carried over perfectly into the game’s 3D visual style that already makes the characters look completely accurate, and with English and Japanese voice overs available plus fairly good subtitling, you won’t miss important details unless you happen to finish a fight before certain reactions have time to play. Perhaps more importantly, there are many attacks in the source material that wouldn’t fit the fighting style cleanly, clever strategies or elaborate moves still getting to appear either through cutscenes or end of battle sequences where you need to press the right buttons at the right time to succeed. There are a few minigames in the game’s later chapters as well to try and make some special training more interactive, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles working hard to include everything it can even when it’s a one-off technique.
A ranking system for story battles and chapters also gives you reason to fight smarter to earn a good deal of extras, although there are many unexciting rewards cluttering the offerings that make pursuing them easy enough to ignore beyond big unlocks like characters, outfits, or special arenas for the versus mode. Multiplayer battles do carry over the battle techniques you’ll use in the story, leading to a battle system where it’s key to defend well and exploit openings rather than rushing down opponents or playing too aggressively. Elements like the grab that may not shine in single-player can find more use against human players, and while the playable demons are often stronger in some ways, they’re balanced out a bit by carrying over some of their specific drawbacks in terms of attack speed and the fact they must fight alone. Demon slayers bring attacks based on flames, poison, and water as well as unique sword types like Inosuke’s pair of serrated swords while demons can battle in truly strange and original ways like the six-armed Susamaru who fights almost like she’s playing dodgeball. It can be a bit hard to sort out how many playable characters there truly are. A post-launch update added the six playable demons, most of which were already story bosses and thus they can carry on their interesting movesets. By default, the game offered 11 totally unique characters (besides shared breathing techniques leading to some overlap in specific moves), a Tanjiro variant, and then six characters appearing in their alternate universe high school outfits who play the same but get new finishing moves and dialogue. With the demons added it is a good set with a bit of range in how characters battle, letting you play as most every relevant character from the time period the game covers plus some who would likely have been skipped over if the game had been released after the series had concluded due to their relatively small roles.
Again, despite technically being a fighting game, the multiplayer feels less important than the main adventure, but it still has room for tense battles based on the emphasis on careful opportunism and figuring out how to slip through defenses. The game does offer an odd Training Mode where you can choose a character to fight repeatedly but they get harder and harder across 10 difficulty levels, but this is also a fairly smart if not exciting idea. It can let you acclimate to how the specific training partner approaches battle so you can learn what to expect from that character. It’s not a glamorous method of getting better against a troublesome opponent, but it scales better than having larger leaps in difficulty.
THE VERDICT: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles is such a faithful adaptation of the anime it can outright replace watching it. While technically a fighting game, its focus on the story mode leads to an incredibly thorough retelling of Demon Slayer’s plot with even the small moments included as collectable memories. The fighting seems built primarily around facing powerful demons or enemies in the single player, battle about finding your moments to strike and avoiding attacks, leading to some fights that are tough but satisfying once you figure them out. Multiplayer isn’t as robust because your limited move pool is about exploiting openings, but the impressive attacks and emphasis on smart play still can produce some entertaining battles even if this game is best thought of as an action-adventure that happens to use fighting game elements for its combat.
And so, I give Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles for Xbox Series X…
A GOOD rating. A lot of fighting games thrive on multiplayer combat, and for genre fans, it might be a bit disappointing to hear this game doesn’t focus on that side so much as providing an entertaining and accurate reproduction of the anime. At the same time, developer CyberConnect2 must be commended for making one of the most faithful anime game adaptations yet made. Too often arena fighters based on anime rely on looking the part most of all, stripping away important story details and producing basic battle systems that look flashy but are fairly shallow. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles wants its combat to work in terms of the story fights against powerful demons though, constructing battles about finding opportunities to string together your impressive looking techniques to make the most of that opening. It may not have the depth of dedicated fighting games when its versus mode is focused on most of all, but in the story when you’re weaving around an arena, avoiding demon attacks, and then moving in with your beautifully animated sword strikes, you are getting the Demon Slayer experience on top of a fighting system that fits that occasion. What feels truly remarkable is the game trying to include almost the totality of the source material that was available at the time, making this feel less like a tie-in game and more like when a full on shift in media type. In the same way the anime is built off what was done first in the manga, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles feels like it is building off the anime rather than being a fighting game with a Demon Slayer skin. There is definitely a great deal of room for this adaptation to make better use of the medium, interactivity at parts is limited and the exploration segments can hold your hand a bit much with that all too helpful map. Those lulls, as well as some issues that come straight from the source material like Zenitsu being hard to listen to whine at length, are balanced out by its greater successes in presentation and battle creativity. Unlike anime fighters where you have to append some disclaimer that it’s pretty much just for the fans of the series, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles can be played as if it was an original game because you still get a full story on top of the action.
There is certainly a way to make the events of the Demon Slayer anime work more cleanly as an action game, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles wanting to keep multiplayer fighting as a component and thus not building its systems to always facilitate the story first, but it is remarkable to find a game based on an anime that could serve as a full on substitute for the show. Key attacks are still shown, small funny moments can be found as memories, and the plot never expects you to have a familiarity with the anime or manga to understand what’s going on or why. It would have benefited from trying to be a pure single-player adventure so it wouldn’t have to lean as often on cutscenes to keep the story moving, but it still provides entertaining battles as well as pretty much everything that would make the show entertaining, and while maybe a fan might be a bit put off by having what they’ve already seen recounted in such detail, it also ensures that Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles is accurate in most every way they could wish for as well.