My initial impression of Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae was pretty dismal. Upon starting up the game, you are given a 2-minute blurb of generic short-skirt anime-babe save-the-world mumbo jumbo, then thrown into a fight with a bunch of samurai robots in business suits. Combat initially feels jerky and stilted, and the enemy AI is less than stellar. Mere moments into the action, my expectations were rapidly hitting rock-bottom, but I decided to play on. Fortunately, the game gets its act together soon enough.

Ignoring the story entirely, MKH is actually a competent, demanding arcade beat-em-up. Each stage places you in a circular arena, in which you must take down five waves of opponents, each more difficult than the last, capped with a boss monster. While combat initially feels sluggish, and the early enemies are laughable, both problems solve themselves in short order. You eventually start to grasp the nuances of the combat system, allowing a skilled player to duck and weave in and out of combat, hammering foes with punches and sword slices, leaving the opponents a bloody wreck, all without ever giving them a chance to strike back. Later foes block and even counter your attacks, brutally punishing you if you attempt to button mash and forcing you to fight cautiously. They also don't all look like murderous C-3P0s, which helps the aesthetic tremendously.

Opponents that have been damaged enough start flashing red, signifying that they are now more vulnerable to your basic attacks and are also capable of being instantly defeated through use of your cinematic sword-sheathing magic. Slaying enemies grants you SP, which you can spend to buy upgraded skills or better durability, as well as occasionally offering up big blobs of health. All in all, MKH is goofier than it intends to be, a bit repetitive, and doesn't exactly have the most complicated system in the world, but it's still a fun bit of slice-em-up action to burn an afternoon with.