Overview
- Page published
- 2024-06-28
- World
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巫兎 - Kannagi Usagi
Getting ready to fight the Cat General
Kannagi Usagi is my favorite critique of Sekiro.
This little game, created with Unity and cute VRoid characters, pits your nameless bunny girl against eight duelists, using the same combat system and control scheme as Sekiro.
It is available for free from Steam, distributed by its developer, Tonoji. They seem the discreet type: a Twitter account was the only online presence i could find, showing they are nowadays working with Unreal Engine.
It’s as violent as the game will ever get
Clicking the steam store page will give you pause; for whatever reason, the developer chose to provide excessive warnings: about sexual content because you might see the girls’ panties for a second if you squint, about drugs because your character can drink a health potion, about violence even though the combats are bloodless, and about the lack of English support despite the game being translated (and requiring no translation in the first place).
Disregard those warnings: this is the most kid-safe game you are likely to ever see featured on my site. The swords do pierce the bodies, but the cutesy anime aesthetic makes it obvious nobody’s getting harmed for real.
With those warnings about warnings out of the way, let me go back to what i said: Kannagi Usagi is my favorite critique of Sekiro.
The Crimson Shadow’s perilous attack changes in her second phase.
This fan-game reimplements to the perfection the core mechanics: deflecting, blocking, breaking posture, evading by jumping and dodging, the mikiri counter maneuver to deflect special attacks, and recovering health with a drink from your gourd. All the timings feel just right.
Importantly, it reimplements nothing more.
Sekiro was probably the game i liked the least of From Software’s canon; one of the reasons being that for every interesting fight like Genichiro Ashina, there is another fight seeking to subvert its mechanics with an annoying gimmick: fights best tackled by using the correct consumable, the correct prosthetic tools, the correct stealth assassination route, or by completely disregarding a core combat technique.
Kannagi Usagi does not provide any other consumable than your healing gourd. There are no sub-weapons, much less upgrades. The game doesn’t throw weird curveballs your way: you win by understanding the opponent and fighting better than her, not by looking up in a wiki which special item you’re expected to acquire before attempting the fight. Once you can fully read your opponent’s moves, you will find them very manageable, and you will fight with relentless aggression.
The Puppet Maiden’s naginata combos come out much slower than you’d expect. Except for the moves that come out much faster than you’d expect.
While most of the eight bosses fight back with a standard katana like yours, all have their unique fighting style and signature perilous attack mixups, each presenting a new challenge requiring a perfect rhythm. The fights rated three stars will certainly not go down on your first attempt, making the quick restart option in the pause menu handy to reset fights that start poorly.
As the game lets you whiff a fair amount of poorly timed deflects, safely turning them into defended hits that only fill your own posture gauge, there is room for victory with a less aggressive playstyle.
You’ll be ranked at the end of the fight.
Bnuuy
Much like Sekiro, players who can’t defeat a boss by filling her posture bar still stand a chance to empty her lifebar, but doing so reduces your score at the end of the game, and so does healing, making use of your second chance to get back up after defeat, and simply being slow.
Of course, you are entirely free to ignore scoring mechanics. The only form of unlockable the game has to offer is a single achievement after winning every encounter.
Limiting its scope to the essentials, it’s Sekiro fighting at its finest, allowing the combat system to shine without adding any unnecessary complexity. Sekiro could only wish the moment to moment experience of playing it were this fun. Here’s hoping we see more from this developer in the future.
One last lie on the Steam page that i must debunk: it says the game “can be played in 10 to 20 minutes”.
It’s definitely true the world record to clear every fight is of about 10 minutes and a few seconds.
You, however, will not win in 10 minutes.