The original Otogi is one of those games that came almost unnoticed, but nonetheless had great graphics, gameplay and was fun to play. You played a warrior who was on a mission to destroy demons and save an ancient japanese city. The game was successful enough, so From Sofrware made a sequel. Unlike the first version you will not play with Raikoh in a solo adventure, but you'll play with six new characters!

Each character will have his own waepon and fighting style. The characters all have different abilities and that brings much extra variety in the game. The original character (Raikoh) is still a great character but some of the new ones are even more fun to play.
Combats in Otogi2 are very special, as most of it takes place in the air. You can easy do combos with over 100 hits with ever touching the ground. But the combo system is pretty archaic, just a series of B and X or B and Y presses. Those combos can look awesome, but they not that great to do youself.
What's cool in this game is that almost everything in the environment is breakable, even more then in the original Otogi. It's not only cool to trash the environment, the game will also graded on how much destruction you cause. Some objects also have 'souls' and if you collect these you will unlock goodies for your characters.
While the game contains some RPG elements, it's no RPG in my opinion. Yes, your characters will become more powerful as they defeat demons and gain experience, you can buy items and magic but it doesn't have the story or feeling of a real RPG. The game is a lot too repetitive and based on combats to be called an RPG.
You will have to replay level several times to make your character powerful enough to succeed in higher levels.
Magic is classified into four types with each being weak or strong against one other type. A character can have 1 item and 1 magic equiped, this adds a touch of strategy to how you outfit your character for a battle ... but do not except too much strategy from this game either ... the choices you have to make are very obvious most of the time.

Once again From Software did a great job on the graphics of this game. It isn't 'the best graphics' ever on Xbox, but it comes really close to the top. What's even more surprizing are the amount of enemies the gfx-engine can handle on the screen at the same time, this while keeping the game very fluid. You will eventually see some frame skipping if many broken pieces of the environment are flying around, but overall it's a really powerful gfx-engine.
Character design and the graphics are amazing and the level designs will give you the feeling you're really in acient Japan.

If you played the first Otogi, you'll get used to the controls very fast ... it's using exactly the same control configuration. The camera position can be problematic during some scenes, but overall it's doing OK. Handling is not really perfect in my opinion, I really think they could have made this better, but well ... you'll get used to it.

While the game was developed in japanese, the NTSC/U version will have voices dubbed in english. While this 'dubbing' can be really horrible in some games (wink to Sonic adv. on dreamcast) it's exceptionally well done here in Otogi2. The music in the game is also very well chosen using typical japanese 'strings and drums' music. It reenforces the the overall amtosphere of the game in a good way.

The game has a standard story mode and there is also a Havoc mode. Havoc mode are special missions with unique goals like destroying 99 arches as quickly as possible or similar. The Havoc mode is useful to level up your characters.
The levels in the story mode are pretty short, but to level up your characters you'll have to play the same level several times. Cool thing is that the mission will be in the same state of destruction you left it. This will allow you to go through a level till everything is destroyted in an environment. You will also be able to play a level with different characters, which can be cool as a level is originally made for specific character, so go thought it with another can bring some surprizes sometimes.
Once you’ve finished the final level there is a second play option, that will allow you to play with the Moon Light Sword, Raikoh’s ultimate weapon.

The game is fun and beautiful, but it's main downside is that it can become real boring pretty fast. The story is not that great and I never managed to feel really connected with the characters. Fun to play once, but I'm not even thinking about playing it a second time.

Pos/Neg:
+ Great graphics
+ Lots of stuff to kill and break
+ Lots of content
- Repetitive
- Limited combo system

Fun Factor: 8/10
Replay Factor: 5/10
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Audio: 9.5/10
Graphics: 9.5/10
Controls: 8/10

Total Score: 8/10