To be honest, there have been precious few kind reviews of Daikatana. In fact, we can count the relatively positive ones on the fingers of one hand. But after so many years in development with renowned developer John Romero at the helm it surely can’t be that bad, can it? Well, following Andrew Bub’s review of Daikatana here on Sharky Extreme we decided to throw in a second opinion (that being Pete Closs’ i.e. mine). After some effort to try and put the long PR legacy of Daikatana from our minds along with the reputation of its designer, we headed in hoping for some decent action at the very least.
“Disappointing.” Not a very promising first subheading is it? But if one word sums up Daikatana, disappointing is it. It seems that for everything that Daikatana does right it does two things wrong. The story is actually reasonably original and interesting, involving a sword capable of time travel (the Daikatana itself) which someone called Mishima has used to alter the past in his favour. Hiro Miyamoto is the ancestor of the man who forged the Daikatana, and he is given the task of rescuing the sword and a woman called Mikiko from Mishima. Things, of course, progress from there as you travel from 25th Century Japan, to early Athens, a Nordic Dark Ages village and then finally on to San Francisco, 2030 with each episode providing a unique weapon set to toy with. However this promising story deteriorates as time goes on thanks to numerous clichés and predictable events.
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