Blood Will Tell is a game with two names actually. It's often called either Blood Will Tell or Dororo. Dororo was a manga series made in the 1960's by Osamu Tezuka which became very popular for a time. That manga is the same story that the game Blood Will Tell is based on. The game was released much later on after the manga series. It released in September of 2004 for Japan and NA regions and in June of 2005 for EU regions. While becoming a popular story in Japan, spawning forth an anime, live action film and of course this game the story is very little known outside of Japan. For being a game based on a 1960's story it was very well made so now I will be talking about this hidden gem.
Blood Will Tell follows the story of Hyakkimaru, a man who has lost 48 body parts to fiends when his father Daigo Kagemitsu forged a pact with the demons in an attempt to rule the world. He was then able to commit crimes and murders without a care. Hyakkimaru was sent into the river as a baby by his mother to keep him from being killed by his father. Dr. Honma, a medicine man, finds Hyakkimaru and then gives him prostheses to replace his missing body parts. He also gave Hyakkimaru special blades hidden within each prosthetic arm. Hyakkimaru eventually learns of the 48 fiends and begins his search for them to recover his 48 missing body parts. Eventually he meets Dororo, a very important character for the game who he travels with.
The gameplay of Blood Will Tell is very hack and slash orientated. It involves fighting demons along your way to fight the main demons and recover more body parts. Each body part will make you stronger or give you a new ability. Several of the demons are optional. I believe over half of them are optional actually. But it is much easier to fight all of the demons. The game also contains a form of magic in Spirit Attack Scrolls. There are several of these, each of which grants a new spirit attack for Hyakkimaru to use. In addition to use his arm blades, Hyakkimaru can also use a sword and you can switch between the two with a button press. There are a few points where you control Dororo in the game. These segments usually involve stealth or tactical killing rather than the hack and slash gameplay Hyakkimaru has. As the game goes on there are a few neat things you can do gameplay-wise as well.
This games main variety is in weaponry and bosses. For weapons you have the usual hidden arm blades and the regular swords. The swords have a large and I mean LARGE variety. It's something around 30 or so swords. Almost all of which can be leveled up at that so you'll definitely have a good selection to choose from. Bosses also have a good variety. There are more bosses than the amount of missing body parts, over 50 in fact.Almost each boss is unique except for a few of them. The amount of bosses also adds to the want to go back to old areas as many bosses are either hidden or not accessible until later.
While the story of the game may sound like a straight objective it gets a lot of depth. And the hack and slash doesn't have you constantly mash a button to kill enemies further adding to the gameplay. Overall the game is a very great play and quite unknown. If this interests you, this is a hidden gem I would recommend.
Blood Will Tell is a game with two names actually. It's often called either Blood Will Tell or Dororo. Dororo was a manga series made in the 1960's by Osamu Tezuka which became very popular for a time. That manga is the same story that the game Blood Will Tell is based on. The game was released much later on after the manga series. It released in September of 2004 for Japan and NA regions and in June of 2005 for EU regions. While becoming a popular story in Japan, spawning forth an anime, live action film and of course this game the story is very little known outside of Japan. For being a game based on a 1960's story it was very well made so now I will be talking about this hidden gem.