Gintama Rumble is a hack n’ slash video game created by Bandai Namco Entertainment for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. It was released on 18 January 2018 in Japan & Asia region (with English Subtitle). The game is similar to Musou / Warriors series from Koei Tecmo. Check out the trailer down below to get a close look at this game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3_fiNrbTIM&t=371s

Now that you have watched the trailer, you already got a glimpse of what’s going on, and I’m going to talk about it down below. Let’s go to the in-depth review then!

• Story

The game consists of 8 Main Arcs of Gintama series.

1. Benizakura
2. Yoshiwara in Flame
3.  Kabukicho’s Four Deities
4. Baragaki
5. Nations Courtesan
6. Shogun’s Assassination
7. Farewell Shinsengumi
8. Battle at Rakuyo

I won’t talk about the story of the Arcs because all of them are good. In fact, Nations Courtesan is my favorite. I have never read or watch Gintama my whole life, and my starting point is this game.

To tell the truth, I really like the story of every arc, but the story presentation is kinda awful for me. This game doesn’t actually explain about the characters that appear in the story. As a newcomer to the series, I find myself confused about who is who and the connection between all of them. The game repeats the same mistake that Naruto Shippuuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 made in their story mode, which is using the still image from Anime for storytelling.

When you saw the trailer of the game, you’d probably be expecting all of that cool cutscene that appears on the trailer, but in fact, all those cutscenes on the trailer are almost 80% of all the cool cutscenes you’ll see in the game. Which is such a shame, considering the in-game graphics is really really good for an anime game.

For the story mode, each Arc has a secret ending which you can unlock by finishing every mission on every stage of that arc.

7/10 for the story. That storytelling style is really ruining the story mode for me. I mean, all of that battle scenes must be really cool if they can recreate it using the same engine they use in the game. But instead, they just used the screenshots from the anime. I know that some people might want it to stay true to the anime, thus the usage of the screenshot from anime. But to me, it looks like that the developer is too lazy or too busy with other projects to recreate the scene using the in-game engine.

 

• Gameplay

Gintama Rumble is a hack n’ slash game which resembles the Musou / Warriors series from Koei Tecmo.

Game Modes

First of all, the game consists of 3 Modes:

1. Gintama Chronicles
   This mode is where you play the main story of the game. Using the preset characters according to the story.
2. Gintama Free Battle
   Just like the name, you can choose the characters you want to use & the map where you want to play
3. Kabukicho Ultimate Rumble
   This mode will only appear once you finished the Gintama Chronicles. This mode is actually a parody of Dragon Ball, where you have to collect 12 balls that can make your wishes come true (See the reference?). Basically, it’s like a deathmatch mode where you have to defeat other characters to collect the ball. The difficulty of the mode is very hard because it serves as an end-game mode. In this mode, you’ll see some other parody of Dragonball, which appears as a special command in the GinPachinko that will turn your character into “Brieza” & “Cello” for a period of time.

 

Characters

There is total of 13 Characters that you can use in this game, including 1 Secret Character that can only be unlocked by finishing the Kabukicho Ultimate Rumble. (Technically there are only 12 Characters because Kagura (Yato Mode) & Kagura (Normal) is divided into 2 characters).

 

 

Battle, Combos, & Awakening

Although the game is a hack n’ slash game like warriors series, the game focuses on 1 on 1 battle between characters.

As you can see, most of the story mode ends up with a boss battle after you kill thousands of enemies on your way to the boss. And this boss battle is actually hard because it requires you to understand the mechanic of the battle. Such as “Counter Guard” where you have to guard just before your enemy attacks you & also “Combo Finisher” & stuff.

The thing that bothers me the most in the battle is how boring it is. I mean, I do understand that warriors series game are basically a square and triangle mashing type of games. But even so, the Koei Tecmo games have a much more interesting approach to the combo. In Gintama Rumble, your combo is fixed since you are level 1. You can only press a series of □ combos (weak attack) or a series of △ combos (strong attack). There is no combination of weak & strong attack at all in this game. But instead, you got 2 Fixed Combos (Hold □ or Hold △) &  1 Special Attack (For Example Kamehameha for Gintoki). The thing is, those fixed combos & the special attack won’t appear automatically by leveling up (I’ll explain this later in the leveling section). In the end, all you are doing is just mashing □ or △ just like any other musou games but tasteless in terms of the combo.

There is also a special attack that will appear during boss battle which is called “Hurricane Attack”. This attack will appear once you reduce the boss enemy until a certain amount, and then you’ll see a QTE button (which is always 〇), and your character & the boss will have a beautiful clash attack and your character will end up winning EVERY TIME without doing anything else (which is pointless) & will deal a huge damage to the boss. Hurricane Attack will appear in every boss battle once you reduce their health bar to a certain amount.

 

During your gameplay, you’ll see that there’s a small bar below your health bar. It will increase gradually as you defeat your enemies with combos. Once the gauge is full, you can go into “Awakening” mode.

Once in Awakening Mode, everything will turn into black & white. Each of your attacks will show an ink splash like the image above., which makes it kinda stylish. When in Awakening Mode, killing enemies with the combo will increase your finisher gauge (on the left of your character icon). Once it’s full, you can release a finisher attack, which will play a small awesome cutscene for each character like the images below.

 

 

Leveling

Leveling in this game is not like your usual Musou game. You won’t be able to level up on a stage. You can only get experience AFTER you finished the stage. What’s really annoying is that it’s not just that. After your character leveled up, you need to increase their stats manually.

 

By leveling up you’ll get 3 points that you can use to upgrade your character manually. For example, see the image above for my Gintoki’s status. The stats are divided into three section. Spirit, which will increase your awakening gauge & Super Gintama Slot. Skill, which will increase your attack power & also to unlock 2 Fixed Combo (with 5 & 12 points)  & Special attack (30 points). And the last one is Strength, which will increase your health bar & defense power.

You have to do this each time your character leveled up. The crazy part is if you want to unlock all of the combos for each character, you need to focus on upgrading their Skill status until 30, which means you will have a stronger attack but weak defense and small HP bar. To tell the truth, it’s really hard to balance all 3 status.

6/10 for the gameplay. Unfortunately, this game is half musou, half action adventure because the focus of the battle is mostly 1 vs 1. I do enjoy playing musou games, but not this one. It’s too boring without variation of combos, not to mention the annoying leveling system. Although some parts are good, the bad parts stand out the most.

 

• Graphics & Performances

To tell the truth, the game actually has a very good engine. And the graphic in the game is very good, especially for this kind of anime game. Basically, all of the action cutscenes run on the same quality with the in-game graphic. Check out the images below for more details.

 

You can see from the slideshow above that the in-game graphic is really beautiful. Each character has a very detailed expression, not to mention the intensity of each scene, makes this game one of the most beautiful anime graphics game to date. It’s too bad that they are not taking advantage of that graphic.

The game also runs on a smooth 60fps on my PlayStation 4 Pro (I don’t know whether it’s 60fps too on the normal PS4), making the battle very fluid.

8/10 for the graphics & performances. Seriously, this one of the best graphics anime game to date. The details are impressive, it’s just too bad that they are wasting it away by using the anime screenshot.

 

• Sound & Music

For the Sound & Music, I must say that it’s top notch. They are using all of the original Voice Actor for the characters in the anime. And in addition to that, if you buy the AV Edition (Anime sound & Voice Edition), you’ll get access to all of the Opening & Ending song of the anime as the BGM of the stage.

The songs lists:

1. Pray (Tommy Heavenly6)
2. Gin Iro no Sora (redbaloon)
3. Shuura (DOES)
4. Donten (DOES)
5. Anata MAGIC (monobright)
6. Kagayaita (Shiki)
7. Tougenkyo Alien (serial TV drama)
8. Samurai Heart (SPYAIR)
9. Wonderland (FLiP)
10. Nakama (Good Coming)
11. Sakura Mitsu Tsuki (SPYAIR)
12. Beautiful Days (OKAMOTO’S)
13. KNOW KNOW KNOW (DOES)
14. Kagerou (ЯeaL)
15. Bakuchi Dancer (DOES)
16. Genjou Distraction (SPYAIR)

All 16 songs & the theme song for this game “SCRAMBLE” by SPYAIR will be available for you to use through every stage. Including story mode.

8/10 for the Sound & Music. But this is because I bought the AV Edition which has awesome music tracks from the anime. I don’t think I’ll be giving this part a high score if I play the standard edition. Enjoying the music as you play through each stage is just awesome.

 

• The Verdict

I personally think that Gintama Rumble could be much better. I mean, all the teasing with cool cutscenes on the trailer, while in reality you only get 9 cutscenes with 1 to 2 minutes duration each. As a newcomer to the series, I had a hard time keeping up with every character that appears, as I had to Wiki all of them. As to the main story, it’s hard to keep looking at those still images/screenshots from the anime. It’s very boring although the story is great.

The Score: 7/10
I’ve played a lot of Musou game and this game actually is kind of a bummer for me. Luckily the game is saved by its awesome graphics & music. I feel like the developer is just too lazy to render something new, so instead, they reused the anime assets. If you are a fan of Gintama, grab it. If you are a newcomer, I suggest you read the anime or manga first and then decide whether you want this game or not.

Erhanz finished this game with 42 hours of gameplay. Trying to get S for every story mission which later he gave up because it’s too difficult. At least he got every Ending for each chapter & unlocked every characters available.