Released in the last hours of the glorious career of the Neo-Geo, the first Ganryu had gone rather unnoticed. But not for the Storybird Games studio, which seems to have had a soft spot for this relatively confidential title, to the point of working on its succession by developing Ganryu 2: Hakuma Kojiro. We thus find there the legendary swordsman who, after having defeated his eternal rival Sasaki Kojirô, discovers that the latter is back among the living and has made a pact with the demons to satisfy his revenge. Neither one nor two, our swordsman puts on his Shinobi costume and follows in Kojiro’s footsteps, over five levels divided into two acts each.
Virgil invites you to discover some of them and tells you about his disappointment with this title which seemed to be off to a good start at the end of its first level. Unfortunately, as you will see by viewing this replay, Ganryu 2: Hakuma Kojiro fails to maintain the flame of the beginnings. It multiplies the anecdotal bosses, erects a wall of difficulty in its last third, the quality of its level design collapses and, to make matters worse, the worries of collisions and the like bugs are still legion.