Ganryu 2 Review (Xbox Series S)

by Jim Smale · June 7, 2022

For our Ganryu 2 Review, we play as Miyamoto Musashi in this beautiful 2D platformer and travel through a 17th-century fantasy Japan, from north to the island of Ganryu-Jima where everything happened between Musashi and Kojiro. The game is inspired by the story of Takezo Musashi from the famous novel “The Stone And The Sword”.

Ganryu 2 Review Pros:

Decent pixel art graphics.
1.1GB download size.
1000 Gamerscore.
2D action platformer gameplay.
Can rebind controls.
In-game cutscenes.
Can skip cutscenes.
Arcade presentation.
The soundtrack sounds like a Street Fighter game.
Animated background and foreground.
Breakable objects for power-ups and bonus score.
Hidden Collectibles.
Combat feels meaty.
Solid platforming.
Plenty of hidden routes and rooms.
You can dash, spin attack, slash, throw weapons like ninja stars, etc.
Big screen-filling boss battles.
Checkpoints.

Ganryu 2 Review Cons:

No difficulty options.
You cannot move the camera around so you can be hot off-screen or land on spikes.
Doesn’t have any tutorials.
The difficulty feels cheap as it’s things like it’s slow to turn and attack when confronted from both sides.
Checkpoints are way too far apart and don’t save any Collectibles meaning a lot of replaying the same section over and over.
Boss battles are huge difficulty spikes.
Doesn’t feel that rewarding.