Meifumado Review | The Real Soulslike Is Its Controls｜Game8 (2024)

Meifumado is a post-apocalyptic 2D action game based on Japan’s feudal era. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.

Meifumado Review Overview

What is Meifumado?

In the grim aftermath of a global catastrophe, Meifumado plunges players into a world ravaged by the echoes of a forgotten war. Scarce resources fuel a desperate struggle for survival, where the powerful prey upon the weak amidst the ruins. The focal point of this bleak saga is the island of Yamatai, a once-prosperous land now shattered by conflict.

As players navigate the treacherous landscape, they are confronted with the looming shadow of rival factions locked in a relentless battle for dominion over Yamatai. Each faction, with its distinct ideology and social order, vies for supremacy, offering players a choice that will shape the destiny of both the island and its inhabitants.

At the heart of the experience lies a robust combat system designed to be intense, challenging, and deeply satisfying. Players can choose from multiple fighting styles, each with its unique moveset, as well as a wide range of special attacks, abilities, and sub-weapons. Whether you prefer brute strength or lightning-fast agility, Meifumado empowers you to tailor your combat approach to your liking by acquiring and upgrading a diverse array of skills and weapons.

Meifumado features:
　⚫︎　Melee and ranged combat options
　⚫︎　Throwable weapons, including bombs and shurikens
　⚫︎　Parry mechanic that leads to deadly counterattacks
　⚫︎　Different weapons and armor to collect
　⚫︎　Diverse boss fights

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Meifumado's gameplay and story.

Steam

$14.99

Meifumado Pros & Cons

My resolution is 1080p max, though...

Meifumado Overall Score - 56/100

Meifumado is an unfortunate case of an incredible idea and passion held back by severe lack of funding. The result is a mostly empty game that can only offer a few hours of mostly wrestling against its controls and weird mechanics. Visually, though, it is extremely pretty, especially if you’re the cultured type who likes posts-apocalyptic vibes.

Meifumado Story - 4/10

Well, if we’re talking about a story, Meifumado really doesn’t have anything substantial. You get a short opening dialogue to ease you in and, well, suffice to say that's the extent you'll get for a long while. Even its ending doesn’t give you any closure since it doesn’t have much to conclude. There are story tidbits here an there, of course, but none that really sets up a world effectively.

Meifumado Gameplay - 5/10

The promising gameplay Meifumado’s trailers teased is, very unfortunately, severely hamstrung by its terrible gamepad keymapping, baffling lack of a remap option, and irritating mechanics. Sure, the core combat loop itself is quite fun, but the hurdles you have to overcome just to get to the point where you can enjoy it is quite unreasonable.

Meifumado Visuals - 8/10

Dark, gritty, and unnecessarily raw; the perfect kind of aesthetics for a bleak, post-apocalyptic Japan. Though low in resolution (effective, since for some reason the game supports up to a whopping 2400x1350), nothing really holds you back from being able to see the action due to its clean and minimalistic UI. However, the menu is quite difficult to navigate, particularly due to its unintuitive icons. It also has a severe lack of anything else to provide aside from its in-game visuals.

Meifumado Audio - 7/10

Meifumado comes with a very satisfying set of sound effects for combat and an eerie, almost foreboding background track that can really let the dread sink into your veins. Then again, that same background track quickly overstays its welcome, and the game’s lack of any other audio to brag about really hurts the score. Oh, and, yeah, there’s no voice acting at all, even for when you slice someone up with gusto.

Meifumado Value for Money - 4/10

The game is being sold for $14.99 with a playtime of around three or so hours, depending on your skill level. It lacks a lot of features that would make that time worth it, essentially making the game around 95% fighting and 5% eating a bucket of food to heal. Plus, you’ll have to take some time to get used to its baffling control scheme, too, especially if you’re using a gamepad (which you really shouldn’t for this game, trust me).

Meifumado Review: The Real Soulslike Is Its Controls

I’m always up for a good 2D action game. While I do enjoy my Elden Ring and Sekiro, being limited to two dimensions ironically feels liberating at times. After all, I’m less likely to get skill checked by a game if it has one less dimension to do it, right?

Okay, that’s not entirely true since a lot of 2D action games are brutally difficult. But, the point still stands.

Back to the main point, I’ve been excited for Meifumado since a while ago. As a big fan of Blasphemous and The Last Faith, getting more gritty titles is always a nice thing. So, it naturally found its way to my wishlist.

Many months later, my excitement reached its peak as the game was finally released. And as one does for these occasions, I told my friends that I would be "busy with work for the night" to stop them from inviting me to games, set my Steam profile to invisible, and booted up the game.

And oh boy was it a wild ride.

Quite frankly, the core components of the gameplay itself is fine. It’s just severely weighed down by almost everything else around it. If you like playing these kinds of games with a gamepad, then the primary issue would be the controls. Most of its default keybinds, which cannot be changed by the way, is downright bewildering.

Just to give you an example, the confirm button is typically either the A or B button (on an Xbox controller), right? Well, in Meifumado, it’s either the X or the R1 button. Like, why? Movement is also stuck to the D-pad, but aiming weapons is on the left thumbstick instead of on the right. Since the game doesn't allow you to move while aiming with a bow, why not just put both on the left joystick?

Though to be honest, the most perplexing part is the weapon sheathing buttons. In order to perform certain actions, such as eating, you'll have to sheathe your weapon first. This is done automatically, sure, but taking it back out has to be done manually. Like, why can't the game just let you pull your sword out spontaneously? It's an additional layer of unneeded complication.

If you’re lucky enough to be someone who prefers using a keyboard and mouse, you’ll have a much better time with the controls. In that case, your main issue will be with the game’s mechanics.

First of all, every enemy snaps to your location right before an attack hits instead of at the start of their moves. In 3D games, enemies are made to be limited in their turning speed in order to allow you to dodge through or around them. But in Meifumado, the lack of a third dimension means that they can turn around at the last moment and get a hit in. In other words, combat rolling through your enemies is useless.

Healing with the game’s consumables is also an extreme hassle for many, many reasons. Not only is it extremely slow, but the variety is also too abundant whilst not providing you with enough of any. That means you’ll have to equip several different consumables on your quick access bar just in case you run out of one mid-fight. Additionally, using consumables forces you to sheathe your weapon, meaning that you’ll have to manually take them out again so you can continue the fight.

The problem with consumables is compounded by the fact that chi, which is the game’s version of mana, is a non-renewable resource. Heavy and special attacks use chi and are two of the very few ways to break shields. So, if you run out of chi, the only way to take down enemies camping behind their giant frying pans is by parrying their attacks. Good luck doing so when there’s more than one enemy attacking you simultaneously.

Speaking of being ganged up on, Meifumado has a flinching mechanic relevant when you or most enemies take a hit. Most of the time, this simply allows you to combo a lone target until it dies. But, the enemies can also take advantage of this against you. For example, if you’re fighting against two enemies with fast attacks, they can easily stunlock you to death (even from full health) if you fail to avoid, guard, or parry a single attack.

This is avoidable most of the time, but enemies often come in pairs or more, so…

Honestly, despite all my criticisms, I still love the game in a sense. No, it’s not because I like punishing myself. I genuinely enjoy difficult games. I don’t mind dying 43 times to an extremely difficult boss (I probably died more to Malenia, not gonna lie). But not when it’s because the controls are working against me, or when the game actively discourages me from actually playing it through gameplay mechanics.

Like, you can’t even sell the loot you obtain from enemies because there’s no shops. What the heck do I do with 17 uchigatanas and a dozen rickety old bows?

Apparently, according to the developer, the reason why they had to cut many features from the game is because none of the money from Kickstarter was received, forcing them to work on an extremely limited (read: personal) budget. Even so, the issues are there, regardless of its funding.

Can’t say I dislike the game, though, even if I had to disable my gamepad through Device Manager just to get keyboard controls back.

Pros of Meifumado

Amazing Ambience

I understand that Meifumado’s dull, very gray color scheme may not click with everyone. But for its setting of a post-apocalyptic Japan where the primary weapons are swords, bows, and spears (and sometimes bombs), the colors work for it perfectly.

Combine that with its pixel graphics forcing our imagination to fill in the rest and its very eerie background track, well… You have yourself a winner.

Cons of Meifumado

Atrocious Gamepad Controls

Action games tend to follow a certain convention when mapping keys to a gamepad. For example, the vast majority of these titles tend to place Attack on the X button (if you’re using an Xbox controller), and Jump on A. Meifumado follows the basic, true, but the issues arise once you look past the ABXY buttons.

Let’s talk about the most obvious one first. On an Xbox controller, the confirm button is typically set on either A or B, right? Some games would use both for some reason, but regardless, the result is still intuitive since people tend to default to those two buttons anyway. But what about Meifumado? It’s X and R1. Why?

Movement and aim binding is also quite weird. You can only control your character’s movements using the D-pad, which is fine. But, for some reason, aiming your ranged weapons uses the left thumbstick. Yup, not the right one. The left one. Like, if you’re not gonna let us move while we’re aiming, then why not have both be controlled by the left thumbstick alone?

There are various other problems with the keybinding for gamepad, yes. But, none of this should have been an issue if you can change the keymapping. That’s because, no, you can’t change it. You’re stuck with those controls.

Fortunately, the keyboard and mouse controls are much better. Unfortunately, not even that is free from sin, because for some reason the game keeps detecting your gamepad even after you disconnect it from your unit. Personally, I had to disable my gamepad via the Device Manager just to force the game to switch to keyboard controls.

Various Irritating Mechanics

While Meifumado’s gameplay is pretty good, there are many things that hold it back from being great. Regrettably, while each of them are separate in nature, they can and will occur simultaneously, depending on the scenario. As you can imagine, that would create very miserable situations that will force you to cheese fights or outright avoid them to save yourself the hassle.

The most obvious design flaw is the enemy’s ability to snap onto you regardless of your position and their animation. This allows them to change direction at the last second of every attack, making combat rolls through them practically useless. Of course, this doesn’t affect things such as projectile attacks, which will still fly toward their intended paths. But it does make for a very annoying situation where much of their attacks can only be blocked, parried, or avoided (by running away).

Another issue is that Chi, which is the game’s rough equivalent of energy (not stamina), is a non-renewable resource. This would be fine if it was attached to active skills like spells in other games, it is instead used for moves like heavy attacks. In other words, once you run out of Chi and consumables to recover them, then you won’t be able to break through shielded opponents besides parrying their attacks. Why did the game exclusively attach shield-breaking attacks to a non-renewable gauge, anyway?

To add to that, consuming items that restore your health and chi take far too long and forces you to sheathe your weapon. Yeah, that means you need to unsheathe your weapon manually right after. This is a major issue considering that each consumable tends to heal for too little, giving your enemies ample opportunity to attack and possibly stunlock you to death. You heard that right. Enemies, particularly those that come with at least one partner, can take free hits by taking advantage of the game’s flinch mechanic. They can sometimes even take you from full health to zero without providing you any opportunity to roll away.

Lacks Polish. A lot of it.

Rather expectedly, Meifumado was released with a bunch of bugs in its metaphorical basket. These include bugging out the map when you try scrolling through it and mysterious cases that make your game crash.

There are also features that were obviously cut off from the final release, such as a possible player shop where you can sell your wares or exchange them for something else. Otherwise, there would be no point in being able to collect so many weapons and armors throughout the course of even a single stage.

Is Meifumado Worth It?

No, Unless You Want to Support the Dev

While Meifumado sounds like an annoying game to pick up, its only real, bulging issue is its heinous gamepad controls. Everything else can be learned on the fly (mileage may vary). However, that would require a lot of time, effort, and commitment to playing a game that was released in such a state. Plus, the game is very short. Inordinately so for a title sold for a cent short of $15.

It’s a shame that Kickstarter couldn’t provide the developer with funds. In a vacuum you’re better off picking up another game until Meifumado receives the polish it so desperately needs. But, if you’re interested in the game or want to help the developer fund it, feel free to get it!

Platform	Price
Steam	$14.99

Meifumado FAQ

Is Meifumado on Early Access?

Meifumado isn’t on Early Access, which is kind of strange considering its rough release. Hopefully, though, the developer will earn enough to polish the game further.

Will Meifumado be released on consoles?

The developer has plans on releasing it on consoles, but it’s currently suspended indefinitely. They did say that they’re determined to release it within 2024, though.

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Meifumado Product Information

Title	MEIFUMADO
Release Date	July 18, 2024
Developer	Old Bit Studio
Publisher	Old Bit Studio
Supported Platforms	PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Genre	Action RPG
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	N/A
Official Website	Meifumado Website