I’ve been a little put out hearing some pick on Hibaru Yaju’s role in Star Successor, mostly because despite providing plenty of frustrations the sequence has become one of my favorites within the game. If sword fighting inside a reactor core with an anime samurai dream girl who offers you a date is wrong, well I don’t want to be right ever again.
Granted the sequence is strangely placed and timed and one-of-a-kind in the delivery, but isn’t that what makes Treasure so much fun to love?
It really is plenty parts Treasure eccentricity, almost like a pause in the action proper that changes the pacing entirely – I felt more than a bit like the student learning to slow down, relax, and wait for the chance to grab the stone from her hand, or in this case evade at just the right moment and strike. Defeating her tosses you straight into another boss encounter in a game that seems to possess such an incredibly strange and unique rhythm that I might never quite find the right words for what Treasure has done this time around.
If you haven’t played Star Successor yet, shame on you, but I guess you can still check out the fight after the break.