This Week In Retro: Asura's Wrath (Patreon)

Previously on This Week In Retro: Japanese video game publisher Sega releases a big-budget science-fiction shooter, Binary Domain, to lukewarm reviews overseas and underwhelming sales. The failure of Binary Domain adds fuel to the already-popular opinion that Japanese game development is past its prime and woefully lagging behind the work being done in other nations.

This Week: Another Japanese video game giant gambles on big, bold action and things don't work out as planned, only serving to further convince critics that they are right and Japan's status as a gaming superpower is doomed. Who screwed up, and what went wrong? Stay tuned to This Week In Retro to find out!

February 21, 2012: Don't make a demigod angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

by Diamond Feit

Considering the relative youth of video games as a medium (the first commercial arcade title just turned 50 in 2021), it is remarkable how many times the method by which most people purchase and consume games has changed during that time. Arcades went from the forefront of gaming to a secondary market to a niche outlet. We used to have to buy plastic cartridges in toy stores to play games at home, but they were replaced by compact discs and then Blu-rays and eventually pure data sent via the internet became the standard. Of course, that's assuming anyone still "buys" games anymore, since many of them require no money up front, relegating purchases to an in-game store that offers special items, cosmetic alterations, or pin-up images of popular characters.

These transitions have come hand-in-hand with the ever-changing ways people engage with video games. The arcade experience was brief, either competing against another player directly or challenging oneself to reach the top of the machine's high score list. It took years for games to even have an "ending" but once that became the norm, suddenly people were willing to invest hours of their time plodding away to "beat" a game, be it at the arcades or sitting at home. Meanwhile, today the concept of games as a "service" is widespread, as the key to maintaining an audience is to ensure that the experience never ends. My most-played games in 2022 are Fortnite, Magic: The Gathering Arena, and Vampire Survivors, none of which have a final boss to defeat or princess to rescue.

Amidst all these paradigm shifts, one frontier has remained on the fringe, explored by a brave few but unembraced by the majority: Episodic games released in smaller chunks over time. Considering the broad acceptance of television shows operating in just such a piecemeal fashion, I find it mysterious that so few games have tried the long-form approach, especially now when streaming services debut more episodes of television every single day than any human could hope to watch in their lifetime.

On this "episode," let us consider that ten years ago Capcom and CyberConnect2 created Asura's Wrath, a video game very much presented as a TV series telling a single story in discreet 20-minute (give or take) segments. The game is so devoted to the television format that each episode includes on-screen credits, an act break in the middle where commercials might be placed, then ends with a "to be continued" caption before showing a preview for the next installment.

In short, Asura's Wrath is a self-contained anime, an 18-episode "season" of over-the-top action that races its engines at maximum speed and continuously raises the stakes. I couldn't summarize the plot if I tried, but rest assured that every episode features the eponymous Asura absolutely tearing apart everything in his path no matter what. The premiere has him leap out of an orbiting space vessel, freefalling and blasting monsters as he descends. Many of his targets are significantly larger than Asura but this doesn't slow his assault in the least; if anything, fighting gargantuan foes only disgusts him more and drives him to deliver stronger blows.

As a pure spectacle, Asura's Wrath seeks to overwhelm the audience with set-piece after set-piece. As a video game, it mixes things up by switching between shooting segments, brawling segments, dramatic cutscenes, and button-mashing quick-time events. Asura may be a one-note character, a ridiculously macho man with arms made of steel and a permanent scowl on his face, but the game never allows players to spend too long in one place or repeat a single action too many times. Despite his nearly-divine power, Asura's adventures often position him as the underdog, a desperate man struggling against astronomical odds to reach his goal. This goes a long way towards keeping him somewhat relatable, even as he grows new limbs and performs impossible feats of strength.

Laid out in text like this, Asura's Wrath sounds like a slam-dunk of a game, a forward-thinking kinetic dynamo neatly divided into digestible chunks for easy enjoyment. Japan's Famitsu magazine certainly saw things that way, awarding the game a near perfect score of 38 out of 40. Unfortunately, Asura's Wrath found a much cooler reception abroad, as positive reviews came tempered with caveats and some critics panning it outright.

Where did Asura's Wrath fall short? A common complaint is that the roller coaster ride, for all its ups and downs, simply ends too soon. Despite its episodic nature, Asura's Wrath was packaged and released as a full-priced AAA product on store shelves, yet a complete playthrough clocks in at just over five hours. A bigger concern is that much of that runtime is spent watching rather than playing the game, as the cinematic cutscenes in Asura's Wrath last about as long as the action scenes. There's also the lingering issue that always revolves around quick-time events as to whether or not pressing a button to advance the story even counts as "gameplay."

What I find ironic about the ho-hum reception of Asura's Wrath is that within two months of its release, a very different episodic game would receive near-unanimous praise and become the absolute talk of the town. Telltale's The Walking Dead is downright sedate when compared to the fireworks seen in Asura's Wrath, but the quiet drama and memorable characters of the tragic zombie apocalypse made it a must-play experience. The Walking Dead also benefited from its actual episodic release, spreading its five chapters across six months of the year, and turning each new installment into a mini-hype party.

Would Asura's Wrath have fared better as a digitally-released series of episodes instead of Capcom asking consumers for $60 up front? Such an approach would have made headlines for sure, especially if the first episode was a free download (as The Walking Dead later did on iOS and PlayStation Plus). However, it's hard to imagine Japanese executives approving such a plan in 2012, before any of them had access to Netflix or Amazon Prime. Today, streaming video services are downright mainstream in Japan, but ten years ago they were only popular abroad and functionally invisible.

I cannot pass judgment on Asura's Wrath for I never grabbed a controller to experience it firsthand. I can watch complete playthroughs on YouTube, broken into episodes just as the developers intended, but I cannot tell you if the ratio of interactive gameplay to passive spectation is sufficient. Even if I had played Asura's Wrath, I couldn't tell you if it justifies its price of admission, because everyone has their own personal barometer for deciding monetary value. I've certainly spent far more than $60 to experience far less than a demigod taking on a series of near-omnipotent heavies.

The only thing I can say with absolute certainty is that Asura's Wrath took chances that few others would dare to embrace. Whether it succeeded or failed in its experimentation is not my call, but it must have fallen short of Capcom's sales expectations, for it never saw any subsequent ports or re-releases onto modern systems. That strikes me as tragic, for if mediocre offerings like Dark Void or 2009's Bionic Commando can make their way to Steam and find an audience, I'm positive that Asura's Wrath deserves at least that much. Do either of those other games include a battle against a Galactus-sized foe capable of crushing a city with his finger? Can you even imagine how Rad Spencer could conceivably defeat such an opponent?

Asura's Wrath does, because Asura is angry.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.