Genji: Days of the Blade is an anime-style oriental RPG for the Playstation 3. It looks stunning at rest and almost as good in motion, and some of the gameplay could have been custom-designed to show off the abilities of the PS3.

It's true that it follows a fairly tried-and-true formula, but if you've only played Western-style RPGs before then the differences in art and game mechanics will be refreshing. If you've played the first Genji game, Dawn of the Samurai, the whole thing will be very familiar. Still, there's a new plot and a couple of new characters to play with. The main characters, Yoshitsune and Benkei, are based on real characters from a legendary period of Japanese history. Sort of like Robin Hood and Little John. If you haven't played the first game, a quick bunch of cut-scenes tell you all you need to know. As is normal for these games, the plot is just something to nail a whole bunch of repetitive hack and slash action to, but it's more developed than in some RPG titles.

You'll start off with two characters and quickly work your way up to four. You take control of one at a time, and they all play very differently. Yoshitsune is a master swordsman and the character you'll spend the most time playing. His friend Benkei is a tank archetype: slow but strong. The priestess Shizuka does your ranged attacks with her yo-yo of doom and looks pretty, and Buson's staff makes a useful shield, even if he does inhabit the reanimated corpse of Yoshitsune's nemesis from the first game. Even though you can swap between characters at any point, Days of the Blade has no support for multiplayer, even two-player local co-op.

In fact, while the game is undeniably visually gorgeous and a lot of work has gone into the graphics, the same attention to detail hasn't been put into the gameplay. So there's no co-op, but when you change fabulously-detailed weapons, all your character's combat moves and animations change as well. Camera angles in particular seem to have been designed to show off just how pretty the game is, rather than to make it fun to play. This will grate on you every time the character you're playing charges straight towards the screen in fabulous 760dpi, heading for the horde of enemies apparently located just over your right shoulder.

Changing between characters does vary the combat, as does the game's nice Kamui system. Unleashing your Kamui power takes them into a very attractive out-of-time dimension. Follow the key-pressing minigame without making mistakes and you can unleash a world of hurt on multiple enemies. Later in the game you'll run across opponents who can do the same to you: hit the buttons properly and you may save your ass. While you can switch out of a character when they're injured, if just one of your party dies, it's game over.

The game's sound suits it, using traditional Japanese music and soft vocal tracks to evoke a subtle, eerie atmosphere. The soft prettiness goes with the style of the graphics, heavy in pastel shades and with no attempt at realism. You may want to switch off the English soundtrack and go for the original Japanese with subtitles, as some of the voice-work is a bit dodgy.

Like most other PS3 games, Genji: Days of the Blade makes a half-hearted attempt to make use of the Sixaxis controller. You can dodge by jerking and shaking the controller around. Tellingly, though, there's still a thumbstick devoted to dodge manoeuvres, and the special 'cocktail shaker' functionality is turned off by default.

As a game, Genji: Days of the Blade isn't breaking any new ground. It goes over the old ground solidly, though, and it does make use of the PS3's graphical capability instead of looking like a hurried PS2 port. If you haven't played this style of RPG before, it's well worth a look.