Samurai Maiden - Chapter 2 | A Prophetic Dream

The second stage of the game. Apparently we got separated from two of the shinobis, so now only Iyo is with us and only her one partner attack is available.

The weapons can be upgraded in the preparation menu with currency earned in gameplay known as “Inga.” For now I only have enough Inga to level the MC’s sword once, which boosted her HP slightly.

There are quite some dialogues before the stage, though none of the information there is noteworthy, so I’ll just move on to the stage itself. The stage introduces a new mechanic where you can hold then release R2 to activate a “Ninja Tool.” The only one I had was the one where you can aim toward a location for Iyo to SLOWLY carry a bomb and run toward the destination to detonate it. It’s slow and doesn’t do much damage, so I don’t see much use in it. There are some chests you can open in this stage, and one of them gave me another Ninja Tool that is a Recovery Urn that heals you when you put it down and are close to it. There are also “memory fragments” from the chests that are just the design concepts for the characters.

You fight some skeleton peons as well as two more giant spear skeleton bosses from Chapter 1 in this stage because… good enemy variety? After some platforming in a cave area, you encounter flying skulls and some disturbing-looking slime enemies that frankly triggered my motion sensitivity. Idk, slimy enemies like these and the Chus from 3D Zelda games will just cause that to me for some reason. One of them is larger and I think serves as a miniboss, who has some AoE attacks that are slow and pretty easy to dodge.

There are also some glowy shrine things here that full-heal you and might serve as checkpoints. The stage ends with an armored version of the previous giant spear skeletons, who has similar attacks but seems more aggressive. It goes down pretty quickly and can even be stunned by simply attacking it.

No dialogue event after the stage. But since I’ve gotten enough bond levels with Iyo, a bond event with her unlocks, and seeing these bond events seems to be the way to unlock more moves for Tsumugi’s moveset.