A waste of money that doesn’t take advantage of new hardware.

December virtual reality (VR) releases have just started and already we’re off to a poor start.

Arashi: Castles of Sin – Final Cut, released Dec. 5 for the PlayStation VR2 (PSVR2) and other headsets, is a port from older gen VR headsets.

It also plays like publisher Skydance Interactive decided it was ok to write a few lines of code to make it work on the newer headset, rather than fully upgrade to take advantage of enhanced features.

Originally released in 2021, Castles of Sin allowed players to immerse themselves as Kenshiro, a Shinobi assassin, who must fight across Japan to stop the six Oni who have taken over the land. Using weapons like guns, shurikens, swords and even a giant wolf sidekick, players had to use all their prowess to overcome their enemies.

Fast-forward to 2023, and the “final cut” port of what was an award winning game, ends up being a gigantic waste of money, offering the exact same game with hardly any improvements.

Sure, the game looks decent – to a minimal extent – but swordplay is weak and repetitive, early bugs are annoying – if not breaking to a less patient player – and haptics that can add a sense of immersive play are essentially nonexistent. The game in its released state, makes one wonder if any real work was done, to improve it overall.

Upon hitting the opening screen, the game looks alright.

It’s not until you get past the comfort settings and into the story, where you get to see the overall graphics aren’t quite up to the quality of the PSVR2. In fact, once you get over playing fetch with your wolf companion Haru – and notice throwing the ball is pretty terrible – you see foliage and similar content is REALLY bad looking. At one point, a tree looked like a transparent ghost.

After the introduction from your one-eyed cousin and her mystic puff of smoke, you’re thrown right into a tutorial that doesn’t play very well. Maybe it’s just glitches, most likely it’s just done poorly, but learning what each button does comes off as annoying, as instructions appear too late or do not properly relay information.

Sure, any VR gamer knows the side buttons mean grab, but how is one supposed to understand that the “triangle” button means action for the dog, when the proper instruction doesn’t appear in the fancy scroll on screen. Instead it opted to appear as a shadowy controller with a highlighted button AFTER you needed to perform an action.

Issues are persistent through the game, the biggest glitch encountered comes with movement around the terrain.

Thankfully, locomotion is implemented here – teleportation is instead relegated to “jumping” with a transition. However, one of the biggest bugs encountered seems to be what can only be described as the game pulling you when you try to transition from walking forward to strafing (moving side to side).

This reared its ridiculous – because it should NOT be there – head almost immediately, and shows the publisher either did not properly test the game prior to launch, or simply didn’t care.

For reference, the PS Move controllers were used in the first edition of the game, and it seems as if this updated port – which doesn’t offer movement direction to be designated by head or hand – forgot to tell the analog sticks.

Another glaring problem – besides the lackluster gameplay – is the choice to basically omit haptics.

This is also noticed as you start the game, when you try and pet the wolf and feel nothing. Lack of haptic feedback carries through for actions like shooting the grappling gun (it also omits adaptive triggers showing a difference between grappling gun and pistol), grabbing onto ladders – which glitches and doesn’t properly seem to “grab” onto anything – and actions as simple as picking up and throwing the dog’s ball.

In fact, the only time you actually feel a smidge of anything is during the VERY boring swordplay – we’ll talk more in a minute – where parrying can trigger some rumble.

Now let’s move to overall gameplay.

The game let’s you choose whether to become one with the shadows – you actually turn transparent in an effort to show the grass makes you a “ghost” – or go full on ninja-Rambo and slaughter everyone in your path.

Regardless of your approach, you will have to fight at some point. It’s here where the game gets really depressing, as the sword fighting cannot be seen as engaging.

Fighting pretty much all enemies – even bosses – can come across as bland. There is nothing making your computer generated foe intuitive to your approach. Instead, everyone seems to have the same set of moves, and once you figure out the pattern it becomes fairly obvious how to overcome.

Even facing multiple enemies who are alerted to your presence, does not instill a sense of panic, as simply moving away while following the same motions, can ensure you come out unscathed.

Trying to command Haru becomes a challenge as well – not only because of the poor tutorials mentioned earlier – but because the control seems to glitch and not allow you to easily point where she should go.

If you do manage to get her to attack the right enemy, it is helpful as one quick stab can get them out of your way.

Overall, this game is simply not worth the $39.99 price tag. In its current state it’s barely above broken, and honestly speaking, it looks like someone was very lazy in preparing this for the new generation headsets.

This should NOT be what publishers can consider ready for market, especially after the slew of bad games that have plagued the console thus far.

A headset like the PSVR2 is capable of a lot, technologically speaking. Therefore, it’s disgraceful for any developer to think releasing a game like this is worth more than a fraction of the current cost. It’s also an insult to the players who spend their money just to wind up with issues that plague them through the entire six(ish) hour campaign.

This is a game that was delayed from the original release it had earlier this year, supposedly to polish away any issues that may have been there.

In the current state, one has to wonder just how bad the game was before, if after a delay it’s still as fun as a swift kick from someone with steel toe shoes.

Plain and simple advice, don’t buy this game.

Arashi: Castles of Sin – Final Cut was reviewed after purchasing from the PlayStation store at full price.