| Blood Will Tell | |
|---|---|
European cover art
| |
| Developer(s) | Sega Red Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Director(s) | Kenichi Imaeda |
| Designer(s) | Masamoto Morita |
| Artist(s) | Hiroaki Samura (character design/cover art) Mahiro Maeda (Fiend design) Keita Amemiya (logo design) |
| Composer(s) | Isao Tomita |
| Series | Dororo |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation 2 |
| Release |
|
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Blood Will Tell: Tezuka Osamu's Dororo, released as Dororo (どろろ) in Japan, is a 2004 PlayStation 2 game released by Sega. It is based on the Japanese manga series Dororo, which was created by Osamu Tezuka. It concerns a hero named Hyakkimaru, who has had much of his body stolen by forty-eight fiends, and has prosthetic replacements. Along with his ally, the thief Dororo, Hyakkimaru must defeat all forty-eight fiends.
The game is divided into nine parts:
Both Dororo and Hyakkimaru are playable characters. After a tutorial in which Jyukai teaches Hyakkimaru (and the player) how to use his weapons, Hyakkimaru reaches an isolated village attacked by demons led by a fiend, the Great Horn. After slaying the fiend, Hyakkimaru gets back his vocal cords, and a cutscene shows the player the story of Hyakkimaru's birth.
The land was in the midst of a war created by the fiends. One day, the heaven gods decided to send a child, a Chosen One, to slay the fiends. The demon gods counter-attacked by corrupting the child's father, samurai Kagemitsu Daigo. In exchange for "the power to bring back peace to the land", each of the fiends takes a body part from the baby, who is then abandoned by his father.
After the cutscene, Hyakkimaru saves a group of people from demons. A girl from the group introduces herself as "the world famous thief" Dororo. The thief is later saved by the samurai from another fiend, the Homonculus. Hyakkimaru wins another body part, his left eye, and tells Dororo what he knows of his past.
He had been found and raised by a physician, Jyukai, who built his prosthetic body parts. At the age of 18, Hyakkimaru heard a voice from the heavens, who told him that the fiends created a human with the stolen body parts, and that Hyakkimaru could get back what was stolen from him if he killed the forty-eight fiends or their human creation.
Hyakkimaru and Dororo come across a small, poor village full of people who are led by a woman named Mistress Yudai, who is actually a fiend who steals their money. Mistress Yudai has three forms: a kindly woman, a large ugly demon named Scourge, and another demon form named Ogress. A troll spirit helped the villagers find their money in a bamboo thicket, but Mistress Yudai demanded that anyone who saw this troll be brought to her and executed. Unbeknownst to the villagers however it is to keep her secret hidden.
After defeating Yudai, Hyakkimaru and Dororo come across a ronin named Tanosuke in a desert-like area. This ronin wields a sword known as Dragon Brood, which is possessed by one of the fiends that had stolen Hyakkimaru's body parts. After Hyakkimaru defeats the masterless samurai, he flees. Dororo follows him and steals his sword. Dragon Brood tells Dororo to kill to satisfy its thirst for blood, which causes Dororo to attack Tanosuke's sister Misaki. However, Hyakkimaru arrives in time to take the sword out of Dororo's hands. Tanosuke reclaims the sword and fights Hyakkimaru, but sacrifices himself to Dragon Brood after being defeated again. Hyakkimaru destroys the blade and regains his spine overwhelming Misaki with grief for her brother in the process. Misaki angrily calls Hyakkimaru a murderer, the latter of which tells Misaki to not let Tanosuke's sacrifice go to waste. The duo heads forward as Misaki sobs because her brother is dead.
Hyakkimaru and Dororo travel to Daidara Mountain and arrive at a temple, where they meet Tahoumaru and Kagemitsu Daigo. Afterward, they come to a village and see Daigo and the magistrate. Dororo follows the magistrate to his hideout in a nearby cave, where she is knocked out and captured after seeing the magistrate eating. Hyakkimaru rescues Dororo, whereupon they return to the mountain to fight various parts of the demon concealed within, Mountainous. After defeating the demon, Hyakkimaru regains his sense of pain.
Hyakkimaru and Dororo arrive at a place known as "The Wall". It is here that he meets Snake Eyes Saburota, and again encounters Daigo and Tahoumaru. He fights a three-tailed fox, then fights a group of soldiers and saves two children, whom Dororo guides home. While she is doing this, Hyakkimaru finds Daigo's manor, where he fights the six-tailed fox. After the battle, Hyakkimaru is temporarily trapped by barriers set up by the "nine-tailed fox". After destroying the barriers, he fights Saburota in a battle which is cut short. He returns to the town and fights Tahoumaru, whom he falsely believes he has knocked out. The nine-tailed fox appears and tells him that the man is his brother. Hyakkimaru also realizes that Daigo is his father. Tahoumaru helps Hyakkimaru defeat the fox, but threatens to kill him if he interferes with Daigo's plans.
Hyakkimaru, out of concern for Dororo's safety, dissolves their partnership and continues up a snowy path alone, killing demons as he goes. Dororo, meanwhile, finds a temple with an odd old man caretaking it. After sneaking into the basement, Dororo discovers a cult of literally faceless individuals worshipping a Fiend called Legion, who has collected all their faces and uses their endless suffering to increase his power. After telepathically informing Hyakkimaru of the discovery (and Dororo's capture), Hyakkimaru makes his way to a frozen waterfall and defeats Legion. Along the way he is hounded by the distraught Misaki (from Chapter 2) who has still not forgiven Hyakkimaru for killing her brother, Tanosuke, and continues to attack him. After Dororo and Hyakkimaru reunite and defeat the old man (the latter of which is another Fiend known as Redcap), they escape the mountain. But Snake Eyes Saburota has been keeping tabs on them throughout and has plans for the revenge-obsessed Misaki.
After fighting a Fiend-possessed Misaki (who promptly vanishes and becomes an optional Fiend for an earlier chapter) Saburota challenges Hyakkimaru to discover the truth of his curse at the nearby village's cursed temple, known colloquially as "The Gates of Hell". After passing through the demon-infested town and a cursed forest that causes wanderers to become lost, Hyakkimaru and Dororo come across the Gates of Hell. Dororo is separated from Hyakkimaru and sneaks into the temple from the roof using the nearby architecture. They fight off a Fiend-possessed horse of Daigo's named Midoro before Hyakkimaru learns the truth about his curse. After confronting Daigo, Hyakkimaru and Dororo leave the temple and the town.
Deciding to fight Daigo and his ambitions, Hyakkimaru and Dororo make it to Daigo's impressive castle built with slave labor over Chapter 4's North Town. Working their way through the traps, Dororo splits off to rescue the slave workers in the basement (as well as a reformed Tahoumaru, who has decided to help the duo) while Hyakkimaru goes on ahead and defeats more Fiends. He also meets Saburota for the last time, who reveals he was created by the Fiends to fight Hyakkimaru but is not the human composed of his body parts that Hyakkimaru was told about by the voice. This person created by the bodyparts of Hyakkimaru is revealed to be, in fact, Dororo. At the top of the tower, Hyakkimaru must fight his father after he is possessed by five Fiends at once, creating the monstrous Chimera. His father survives, but the ghosts of all the dead Fiends then surge towards Dororo. They are instead intercepted by a protective Tahoumaru. Hyakkimaru then must kill his possessed brother to rid the world of the Fiends once and for all. The tragedy convinces Daigo to pursue more peaceful solutions to unifying the country.
Unlocked upon destroying every single hidden Fiend, granting Hyakkimaru all body parts besides one. Because Hyakkimaru was reluctant to kill Dororo for the last body part (his right arm), he has spent the next five years to build up his spiritual energy sufficiently to draw out the Fiend from Dororo and defeat it. Dororo in the meantime has grown to become a beautiful young warrior maiden. Hyakkimaru performs the exorcism technique and confronts the Fiend contained within her: the largest Fiend yet, the Behemoth. Hyakkimaru defeats the Fiend straight after, recovers his arm and embraces the successfully exorcised Dororo.
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | 67/100[1] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| Edge | 6/10[2] |
| Electronic Gaming Monthly | 6.83/10[3] |
| Eurogamer | 7/10[4] |
| Famitsu | 30/40[5] |
| Game Informer | 5/10[6] |
| GamePro |    [7] |
| GameRevolution | C−[8] |
| GameSpot | 7.3/10[9] |
| GameSpy | [10] |
| GameZone | 6/10[11] |
| IGN | 6.8/10[12] |
| Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine | [13] |
| The Sydney Morning Herald | [14] |
The game received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.[1] In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 30 out of 40.[5]
