Blood Will Tell

Blood Will Tell: Tezuka Osamu's Dororo, released as Dororo (どろろ) in Japan, is a 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.

Story

The game is divided into nine parts :

Prologue: Hyakkimaru

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 cut-scene 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 cut scene, Hyakkimaru saves a group of people from demons. A girl from the group introduces herself as "the world famous thief" Dororo. Dororo 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.

Chapter 1: Yudai

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 so that her secret may be kept.

Chapter 2: Dragon Brood

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.

Chapter 3: In the Belly of the Mountain

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 obese 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. After defeating the demon, Hyakkimaru regains his sense of pain.

Chapter 4: The Wall

Hyakkimaru and Dororo arrive at a place known as "The Wall". It is here that he meets Snake Eye 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 Snake Eye 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.

Chapter 5: Legion

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), Hyakki 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 and continues to attack him. After Dororo and Hyakkimaru reunite and defeat the old man (another Fiend known as Redcap), they escape the mountain. But Snake Eye Saburota has been keeping tabs on them throughout and has plans for the revenge-obsessed Misaki.

Chapter 6: Gates of Hell

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 before Hyakkimaru learns the truth about his curse. After confronting Daigo, Hyakkimaru and Dororo leave the temple and the town.

Chapter 7: Tragedy

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 Hyakki was told about by the voice at the beginning of the game. This person 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.

Chapter 8: Final Chapter

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 since Chapter 7 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. Hyakki performs the exorcism technique and confronts the Fiend contained within her: the largest Fiend yet, the Behemoth. After a four-part boss battle, Hyakki defeats the Fiend, recovers his arm and embraces the successfully exorcised Dororo.

Characters

• Hyakkimaru - A cursed samurai which 48 parts of his body parts were given to the 48 Fiends in exchange of their demonic powers offered to Kagemitsu Daigo, now the young samurai wants to slay all 48 fiends and recover his body, becoming a normal human.
• Kagemitsu Daigo - A Feudal Lord who sold 48 parts of the body of his son (Hyakkimaru) to the Fiends in exchange of power and invunerability which made Daigo win numerous battles.
• Dororo - A young thief who follows Hyakkimaru, out of interest and the possibility of wealth (and a sword). Each chapter of the game has a sequence where you control Dororo, and she defeats one of the Fiends (Dragon Tank) by herself.
• The 48 Fiends - A countless legion of demons who entered into a pact with Kagemitsu Daigo to rule the world, using him as their puppet.
• Jyukai - A kindly doctor and science genius who found and saved Hyakkimaru when he was just an infant, Jyukai was coming from China and he found the infant Hyakkimaru hanging on a beg in a river, Jyukai raised him and restored Hyakkimaru's missing body parts with prostheses and powerful weaponry like machine guns and canons.
• Misaki - A kind and beautiful maiden who becomes obsessed with revenge after her brother (possessed by a demonic sword) is slain by Hyakkimaru, in truth her brother offered himself to the demonic sword, Dragon brood which killed him, Hyakkimaru tried to save him but was too late, now Misaki seeks Hyakkimaru. In the end she realises that Hyakkimaru is not a murderer and she thanks him for everything.
• Tanosuke - A once honorable young samurai who became corrupted after his Lord commanded him to kill the castle's staff. His sword became possessed by a blood-thirsty Fiend and he reveled in the destruction he caused. He eventually mustered enough self-will to deprive the sword of more blood by killing himself with it.
• Mio - A young but precocious girl, orphaned by the war, who takes care of younger orphans in an old temple. She believes there is a peaceful solution to the current war-torn country. Her last words to Hyakkimaru in the end was to make the world more peaceful with no war and suffering, she then dies at the hands of a Fiend (Gapping Maw).
• The Magistrate - A greedy, overweight magistrate who has been eating the food stolen from the starving village he governs. He's actually possessed by a gluttonous Fiend who kills him after they separate.
• Tahoumaru - An honorable young man who is Daigo's son and Hyakkimaru's brother. Though initially at odds with Hyakki after he disrespects Daigo, he learns the truth of his brother's relation to him and the curse he suffers from and decides to help him.
• Snake Eyes Saburota - Initially a carefree Ronin who rooms with Hyakkimaru and Dororo at one night, Saburota wants to join Daigo for some unexplained reason. He is later revealed to be a minion of the Fiends and works for them to earn himself a heart.
• Mistress Yudai - An apparently benevolent rich woman who helps a village when they're at their most destitute, she is actually a Fiend who has been preying on the same village for centuries, perpetuating a cycle of theft and reimbursement to keep the village miserable and poor. Her unusual longevity causes no suspicion with the villagers, who believe her to be an angelic being.
• Mai-Mai Onba - A hidden Fiend with no strong influence on the game's plot, Mai-Mai Onba is a powerful moth Fiend. Her last words are the name of her human lover from the manga.

Reception

• GameSpot – 7.3.^[3]
• IGN – 6.8.^[4]

References

External links

• Blood Will Tell at MobyGames
• Official website (Japanese)
• Official page at Sega (Japanese)