also known as Blood Will Tell - Tezuka Osamu's Dororo
PlayStation 2
🇯🇵
Reviewed in 2004
80
✪ Reviewed on June 18, 2025
74
An action-adventure inspired by Tezuka Osamu's manga where a samurai progressively loses his limbs, replaced by demon weapons. The original premise and dark world are captivating. Combat is satisfying despite a temperamental camera. A cult adaptation.
Your verdict
Category
Action1 player16+
Description
A 2004 action-adventure from Sega and Red Entertainment, adapted from Osamu Tezuka's Dororo manga. You play as Hyakkimaru, whose body has been stolen in 48 pieces by demons; each boss defeated restores one part and gradually reshapes his combat abilities.
Dororo review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
3/5
Music
★★★★★
"Memorable"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
Adapted from Osamu Tezuka's manga, the game depicts a feudal Japan haunted by demons. The art direction conveys the hero's macabre concept, a young man deprived at birth of forty-eight parts of his body, fitted with weapon-prostheses: blades hidden in the arms, mechanical limbs, a silhouette half-man half-weapon. Dark prints and monsters inspired by the Japanese bestiary compose a cruel, strange tale.
Sold by his father to forty-eight demons in exchange for power, Hyakkimaru sets out to reclaim his body piece by piece. Each demon slain returns a limb, a sense, an organ, in a quest for humanity as literal as it is symbolic. Accompanied by the young thief Dororo, he crosses a war-ravaged Japan, the story blending filial vengeance with a questioning of what makes us human.
A Sega action adventure adapted from Osamu Tezuka's manga, Blood Will Tell follows Hyakkimaru, a warrior deprived of forty-eight parts of his body by demons, who reclaims his humanity by slaying them one by one. The concept of bodily reconquest, the dark feudal Japan mood and the varied combat give the adventure a real identity. The dated handling and a fickle camera have aged. An endearing curiosity for fans of atypical action and devotees of Tezuka's work.
