Licensed arena fighters are a solved formula these days. They give fans premium familiar material to play with, while limiting scope and costs for developers. Sometimes, projects like Kill la Kill IF and Dissidia Final Fantasy distinguish themselves with more ambitious gameplay, but most end up niche either way. Then, there are CyberConnect2's acclaimed licensed games, the latest being Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles 2. CyberConnect2 has the arena fighter formula down to a T, and Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles 2 proves that there's no need to rock the boat while it's sailing smoothly.
As with the first console Demon Slayer game, The Hinokami Chronicles 2 is an action-adventure title with an arena fighter combat system, and the balance of the two genres varies depending on the mode. These games harken back to CyberConnect2’s hit Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series, covering their source material arc-by-arc while boasting cell-shaded 3D animation only rivaled by Guilty Gear developer Arc System Works itself. Saying that Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles 2 is more of the same sounds reductive, but in this instance, it's a seal of quality that even the Demon Slayer-curious won't want to miss.
Demon Slayer Could Be the Perfect Anime to Hop On the Soulslite Train
The Soulslite genre offers an approachable yet rewarding gameplay experience, which may appeal to most of Demon Slayer's massive fanbase.
Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles 2 Pulls Players Deep Into Its Story
The main event here is the story mode, which covers the Entertainment District Arc, Swordsmith Village Arc, and Hashira Training Arc of Koyoharu Gotoge's Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba manga, bringing The Hinokami Chronicles up to the end of the anime’s fourth season. Players follow Tanjiro Kamado, his Demon-infected sister Nezuko, and their unlikely allies Zenitsu Agatsuma and Inosuke Hashibira through Japan’s countryside as they work alongside the Demon Slayer Corps’ elite Hashira to defeat increasingly powerful Demons. There won't be many surprises here for anime-current fans, but experiencing Demon Slayer’s action as a participant keeps things interesting.
In service of that, the story mode has been spruced up compared to the first Hinokami Chronicles. The whole affair is still linear, but collectibles and side quests are inserted wherever they’d fit, as well as several new types of gameplay. Several minigames are scattered across Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles 2’s runtime, like a rhythm game, and sequences where the main characters must navigate using their special talents get players involved when characters are just moving between locations. They're all just brief distractions, but they sell the premise that players are progressing through a single-player action game, and not just the story mode of another arena fighter.
Clearing the first Hinokami Chronicles’ story mode took the average player between 7 and 10 hours and Hinokami Chronicles 2 is similar.
Efforts to make this mode interesting also extend to its combat. Many fights are relatively straightforward, but there are frequent little twists to the core mechanics, health values, and enemy AI that keep things interesting. There are plenty of boss-exclusive attacks, and CyberConnect2’s use of floor-painting area-of-effect moves hasn't failed yet. Mob battles have also been brought back from Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, even if they're a bit starved for material here. And of course, CyberConnect2's praised quick-time events are back, even if they don't reach the creative height that NUNS and Asura's Wrath did.
Hinokami Chronicles 2 feels like it has one of the most mechanically solid story modes in its genre, even if it's not always the most exciting. There's a fair amount of downtime baked into this section of Demon Slayer's story, with rote traveling between areas and static cutscenes bridging gaps between fights. Moments animated with CyberConnect2’s usual flair typically interrupt plainer cutscenes, and proximity to major moments sees a sharp increase in animation, but even they can feel like they're holding back until gameplay actually starts. Still, despite its minor blemishes, Hinokami Chronicles 2 covers Demon Slayer’s middle section with all the style one expects from CyberConnect2, and ends its story mode with a suitably explosive finale.
The Hinokami Chronicles 2 Tops Its Predecessor As The Ultimate Demon Slayer Package
With all of that said, The Hinokami Chronicles 2 is just the middle of Demon Slayer’s story, and that comes with some obvious weaknesses. The ending feels conclusive enough for now, especially with the imminent release of the first Infinity Castle Arc movie, but players unfamiliar with Demon Slayer's plot, or who haven't played the first Hinokami Chronicles, will struggle to get up to speed. A new mode titled The Path of a Demon Slayer collects six of the first game's pivotal fights, and even introduces a new hard mode for them, but players will have to fill in some plot gaps themselves.
Even though the Hinokami Chronicles series will likely feel its best when its presumed trilogy of story modes is played back to back, The Hinokami Chronicles 2 includes plenty of additions that make this sequel a marked improvement over the original. Training Paths, the replacement to the first game’s increasingly tough Training trials, provides The Hinokami Chronicles 2 with functional arcade ladders complete with bonus conditions and plenty of unlockables. Character unlock keys are sometimes among them, so players looking to make meaningful progress without story mode have options.
Online play was not available during the review period, but custom lobbies are in The Hinokami Chronicles 2 at launch, and the more recent Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections did have more stable netcode than Hinokami Chronicles 1. Don't expect any rollback netcode or crossplay, though. In every mode but ranked matchmaking, players can now bring in Gear loadouts that confer conditional bonuses during matches. Some of these have serious potential, so experimenting with them while grinding out the new character Mastery levels for further unlockables will likely be where long-term players end up. With plenty of new online Slayer ID decorations to gain in the process, there are lots to see and do after the story's over.
Throughout story mode and regular gameplay, players will accumulate Kimetsu Points to spend on Gear and other items in a shop menu.
The experience wouldn't be complete without a top-notch presentation, and CyberConnect2 delivers. Japanese and English voice tracks accompany original music and songs from Demon Slayer’s anime, while sound effects help the vibrant battle animations hit hard. Hinokami Chronicles 2 benefits from the jump to current-gen hardware, sporting a solid 60fps on the base PS5 that makes gameplay look and feel better than ever before. It's unclear if Ultimate Arts run at the same framerate or drop to 30, but that's forgivable when Dual Ultimates and alternative Ultimates have essentially doubled the number of these hyper-animated supers. Battles can become too visually noisy and characters judder strangely when they turn, but those are small potatoes in a game that's otherwise a visual feast.
Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles 2 Picks Its Battles Carefully
Battles aren't an afterthought, even if they play second fiddle to building an authentic Demon Slayer experience. The battle system is mostly identical to the first Hinokami Chronicles, with either two-person teams or solo-only fighters engaging in fast-paced brawls in circular arenas. Dual Ultimates, Gear loadouts, and a couple of preset Demon teams are the closest thing to new mechanics, but the easy-to-learn, hard-to-master action holds up. Cutting three super meter stocks and three default rounds down to two each makes battles feel faster and more frantic, and the additional ease of character switching helps offense keep pace with Hinokami Chronicles’ many defensive mechanics.
There are other changes, like max-length “blue” combo timers becoming harder to prompt, and heavy attacks changing their input while also gaining combo properties, but it's easier to recount what hasn't changed. Some characters are considerably more distinct than others, but there are a lot of similar movesets that are mostly differentiated by a single unique skill. That's a problem many arena fighters share, however, and The Hinokami Chronicles has a more pressing Demon issue to slay. Fighting alone is typically lore-accurate and provides an expanded move pool, but now that two established Demon pairings have team versions, and some new heroes can't buddy up, it's past time to let everyone either go solo or share the powerful tag mechanics.
Mid-combo offensive tags now extend combo timers by about 25%, so solo fighters are even more disadvantaged.
The game's roster has over 40 character slots as advertised, but eight of those 46 are taken up by Academy skins. These are more intricate than the large wardrobes the main heroes have built up, but are ultimately just cosmetics. Only two Academy characters are actually new, and only eleven normal fighters have joined them, with the remaining cast being the aforementioned Demon duos and everyone returning from the first Hinokami Chronicles and its ample DLC. Infinity Castle Arc representatives should creep in post-launch to make the newcomer ensemble more impressive, but with other oddities like Tanjiro evoking Goku and Naruto by taking up five slots, the awkwardness plaguing many licensed arena fighter rosters has reared its ugly head again.
Setting aside infestations of Demons and Slayers, Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles 2 is a good time. It's best for fans, and it's not going to convert any new arena fighter fans, but The Hinokami Chronicles 2 is undoubtedly the new standard for Demon Slayer games, and it does the material justice. CyberConnect2’s prestige animation is the star and its decades of designing interactive narrative experiences and action combat also show through, even if the studio is playing things safe. Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles 2 is a smooth ride through familiar territory, and it doesn't need to be anything else.
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Action
- Successfully covers Demon Slayer?s middle arcs in a form anyone can appreciate
- Jaw-dropping 3D assets and animation
- Meaningfully improved over the first game; there's more modes worth playing after the main story
- It's safe to a fault in story adaptation and gameplay
- There's combat depth, but it?s not clearly surfaced to the player
- Teams have built-in advantages over solo fighters
- There?s no reason not to have rollback netcode, especially with a ranked mode
Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles 2 releases August 1, 2025 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The Best War Games was provided a PS5 code for this review.