Introduction

In Media Res (Watch this first)

Optional Introductory Videos
For the sake of giving the game a better first impression, I cut out a sizable chunk of unskippable gameplay from the very beginning. We went back and took a look at the unedited opening of the game for the sake of completion and morbid curiosity, and so can you with this supplementary video, but I don't recommend it.

There's also a lengthy cinematic that plays before the game's title screen. It skips badly on my copy of the game and I can't record it, but it's on YouTube here.
Opening Cinematic

Now, a little bit about what you've just seen...

Blood Will Tell is a Playstation 2 exclusive action game from 2004 adapting the unique premise of a classic series. Using the backstory and characters from Dororo, it tells a captivating story with its own take on the source material and is especially notable for having dozens of boss fights. It received mostly middling reviews upon release and quickly faded into obscurity, but a young Fiendly caught wind of it and was so enthralled by the absurdity of its hero's situation and enticed by the promise of so many bosses that the title never left my mind, even in the many intervening years in which I didn't play it (even though I owned it for several of those years). Finally, nearly a full decade later, I gave it the chance it deserved, had exactly the reaction I'd been expecting all along, and knew I had to share it.

Dororo was originally a manga series that ran through 1967-1968 created by Osamu Tezuka, an artist known the world over for works like Astro Boy and bearer of titles such as "Godfather of Anime" and "The Japanese Walt Disney." This story focuses on a boy named Hyakkimaru on a quest to defeat the 48 Fiends that are each responsible for robbing him of a body part, along the way meeting a younger boy named Dororo who fancies himself a master thief. The story was adapted into a 26-episode anime series in the year following the manga's completion, then lay dormant for a full 35 years before some genius at SEGA realized its potential to make a badass video game. We're obviously going to be focusing on that incarnation of the tale, but I will be covering its ancestors as we go through it, as well as the live action film that followed a few years later.

About This LP
Joining me will be various guests throughout the chapters, all of whom will be mostly blind to the game's twists and turns. We will of course be taking on all 48 Fiends in hopes of seeing our hero made whole again, including many hidden Fiends which will require the occasional return trip to a completed chapter to find and slay. We are unlikely to collect all the weapons due to the luck-based method of their acquisition, but they're honestly pretty samey anyway.

With the introductions out of the way, our journey can now properly begin...

Chapters

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Part 1 - Part 2

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Hidden Fiends

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Part 1 - Part 2 - Hidden Fiends 2

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Dororo Mode - Gallery Videos & Art - Sword Showcase

Encyclopedia
Every Demon and Fiend in the game has an entry in the Encyclopedia. After each chapter, the entries for all enemies first encountered in that chapter will be compiled and posted here, along with what body part they restore upon defeat and information on what traditional monsters they are based on where applicable.

Yokai Corner
Zain's series of short videos about the attributes and nature of specific yokai, not necessarily ones that appear in this game, but still relevant and interesting to anyone who appreciates the game's numerous yokai allusions.
Rokuro-kubi
Kappa
Kama-Itachi
Bake-Kujira
Yuki-Onna
Gasha-Dokuro

The Let's Play Archive

Blood Will Tell: Tezuka Osamu's Dororo

by Fiendly

Introduction