I'm all for personal taste, but I've always been baffled by the Musou following. They just straight play like shit. They're like next gen Fighting Forces with licenses thrown on them, and everything about them is cheap and poorly made. I have someone telling me right now that apparently Hokuto No Ken 2 isn't so bad, but I straight don't believe him.
I mean, I can see the appeal in damn near everything from plane simulators, to the idolmaster, to football manager, all sorts of niche stuff, and my tastes are pretty broad as well, but Musou is supposed to be hyper mainstream and it's just straight TERRIBLE. God.
Also, yeah, I watched all of Kabuto, it's the only one I've seen though, but big fan. Which is why I really want this to be a game not made by Koei so it has at least a glimmers hope of being not garbage.
Well, from playing the demo, I can tell you that Hokuto 2 does address a lot of the major complaints you guys had about the first game, namely the sluggish controls and overall slowness of the game. However, they took out jumping for some insane reason, so I don't know...even I'm a bit baffled by that decision.
I guess the appeal of Musou, for me at least, is the "one man army" aspect of it. I like mowing down hundreds of nameless enemy mooks with impressive looking special moves and shit. It's not DMC or Bayonetta, but it serves a specific purpose and does it well enough. And there's the whole leveling aspect, as well. Working towards making your favorite character ridiculously powerful so you can do what you've been doing for the past 100 hours faster and faster. :lol It's shallow as hell, yes, but sometimes it's good to take a break from Dark Souls or Vanquish and play something a bit more mindless. And really, saying it's mindless isn't exactly true, since there's a lot of hidden depth to the games (just look at any Koei-specific forum and see some of the combat strategies/combos some people come up with...some of that stuff is too much even for me).
But yeah, I ain't tryin' to make you a fan or anything (I've already been through this whole spiel with Matt too, :lol). Just explaining my take on the whole thing.
Cool to know you like Kabuto, too. If you get some time, check out Kamen Rider W. I watched it recently, and it completely eclipsed Kabuto and Blade as my favorite Rider series. So good.