There’s no shortage of party games on the Switch – the console is practically built with the genre in mind. Standing out from the crowd requires carefully balancing the rules or applying a trick to make your game unique. Or, in the case of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Sweep the Board, you can let your licensed anime property do the work for you.
A lot of effort went into making Demon Slayer – Sweep the Board feel like it belongs in the anime world. The 12 playable characters include three main characters as well as nine Hashiras representing the best of the best among the Demon Slayer Corps. They each have little interactions with each other that make them feel true to the anime version of the character – Inosuke is a rival with Tanjiro, for example.
The five panels themselves are also inspired by specific arcs in the anime, each with a different layout and different fast travel mechanics. Visually, all the boards feel unique, so there’s a lot to love here if you’re a fan of the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba anime.
However, if you get past the anime surface with Sweep the Board, the game starts to look a bit like many other Switch party games. The board layout and progression mechanics feel like Dokapon Kingdom while the minigames will rightfully be compared to Mario Party. However, while Dokapon Kingdom goes all out in establishing chaotic gameplay where every move feels unpredictable, and Mario Party offers slick, well-balanced minigames, Demon Slayer – Sweep the Board does neither.
Navigating the game board feels like a chore most of the time. Since the game is designed around a semi-cooperative story, it leaves out any way to sabotage your teammates. The only real way to interact with them is to try to get to destination fields before they do, which isn’t nearly as satisfying as casting spells or setting traps for them. Every move feels predictable, which takes a lot of the fun out of the party game format.
Similarly, the minigames aren’t all that engaging. You play one after each turn and there’s a wide enough variety that we didn’t find them overly repetitive. But none of them were that much fun – they were a chore to endure, not part of the game we celebrated. The best ones, like the fireworks, are mildly entertaining at their peak, while others, like the jump rope simulator, are frustrating due to clumsy controls.
There is a bright spot in all this mediocrity, and that is the Great Demon Battles that pop up periodically throughout the game. Reaching the starting destination during the day summons a Great Demon square which, when reached, has a chance to trigger one of these simple but fun battles. Each was taken from an anime arc, all the way up to the Swordsmith Village Arc that made up the third season of the series. Using motion controls or simple flicks of the joystick, you simulate a sword swing to destroy these epic enemies.
Battles with larger demons are not difficult. During our entire time playing Demon Slayer – Sweep the Board, we didn’t succeed in a single one, and we’re not entirely sure if it’s possible to do so. The main competitive aspect here is to earn medals for timing your attacks more accurately or faster than them. It’s easily the most fun and unique part of the game – it’s just a shame that it happens so sporadically.
There are three game modes in Sweep the Board. Singleplayer, in which you play against three characters controlled by artificial intelligence, is the most painless, but the least fun, because what good is entertainment alone? You can play against friends or strangers online as long as you have a Switch Online membership, which was fun, but comes with a number of connection issues with other players. These connection problems were so common that, in five attempts, we were never able to complete the entire online game. Someone either crashed or the game paused on random screens for a few minutes before we gave up and just restarted.
The best experience is local multiplayer, but even that can feel sluggish. There’s a frustratingly long pause between when you roll dice to determine how far you move and when your character actually starts moving around the board. It starts off barely noticeable, but after waiting a second or two four times for nine turns, you’ll be begging for a way to speed things up.
If you are an anime fan, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Sweep the Board can be a fun experience. The graphics do a reasonable job of recreating the anime’s art style, and the recreation of the climactic battles from each arc is worth experiencing once or twice. However, when you strip away the anime dress, Demon Slayer – Sweep the Board is a mediocre and occasionally frustrating party game that doesn’t get the basics of the genre right. Without the Demon Slayer characters carrying it, this would be one of the most forgettable party games on the platform. Not necessarily bad, just underwhelming in almost every way.
Conclusion
If you’re a die-hard fan of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, you and your friends might find enough enjoyment in Demon Slayer – Sweep the Board to see you through a game or two. However, unsatisfying and forgettable mini-games, icy gameplay and connection issues that made online play unusable for us largely overshadowed the positive aspects of this party game.
