Preface: Not Actually R18
The game we'll be talking about here, Kannagi Usagi, has the immediately-noticeable distinction of being marked with "Frequent Nudity or Sexual Content" on the Steam store. This classification is voluntarily chosen by the developer themselves and generally indicates an explicit, adult-only product. However, Kannagi Usagi has neither nudity nor explicit sexual content, and I'd venture to guess that the developer might have opted to classify their game with this flag as a "better safe than sorry" measure. Kannagi Usagi, while generally tame, does contain panty shots and jiggle physics (roughly equivalent to your standard ESRB M-rated anime game), and if either of those are a factor for you to pass on a game, consider this your advance warning!
Under the Surface
Now that I've explained why this game might not show up in your Steam Store by default, let's dive in. 巫兎 - KANNAGI USAGI -, or henceforth more simply Kannagi Usagi, is a boss rush game cribbing Sekiro's combat almost wholesale. On the surface, the game might unflatteringly appear like shovelware: featuring Unity prefab assets, royalty-free music, and character models reportedly constructed in VRoid Studio. But it's not.
The game is a competent, compact, purpose-built Sekiro combat simulator. You play as a rabbit-girl shrine maiden (a sort of... kannagi usagi, so to speak) armed with a sword and healing flask, tasked with defeating eight (yes, eight--the last one is secret) bosses, each with unique fighting styles and methods of approach. The game's structure is deadly efficient: the hub zone provides access to teleports to each boss arena; choose one and the fight is on. Death means the choice of instant restart or a return to the hub zone. Outside of the final boss unlocking after all seven others are defeated, the only form of progression is your clear times and rank for each boss you've beaten. No RPG mechanics, no grinding, no upgrades. It's just you and the boss, practicing as much as you need to claim your win. This no-nonsense approach is exactly what makes Kannagi Usagi so easy to spend time with.
Sekiro-lite
As for the actual gameplay? Brilliant. Chef's kiss. Credit to FromSoft for making such a solid system, and to Kannagi Usagi's developer Tonoji for replicating it so faithfully while also designing original bosses that take advantage of the mechanics. I'm playing Version 1.1.1, as I understand that bosses from earlier versions that at one point more directly resembled certain Sekiro bosses have been revised to play more distinctly. Anyway, the bosses strike that perfect balance of feeling impossible on first attempt (and second, and third, et cetera) yet are in reality perfectly beatable.
Or maybe "solvable" is the right term. In classical soulslike fashion, each boss is just as much about understanding what their fight demands as it is the actual execution. The rhythm and movement of each boss in Kannagi Usagi is reinforced thematically by how they look and behave, making it a joy to learn each boss front and back, knowing that the next challenge will be completely different.
Kannagi Usagi is, funnily enough, my first exposure to Sekiro's combat. My first hour or so with the game, I was with a friend who had beaten Sekiro and was able to explain the games' similarities. From what I understand, Kannagi Usagi, while solid in its own right, is far surpassed by the FromSoft title that inspired it, which gets me all kinds of excited. That's right--the funny anime rabbit game has convinced me how much I need to play Sekiro more than any review or advertisement ever could. That's how my brain works.
The Joy of the Grind
Over the span of the roughly four hours I've spent with the game, I've beaten all of the bosses and practiced some of my favorites to improve my clear times and rankings. As of writing I have cleared every boss with either A or B rankings--better than the many C-ranks I got on my first attempts, but leaving plenty of room to improve to S-rank if I choose to return to the game later. Even with my suboptimal A-rank play, it's immensely satisfying to see myself elegantly take down bosses that had given me so much trouble before. When practiced, the gameplay can appear effortless, even if in reality I'm sweating bullets trying to keep up with the reads for each opponent's flurries of attacks.
I'll stop here, but suffice to say Kannagi Usagi engaged me in a way that continually motivated me to practice and improve against seemingly impossible odds. The soulslike addictive sense of overcoming difficulty through your own skill alone is very much present in this game. And it makes me all the more excited to get more of it with Sekiro when the time is right.