it took me about a year to finish it since I stopped two separate times for long periods of time(which was a pretty weird way of reading it I guess, I blitzed through like a third of it in a few days then stopped for like 6 months then did that again, stopped for another like 6 months, then did it again to finish it) but I finally got around to finishing Muramasa and figured i'd post some final impressions on it since I posted some in here when I started reading it
personally when it comes to VNs I have a definite type; I don't read them very often usually like 1-2 a year but when I do read a VN I like the big dramatic ones with a heavy plot focus and a lot of twists and turns and such and this lived up to that
but as for more specific stuff:
first what I would probably call it's main strength: the combat
i'm the sort of person that normally when I get to a combat scene in something my eyes will kinda glaze over a bit and i'll skim read it(and not just in VNs but with books too, and even with something visual like a movie more often than not i'll kinda zone out and half pay attention) but something about the cerebral way the combat was written with this really clicked with me, the bandit sword fight in particular stands out as something that just might be my favorite combat scene in anything i've ever read but it was overall very strong outside of that as well
my VN backlog is extremely long for the pace I read them at so it'll probably be a while before I get around to it but I definitely intend to read Hanachirasu at some point
if anyone knows of anything else aside from Hanachirasu with a similar feel to the combat i'd be interested in hearing about it whether that's another VN or even some other sort of media entirely
another area where I felt like it stood out compared to other VNs was the overall production value of it, it definitely had a feeling of having a lot more work and budget put into that area than the norm kinda like how I felt about Muv-Luv
the worldbuilding also felt pretty strong, the characters were mostly pretty good( Sorimachi probably being my personal favorite, he kinda disappeared for most of the game in between the common route and the end but I really felt like he fit the games themes well) and as a general rule humor can be pretty hit or miss but when this VN was trying to be funny it usually landed with me whether that was the moment to moment stuff or stuff like the couple dream sequences they did
it wasn't perfect, some characters felt a bit cartoonish at times like the bandit's brother and the monk in the hero route(although I felt like his character mostly worked overall by the time I finished the other routes), some of the plot points felt a bit too silly to take seriously, there were a few moments where the choices were kinda annoying, and when the philosophical stuff didn't click it had a tendency to feel a bit preachy
but overall I think it's the first VN i'd give a 9/10 to which puts it below my 10s in Fata Morgana and Saya no Uta but above the 8 I tend to put stuff that I overall really enjoyed at like Remember11/Subahibi/Umineko/Muv-Luv among others