I'm playing the demo and have seen the bugs people are talking about.

Wouldn't be so bad if my guy wasn't so easy to damage with little bug and frog bites.

So I have a few questions about this game:

1. Is it an open ended sandbox game or broken into levels. If levels, how many?

2. Do I upgrade my stats or get healing armor or any type of armor that will make little bugs and frogs less dangerous?

The game is challenging, I will give it that and so it sticks to old school tradition but is there any sort of RPG element that will allow me to grind or build myself up so that I can go back and get through various territories easier?

You can upgrade some stats like damage resistance/damage done by the katana/etc as you play and kill enemies....every so many enemies you get a skill point to spend.

Can't redo areas though. And yes armor is in some areas later on, but can be worn away with damage.

And for bugs just use melle/fists at first or shotgun when you get it.

So the game is broken into levels? Gamespot review mentioned Daikatana being a decent length.

It's not too bad but if the whole game is like that opening swamp level and my character never really upgrades to much more, it might be a painstakingly difficult game to get to the end of.

Episode 1 is bloody awful, by all standards.
E2. is the best.
E3 is good.
E4 is so so.

If you manage to reach E2, the rest tends to be smoother. There are some design inconsitencies through the game though. Like there are medstations and health fountains in the first couple of episodes and there are no similar resources in the other 2.

Occasionally, there are some really anoying jump puzzles too (particularly very late in the game).

Overall, Daikatana isn't the worst game ever, it's just average.

The only good part about episode one is that it's linear as hell so you can't get lost or worry about getting certain items. The other episodes have branching paths where you may have to load into a new level, come back the way you came and then load in the other part by going the other way. It's never clear if you have to go somewhere until its too late and you have to go back through the levels one by one on foot which is dumb.

Episode two's biggest problem though is that you have to collect five key pieces over the course of the episode so you can gain entry to Medusa's lair. These episodes are quite big, are comprised of several levels, the keys are hidden (one was deep in a water fountain. How the hell am I supposed to know there's a critical key down there?) and they give you no indication on whether you picked up the required pieces before loading a new level. I finally get to the gates to go to Medusa's lair and it has five key slots. I click them all but only four are used. I was so pissed. No one told me ever there were five of them and the one I'm missing could be anywhere. And just like that, you have to either level skip to medusa's lair and lose all the stats you accumulated especially the Daikatana which can't be increased via cheats like the other stats, wander back through several levels sequentially or restart the whole episode. That's an epic fail right there. I want to like Daikatana but I end up hating it a bit more each time I reinstall it every so often.

Now that you mentioned, I remember that! XD Since I didn't mind backtracking a lot, specially since I used the "Leave sidekicks behind" tactic, I always forget about that.

But I don't remember thinking the travel around to be so much of a chore as you.

Do you get a chance to level during the excess running around?

No, because I kill everything in sight the moment I see them. That said, backtracking AND killing new enemies would be much more of a chore.

I'm fairly certain enemies don't respawn if you backtrack anyway.

Enemies do not respawn. It's like quake II where you can check your mission and it says how many enemies there are in the level. That['s also the case with daikatana. So if you killed everything there is only an empty level to cross.

Like above posters said; getting through episode 1 is a chore. But then it get's a lot better. If you are able to manage the sidekicks it actually get;s fun. I think ep 1 bad, 2 and 3 are great and 4 is mediocre.

Add the hype, the terrible 1st episode, the bugs at release, the terribly stupid sidekicks and the mediocre graphics at time of release (now they do not look so bad because you do not expect that much from an old game, I actually think ep 2 and 3 have rather nice graphics to be honest) and you get a game that got terrible reviews and an even worse reputation.

To me the game is good because, i never give in to hype, i look at graphics differently then other people, i never played the game unpatched, and from the beginning I learned that in some levels it was best to plant the sidekicks in the beginning and when you reached the end of the level you went back to get them... The fact that i like these old school shooters, love terrible dialogue and always have gotten a kick out of a lot of cutscenes made this a game i have always liked...