IIRC it's one of those sidescrollers with overly-lengthy turnaround times, though I find its handling very agreeable overall, even in that moderately tricky acid platforming stage. (an impression helped by one of the all-time most gratifying sidescrolling flamethrowers - makes the same platform's Alien 3 look like an even worse joke than it already is)Sengoku Strider wrote:Is it just me, or is Kūjaku Ō 2 (AKA Mystic Defender) pretty laggy? I'm playing with an original cart on original hardware, and at first I thought I must be perceiving delay in my setup or TV, but then other games were responding fine. Like there's a palpable delay between pressing left and your character actually turning and moving that way. He feels sorta stiff. Though I guess as a Buddhist monk simulator it doesn't need to feel like Shinobi.
Yeee! Do 'em like Đức done!
But to them, instead of heself! 
I may be a bit biased, as the MD sidescroller I associate with really bad turnaround+move lag is Alisia Dragoon. Een there, it's mostly the pairing with Contra-fast and relentless enemy fire that really irks (on Normal you can just sponge it up, on Hard it'll kill your waify magical girl and her animal pals dead, necessitating some fairly involved use of cover... which is fine, as your large suite of homing attacks is meant for just that, but it's an annoying snag that'll jam up your improv).
The golden rule with this, as demonstrated by Saigo no Nindou, Castlevania Bloodlines, and a bit later on Metal Slug: if you're making a fast-paced scrolling action game, and it's going to have "character visibly turning" frames, ensure that they actually begin moving the instant the direction is pressed. A delay is fine, in a deliberate cinematic platformer like Prince of Persia, but it absolutely gums up fast action.
See also visible ducking frames! Head up but HITBOX DOWN
Spoiler
My favoured approach is to just not have these interstitial frames at all, ala OG Dracula and Ninja Gaiden. Even Strider Hiryu, a game that prided itself on an extensively well-animated running, jumping, climbing player sprite took this approach, with the drudgery of about-facing or going from crouched to standing in the heat of battle.
Of course some games, like AD, don't have turning frames at all, yet impose "cinematic" delay regardless. Best of both worlds.
Possibly scrolling action's finest synergists of luxuriant detail and utter uncompromising hardcore.
Who could resist such swashbuckling derring-do. 
For an (I'm assuming) non-JP developed action game, that's some good ninja design. EDIT: wait no, I guess that's just the motion line on his nunchaku. Still, very sharply drawn.
Worth keeping a Sega/Mega CD around for entirely on its own, practically beltscrolling's answer to RE4's The Mercenaries.
