Muramasa

The Muramasa (ムラマサ, Muramasa^?) is a cursed Long Sword-class Artifact weapon available throughout the Golden Sun series. Being such, it may randomly immobilize the wielder on a given turn if they are not equipped with the Cleric's Ring, and it will be impossible to unequip it without paying at a Sanctum.

In Golden Sun

Muramasa (GBA)
Visual effect of Demon Fire
In-Game Description
"Long Sword: Unleashes Demon Fire" (GS) "Cursed Long Sword: Unleashes Demonfire" (TLA)
Trade Info
Weapon class	Long Sword
Buy value	13600
Sell value	10200
Artifact?	Yes
Statistic Boosts
Attack Boost	126
Unleash effect
Effect name	Demon Fire/Demonfire
Extra damage	60
Side effect	May inflict the target with Haunt
Acquisition
• Chest in Crossbone Isle (GS)

In Golden Sun, the Muramasa is contained in a treasure chest in the ninth puzzle-filled floor of the optional dungeon Crossbone Isle; the chest can only be reached by solving a particularly tricky optional puzzle involving riding on rolling logs. As a Cursed item, it may randomly immobilize the wielder on a given turn if they are not equipped with the Cleric's Ring found as an optional puzzle reward in an earlier floor of Crossbone Isle. Even if the Adept equipped with this does have the Cleric's Ring equipped as well, you will only be able to unequip the sword by having a Healer at a Sanctum remove the curse.

The Muramasa's Unleash effect is Demon Fire (おにびおくり, Onibi Okuri^?, lit. Funerary Willowisp), which adds 60 points to the equivalent to a normal physical attack and aligns the overall damage with the Mars element. It also causes a 25% chance to inflict the Haunt status condition, causing any damaging attack the target deals to you to have a 25% chance to deal 25% of the damage onto itself as well. Demon Fire visually appears as a swarm of red-tinted spot-like flames converging into the target while the user slides forward and attacks.

If Crossbone Isle as a whole is taken out of the equation, then by the time the final boss is engaged atop Venus Lighthouse, the best weapon for Isaac would be the Gaia Blade, and Garet can be equipped with the Silver Blade or Righteous Mace. However, looting all of Crossbone Isle effectively gives you three separate, similarly high-Attack cursed weapons you can equip on Garet to shore up his attack rating: the Muramasa, Demon Axe, and Wicked Mace. Both the Demon Axe and Wicked Mace sport very slightly higher Attack ratings and Venus-aligned Unleashes that inflict Poison and Deadly Poison/Venom, respectively. Both strengths of Poison are inflicted with 55% base chances and are guaranteed to inflict their damage based on maximum HP after each action taken by the victim (and since the Wicked Mace's Deadly Poison capability is the stronger version, that is easily the best weapon of the three to equip alongside the Cursed Ring).

The Muramasa, on the other hand, only has a 25% chance to inflict Haunt, a condition that only has a 25% chance to cause any damage the victim deals to "rebound" back to the victim. This is generally not particularly strong when applied upon an enemy and depends on the enemy hitting you hard, and for luck to go your way when that happens. On the other hand, there is something to be said for the Muramasa's Demon Fire Unleash being both Mars-aligned and offering a particularly hefty damage bonus. If Garet is in the Champion stage of his Guard class series, his high Mars power will enhance the Unleash's raw damage fairly well, and the high added damage bonus will compensate for his class series' low Attack modifiers.

Even so, the Mars alignment of the Muramasa's Unleash renders it all the more ineffective against the final bosses at Venus Lighthouse because they have very high Mars resistance ratings. Against Deadbeard, the optional boss of Crossbone Isle, Venus is the element it has the least resistance to, making the Wicked Mace better to use against that as well. Regardless, the Wicked Mace's deadly poison will be far more immediate and impactful against random enemies than Haunt, making that the best general-purpose weapon of the three.

In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, the Muramasa can only be acquired by the final party if it is transferred via use of a Gold-level password and the Clear Data save file it was generated from has it in the inventory of Isaac's party. By that point, stronger weapons without any equipment curses will have already been collected by Felix's starting party, such as 145-Attack Hestia Blades from Lemuria's Lucky Medal Fountain (complete with their own Mars-aligned Unleash). At best, Muramasa (or one of the other two Crossbone Isle weapons) can temporarily remain on Garet until more weapons can be collected and distributed to Isaac's additional party of four. (The Muramasa's Unleash effect, incidentally, is reformatted to Demonfire in its appearance in The Lost Age.)

In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

Muramasa (DD)
The DS model of the Muramasa
In-Game Description
"Weapon: Long Sword (Cursed)" (DD)
Trade Info
Weapon class	Long Sword
Buy value	13600
Sell value	10200
Artifact?	Yes
Statistic Boosts
Attack Boost	126
First Unleash effect
Effect name	Critical Move
Extra damage	x1.4
Side effect	May reduce target's HP to 1
Second Unleash effect
Effect name	Demonfire
Extra damage	60
Side effect	May inflict the target with Haunt
Third Unleash effect
Effect name	Zenith Strike
Extra damage	60
Side effect	May reduce target's HP to 1
Acquisition
• Chest in Harun Channel

In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, the Muramasa is found in a treasure chest located in an exterior portion of Harun Channel that can only be reached after completing the rest of the dungeon complex shared between the Channel and Warrior's Hill. Like all other weapons, the Muramasa now randomly chooses between its signature Unleash and two other Unleash effects: Critical Move (クリティカル, Critical^?), which only deals an attack that is 40% more damaging, and Zenith Strike (てんくうぎり, Tenkūgiri^?, lit. Heavenly Slash), a Jupiter-aligned Unleash that adds 60 flat damage. Both of these Unleashes have a 35% chance to lower the target's HP to 1 if its survives. Rare for these kinds of weapons, however, is that its signature Demonfire unleash is now the second of its three Unleashes total; the gameplay relevance of this is that when the weapon is fully mastered via the "Unleash Experience" system, Zenith Strike will be more likely to proc than each of the others.

The Muramasa is much less useful in Dark Dawn than in the first game because it is found during the Eastern Sea segment of the game that occupies the last third of the game's play time, which is when much stronger Artifacts can be gotten fairly easily. This is even before taking into account that this sword is laden with an equipment curse that the Cleric's Ring will not be available to mitigate because that can only be found in this game's version of Crossbone Isle – all the way in the postgame. The likelihood that the Adept equipped with this will fail to make their intended move for the turn compounds its unimpressive base Attack and turns this into a weapon you should avoid equipping whatsoever. (You can't even effectively use a certain glitch and exploit at the Endless Wall to reach Crossbone Isle early because that only becomes possible as you are reaching the final dungeon in the storyline anyway.)

Cultural references

Muramasa Sengo was a Japanese swordsmith who lived during the Sengoku period of the 16th century. His blades were renowned for their sharpness, but he was personally reputed as violent, bellicose, and somewhat insane. Swords were culturally considered to inherit the psyche of the individuals who crafted them, which led to the belief that Muramasa's swords thirsted for blood as he did. Tokugawa Ieyasu himself apparently worried that Muramasa's blades sought out his family (the basis for his paranoia being that Muramasa's blades had either wounded or killed more than their fair share of his relatives and retainers, and even Ieyasu himself had been cut by a Muramasa-made wakizashi sword and yari spear). Thus, Ieyasu ordered the swords' confiscation.

In Japanese popular culture, Muramasa's blades are often depicted as supernaturally cursed, usually needing to be sated with drawing someone's blood – or outright killing the person – before they would allow the wielder to sheath them back. One legend pertaining to the blades smithed between Muramasa and his venerated master, Masamune, holds that their respective worksmanship could be compared and put on display by placing one of each swordsmith's blades into a stream with free-floating leaves. Leaves and other bodies like fish would get cut cleanly in two the moment they touched the blade forged by Muramasa, whereas they would change course to evade the blade forged by Masamune. This is culturally regarded as a testament to the calm soul ascribed to Masamune, which refused to kill or destroy in any circumstance where that was not a necessity.

The name of Muramasa's Unleash effect in the Japanese version, Onibi Okuri, refers to a ghostly flame in Japanese legends called onibi, commonly translated into English as "willowisp". Folklore holds that they are spirits of humans and animals that take on fiery properties as an outcome of their resentment. The word onibi, as reflected in the kanji it uses (鬼火), literally means "demon fire".

Gallery of Dark Dawn unleashes

• 

  Critical Move

• 

  Demonfire

• 

  Zenith Strike