Samurai Western
Posted May 8, 2005
Gojiro Kiryu is going to clean up the West, even if he has to kill every last bastard in it.
The star of the Way of the Samurai series has come to America looking for his missing brother, but settling things isn't going to be easy. There are hired guns — thousands of them — out to stop him. And he's only got his sword. So what's a brother to do? Clearly, there's only one option: killing rampage.
Gameplay:
Although this is technically Way of the Samurai 3, Samurai Western plays a lot more like a sequel to the PlayStation game Rising Zan, sans gunplay. There are no dialogue choices and no branching paths. This is a purely linear arcade-style hack-and-slash with cutscenes before each level to progress the story.
The goal in each of the 21 levels (including 5 extra stages) is basically the same. You run around carving up everything that twitches until you either hit the end or the game decides you’re done, at which point either a boss battle begins or it goes straight to the tally screen. Along the way, enemies randomly drop items that replenish your health and special meters or level up your weapons and accessories. By completing levels, you receive new swords and accessories, as well as experience points to level up Gojiro. There are only a handful of areas and most are used repeatedly, without change, throughout the game.
You have one attack, which can be chained together. With properly-timed swings, however, you can also deflect bullets. It's a nice ability for any samurai to have, especially when they're hell bent on proving the superiority of a Japanese sword to any gun, but it also requires excellent
timing on the part of the player. You will probably more often decide to dodge, allowing you to weave and roll through the dozens of bullets aimed your way. Just try not to get knocked down.
The problem is that you will be knocked down. A lot. Gojiro might be able to take a shotgun blast (or three) to the face and live to tell about it, but it's going to put him on his back. When you’re on the ground, you're completely defenseless, and should you be shot too much, you will curl up into a fetal position and rock back and forth and just make the whole thing worse. No, seriously, that's what happens. Granted, if I were on the ground being shot repeatedly, I would probably curl up in a ball, too, but it's worth noting that I can't deflect bullets with a sword or leap six feet into the air, either. More often than not, if there are a lot of enemies, you will get up only to be knocked down again. Suffice it to say, it's extremely frustrating.
Being knocked down will also cancel out any special you’ve got going. By charging the special meter (with kills and whiskey, naturally), you can perform a special move that lasts until the bar is drained. Each move is unique to the sword you wield; one may make you invincible but punish you for attacking, while another might greatly improve your speed and power. When in special mode, you also get a "body count" on the screen. Nice.
Swords also influence other factors in combat. One type is potent but leaves you more open to attack, while another makes deflecting bullets easier but each swing less powerful, and still another is so light that you can double-jump. Your choice of sword greatly determines your success in a given level, but the fact that your weapons can be leveled up at all discourages experimentation with new swords. For example, a new weapon might have a great special ability, but by using it instead of your current level nine sword you'll see a steep decline in power, health, and so on.
Like swords, accessories affect your stats positively and negatively, but the really neat part is that you actually wear the items you have equipped, even in cutscenes. Not only that, but if you don't like the appearance of an item, you can manually change its placement, rotation, and scale to make it look as cool or as ridiculous as you like. If only roleplaying games did this. There are all kinds of things you can get, from the basics like cowboy hats and bandannas to oddities like kabuki masks and birds (and stranger still).
Bosses are strange, too, and as the game progresses, they just get weirder and weirder. Luckily, they break up the tedium of fighting the same enemies over and over. Unluckily, the boss battles can be pretty difficult. It's probably a good idea to replay previous levels to build up Gojiro so that you don't end up breaking your controllers when the wall accidentally impacts them. Thankfully, if you die at a boss you are given the option of starting from that battle instead of having to replay the entire level again.
Unfortunately, you might have lost to a boss because of the camera. There's really no way to lock onto enemies, so many times you must manually reposition the camera. That's fine for slower enemies, but faster ones will zip by you and you either can a) reposition the camera and take a chance of being attacked in the process or b) slash blindly. Neither is an acceptable choice, and what's worse is that the camera gets completely wonky against the sides of buildings. When this happens, you completely lose sight of your character and must try to fumble away from the corner, all the while pretty sure that enemies are having a free-for-all. And if you get knocked down in a corner? Just pack it in, pal.
Graphics:
The game looks pretty good and the character movement is natural and fluid, but the models could stand to be a little less blocky. Also, most of the game takes place outdoors during the day, so it tends to be pretty brightly lit. That's fine, but when it's not brightly lit (say, underground in a mine), I would expect lighting effects to be put to good use — glowing lanterns, for example. They're not, however, and it's really a lost opportunity that would have added quite a bit to the atmosphere of those levels.
Even so, there are still some nice effects. Stained glass windows look fantastic, and I particularly like the "ghost trail" that's left behind if you dodge a bullet.
Audio:
The entire game is voice-acted. I really like the fact that Gojiro speaks with a very heavy accent; it adds authenticity. Somewhat less convincing is the drawl that the side characters all attempt to effect, but some of the characters, like Ralph, generally fare okay.
Sound effects such as gunfire and ricocheting are fine, but the big problem is that there are only a handful of enemy exclamations. Combine that with the fact that the bad guys are pretty gabby to begin with and you begin to lose patience after hearing multiple enemies say "Stand still!" and "Madre de Dios!" over and over and over.
The background music is countryish guitar plucking, naturally, with a little saloon jazz piano. It works in the context of the game. The main theme (during which a silhouetted live-action Gojiro squares off against a hundred gunslingers) is pretty good, as well.
Conclusion:
If Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone got together to make a video game... well, it wouldn't be this, but despite the knockdown factor and occasional camera issues, you could do worse than Samurai Western. Recommended.
The star of the Way of the Samurai series has come to America looking for his missing brother, but settling things isn't going to be easy. There are hired guns — thousands of them — out to stop him. And he's only got his sword. So what's a brother to do? Clearly, there's only one option: killing rampage.
Gameplay:
Although this is technically Way of the Samurai 3, Samurai Western plays a lot more like a sequel to the PlayStation game Rising Zan, sans gunplay. There are no dialogue choices and no branching paths. This is a purely linear arcade-style hack-and-slash with cutscenes before each level to progress the story.
The goal in each of the 21 levels (including 5 extra stages) is basically the same. You run around carving up everything that twitches until you either hit the end or the game decides you’re done, at which point either a boss battle begins or it goes straight to the tally screen. Along the way, enemies randomly drop items that replenish your health and special meters or level up your weapons and accessories. By completing levels, you receive new swords and accessories, as well as experience points to level up Gojiro. There are only a handful of areas and most are used repeatedly, without change, throughout the game.
You have one attack, which can be chained together. With properly-timed swings, however, you can also deflect bullets. It's a nice ability for any samurai to have, especially when they're hell bent on proving the superiority of a Japanese sword to any gun, but it also requires excellent
timing on the part of the player. You will probably more often decide to dodge, allowing you to weave and roll through the dozens of bullets aimed your way. Just try not to get knocked down.The problem is that you will be knocked down. A lot. Gojiro might be able to take a shotgun blast (or three) to the face and live to tell about it, but it's going to put him on his back. When you’re on the ground, you're completely defenseless, and should you be shot too much, you will curl up into a fetal position and rock back and forth and just make the whole thing worse. No, seriously, that's what happens. Granted, if I were on the ground being shot repeatedly, I would probably curl up in a ball, too, but it's worth noting that I can't deflect bullets with a sword or leap six feet into the air, either. More often than not, if there are a lot of enemies, you will get up only to be knocked down again. Suffice it to say, it's extremely frustrating.
Being knocked down will also cancel out any special you’ve got going. By charging the special meter (with kills and whiskey, naturally), you can perform a special move that lasts until the bar is drained. Each move is unique to the sword you wield; one may make you invincible but punish you for attacking, while another might greatly improve your speed and power. When in special mode, you also get a "body count" on the screen. Nice.
Swords also influence other factors in combat. One type is potent but leaves you more open to attack, while another makes deflecting bullets easier but each swing less powerful, and still another is so light that you can double-jump. Your choice of sword greatly determines your success in a given level, but the fact that your weapons can be leveled up at all discourages experimentation with new swords. For example, a new weapon might have a great special ability, but by using it instead of your current level nine sword you'll see a steep decline in power, health, and so on.
Like swords, accessories affect your stats positively and negatively, but the really neat part is that you actually wear the items you have equipped, even in cutscenes. Not only that, but if you don't like the appearance of an item, you can manually change its placement, rotation, and scale to make it look as cool or as ridiculous as you like. If only roleplaying games did this. There are all kinds of things you can get, from the basics like cowboy hats and bandannas to oddities like kabuki masks and birds (and stranger still).
Bosses are strange, too, and as the game progresses, they just get weirder and weirder. Luckily, they break up the tedium of fighting the same enemies over and over. Unluckily, the boss battles can be pretty difficult. It's probably a good idea to replay previous levels to build up Gojiro so that you don't end up breaking your controllers when the wall accidentally impacts them. Thankfully, if you die at a boss you are given the option of starting from that battle instead of having to replay the entire level again.Unfortunately, you might have lost to a boss because of the camera. There's really no way to lock onto enemies, so many times you must manually reposition the camera. That's fine for slower enemies, but faster ones will zip by you and you either can a) reposition the camera and take a chance of being attacked in the process or b) slash blindly. Neither is an acceptable choice, and what's worse is that the camera gets completely wonky against the sides of buildings. When this happens, you completely lose sight of your character and must try to fumble away from the corner, all the while pretty sure that enemies are having a free-for-all. And if you get knocked down in a corner? Just pack it in, pal.
Graphics:
The game looks pretty good and the character movement is natural and fluid, but the models could stand to be a little less blocky. Also, most of the game takes place outdoors during the day, so it tends to be pretty brightly lit. That's fine, but when it's not brightly lit (say, underground in a mine), I would expect lighting effects to be put to good use — glowing lanterns, for example. They're not, however, and it's really a lost opportunity that would have added quite a bit to the atmosphere of those levels.
Even so, there are still some nice effects. Stained glass windows look fantastic, and I particularly like the "ghost trail" that's left behind if you dodge a bullet.
Audio:
The entire game is voice-acted. I really like the fact that Gojiro speaks with a very heavy accent; it adds authenticity. Somewhat less convincing is the drawl that the side characters all attempt to effect, but some of the characters, like Ralph, generally fare okay.
Sound effects such as gunfire and ricocheting are fine, but the big problem is that there are only a handful of enemy exclamations. Combine that with the fact that the bad guys are pretty gabby to begin with and you begin to lose patience after hearing multiple enemies say "Stand still!" and "Madre de Dios!" over and over and over.
The background music is countryish guitar plucking, naturally, with a little saloon jazz piano. It works in the context of the game. The main theme (during which a silhouetted live-action Gojiro squares off against a hundred gunslingers) is pretty good, as well.
Conclusion:
If Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone got together to make a video game... well, it wouldn't be this, but despite the knockdown factor and occasional camera issues, you could do worse than Samurai Western. Recommended.