Way of the Samurai

PS2 review by Matt Wadleigh, published on Tuesday 31st August 2004

Feudal Japan is all the rage these days. Hollywood’s showing its darker side in movies like The Last Samurai (which actually is a pretty kick ass movie for those interested), and video game manufacturers are loving the setting in recent games like Koei’s Samurai Warriors. This isn’t just a recent phenomena, throughout the world there are thousands of books and movies dedicated to the Samurai culture. As long as people continue to be interested in the disciplined and respectful life of the Samurai, there will always be people interested in making money off it. Those people, such as the good people of Bam! entertainment, will try there hardest, but will ultimately fail and have to kill themselves with their own blade to die an honorable Samurai’s death.

In 1878, life is fading for the Samurai. They’re attacked by everyone where ever they go. People who once relied on them for defense and friendship have now turned their backs on the Samurai. Instead of embracing their former allies, the government of Japan has issued edicts and passed laws limiting or all together banning their ways. The Samurai have become vagabonds; choosing to either dishonorably give up their blades or honorably die by them.

You play as a Samurai who has to make a choice. From the get-go, you’re in control of your character. The boring character creation screen asks you to select a name for your character, what he’s going to look like, and his body type. You can name your character pretty much whatever you want, but his face and body is limited to a few choices each. Once you’ve got things the way you want them, it’s off to a brief tutorial that teaches you the game basics. A lot of the points are redundant and figured out before the instructor even tells you them, but it was helpful for some of the things I wouldn’t have known off the bat.

After that, you’re thrown into Rokkotsu Pass, a turbulent area where three powers vie for power. The first is the government, which is slowly moving through the country gaining power from Samurai warlords. They’ve got a stronghold in Rokkotsu, and are using their money and troops to enforce their will slowly on the people of the Pass. Then, there is the Kurou family, which initially controlled Rokkotsu Pass until the Government showed up and cut off their money supply. In a desperate attempt, they want to sell an Iron Foundry they own the government, which is wanted by the final faction, the Akadama Clan. Led by the son of the Kurou family, the Akadama Clan wants to purchase the foundry in hopes of using it to increase their military armaments and kick the government out of Rokkotsu Pass once and for all.

Got all that? From the moment you start the game, you’re offered what seems like a simple choice: save a girl who’s being kidnapped, ignore it, or join the kidnappers. Save the girl, and she’ll treat you right, give you some lunch, and unlock another path to the story. Ask to join the kidnappers, and they’ll beat you up, take your money, and tie you to railroad tracks to die. Of course, this unlocks yet another branch to the storyline. For the first part of the game (which lasts 2 days in Rokkotsu Pass, or approximately 2 hours of gameplay), you’re given loads of choices, each affecting the outcome of the story.

Ultimately though, I was disappointed with the options. Once you’ve established a friendship with a certain group, you’re pretty much stuck with them for the rest of the game. I joined up with the Kurou family at one point, with the intention of stabbing their leader in the back (and whoever said that reviewers don’t backstab!) at a pivotal moment. Of course, I couldn’t do that, and it made me sad. Instead, I had to follow that story path, until I eventually died.

Here’s another thing that disappointed me: death in the Rokkotsu Pass is final. Like a true Samurai, you’re given one shot at life, and when it’s over, it’s over. This is understandable, and really not a flaw, but when coupled with quite honestly one of the most terrible save systems that I’ve dealt with since Far Cry, it’s brutal. You can only save at specific points that the game seems to randomly decide (it looks to me that it decides by the time of the in-game day), and they never quite seem to come when you need or want them. I had to leave my PS2 running for four hours while I ran errands, because I couldn’t save and had to run errands. Even still, once you load the save, it’s gone forever, so if you accidentally shut off your machine, or die, there’s no going back. I’m sure the developer’s intention was to keep people from reloading key areas just to get ahead faster, but in execution it proves to be a flaw.

Much like other games in the genre, fighting is a staple of Way of the Samurai, and again like in the other games, it’s incredibly repetitive. You’re given the options of strong and light attacks. As always, you can perform more light attacks at one time than you can hard attacks, but they do less damage than the hard attacks. You can also defend, and so can your opponents. To catch them off-guard while you’re defending, you can choose to kick them, allowing you to unleash an attack against them. While their defending, you can attack them and at the same time push them (executed simply by moving towards them while attacking) to cause them stumble backwards and let their guard down.

While this may sound like a lot of options, remember, this is a game intended to be replayed multiple times in hopes of seeing how all the stories unfold. So, after two hours, it’ll start to be repetitive, and after ten, you’re going to hate it. A lot of the combat is simply attack them as much as you can with the weak attacks while pushing, and then unleashing your best strong attack. You can perform a lot of different combination moves, but I got through most of the game through button mashing. To make combat easier, you can also tune your sword, but again, this isn’t a must either. I got through the game with my starting sword, and the modifications I made to other swords were simply to make the random combat go faster.

Another flaw discovered through frequent combat is the inadequate targeting system. The game will auto-target a random target, oftentimes ignoring the nearest target and instead focusing on one that’s farther away. This isn’t too big a problem, because fortunately only one enemy can attack you at a given time, but none the less it’s an issue to say the least. Finally, there’s an incredible amount of repetition in the character models and their names. You’ll kill “Shin” probably eight times during the game.

Even the game’s graphics are below average. While character models looks decent, none of them have any facial expressions, and the whole world in general lacks detail. With such a sprawling storyline, you’d expect Rokkotsu Pass to be expansive, but there are only a few, small areas that offer little to no exploration. What could have been a Samurai epic feels more like a made-for-TV movie because of the condensed nature of the Pass. The music could be considered a saving grace; the orchestrated Japanese music really fits the game well, even with no voice acting or real sound effects to accompany it.

Playing through Way of the Samurai unlocks a battle mode for you and a friend, but it’s still missing something, and just remains average, which is the main fault of the game. It could have been such an amazing and innovative game, but instead lots of small problems launch a fatal blow to the game from which it can not recover. The game is worthy of a shot if you can get it for really cheap or you rent it, but I can safely say it’s not going to be your favorite.