The argument for Lightning Blades might be that they provide less-skilled players a way to come back against a stronger opponent, but in actual practice, I’ve seen them used far more by the dominant player to help keep their win secured. I’ve never been a huge fan of those “uber insta-kill” types of attacks, and I think they especially don’t belong in Samurai Shodown. I’m sure people will tell me how they’re not broken, and how you can do this or that to avoid them, but the skill level required to pull them off is awfully low for how powerful they are. I say most, however, because I’m really not happy about Lightning Blades.
Similar, there are also Super Special Moves, a once-per-match specials that are equally damaging if landed.Īs nervous as I was about how new ideas might clash with the series’ classic gameplay, most of the additions to Samurai Shodown feel right at home, giving players new options in battle that don’t overshadow other, more traditional elements. Breaking your Rage Gauge (Samurai Shodown’s take on the super meter) not only give you access to a temporary boost in power, but also the incredibly deadly Lightning Blade, a cinematic attack that burns the remnants of your Rage Gauge to do major damage to your opponent. One of the first new options is the counter, where-either with your weapon or bare-handed-you can parry an enemy’s attack, making them lose hold of their own blade.
As opposed to the traditional two-punches, two-kicks, gameplay has moved to the more modern weak/medium/heavy slash plus single kick button layout, with all additional techniques coming out of combinations of those four inputs. That’s not to say that Samurai Shodown doesn’t bring some of its own ideas with it, of course. While no game on this level is made by one person alone, I can’t help but believe that fighting game veteran Hidetoshi “Neo_G” Ishizawa had some part in making sure Samurai Shodown properly felt like Samurai Shodown, so credit to him and the rest of the team.
I know other fans who think the series kept that core spirit alive in later releases, especially the beloved-in-some-circles Samurai Shodown V Special, but for me, this is the first time since Samurai Shodown II, so long ago, that I’ve truly had that kind of experience again. That’s what has made the series great, and it’s what Samurai Shodown understands. Some over the years have called the Samurai Shodown games “slow” or “boring” because, unlike the offerings of a lot of other fighter franchises, SamSho has always been more about defense instead of offence, strategy versus strength, fewer yet more calculated attacks rather than trying to overwhelm your opponent by throwing out as much as possible. What Samurai Shodown gets so right is a true understanding of the fundamentals that the series was originally based around. As much as I knew that this was a game released in 2019 on the PlayStation 4 crafted with polygons and other modern development techniques, on a mental and emotional level, I could have been back at my local arcade in the ’90s, playing a new Samurai Shodown release on one of the many Neo Geo cabinets they had-and that shocked me. There was no “it was good for a modern game,” no “it was fun except for this or that,” no trying to convince myself that I had liked something I actually didn’t. What I was feeling on a deeper level, however, was that I had had an experience that took me back to what I loved about the series without having to put any quantifiers on it. Now, I know that might sound like a weird thing to think, because of course I had. Once we parted ways, I stopped for a moment to focused on one singular thought: I’d just played Samurai Shodown. Finally, I ended up getting paired up with another player, and we traded wins in a set of 15-or-so matches. Prior to launch day, finding online opponents was a somewhat tricky proposition. If there’s one game I certainly didn’t expect to change that trend, it was the just-released Samurai Shodown, a modern-era soft reboot that would no doubt be as far away from SamSho II in spirit as it was in time.Īnd then, something happened-and it’s perhaps the strongest statement I can make about Samurai Shodown in this review. Since that groundbreaking sequel saw release in 1994, there hasn’t been any further chapter of the franchise that I’ve found to come close to SamSho II’s legacy, be it due to complaints over fighting engines, visual styles, character rosters, balance, or whatever else. The recipient of my harshest judgment, however, has been the Samurai Shodown series itself.
SNK’s Samurai Shodown II is unquestionably my favorite fighting game of all time, and-for good or bad-the bar by which I judge all other genre entries to at least some degree.
28 June 2019 Mollie L Patterson Comments Off on Samurai Shodown Review