However, it doesn't matter if you're chaining combos or are wielding a strong weapon, because the combat system is so unrealistically tipped in your favour that it's not particularly difficult to win.

You can execute two types of attacks, light and heavy, and those who're familiar with such gameplay from other games know that light attacks are fast but do very little damage whereas heavy attacks dish out a lot more but are slow to execute and leave you vulnerable to enemy attack. It was only here that I was able to control the movements of my character without bumping every which way into things. Though the budget production animation is an issue when wandering about, it works surprisingly well during combat. But most people won't really be interested in that, because this satire is simply too dry - or perhaps subtle - to really resonate in an industry that thinks a nuclear explosion is a mild narrative device.īut not everything about this game is bad. The catastrophically-small environment to explore is a clever play on the reality of larger open world games - a statement that those games are padded out when the same amount of content can be quite easily (and effectively) squeezed into an area the fraction of the size. It uses its surreal elements to satirise the way that other open world games can transition between different themes and objectives at the drop of the hat. When it works, Way of the Samurai 4 is a clever little parody of open world games. This game, just like an eager overachieving student, tries to juggle many things at once. Instead what I got was practically non-existent character development and laughable dialogue. Way of the Samurai 4 has a relatively mature and complex story that covers extreme ends of the spectrum, like fetishism and xenophobia to honour and loyalty, so from start to finish I was just hanging for it to start making some serious arguments around these themes and give me pause to think about what's going. Games like this are designed to be unpredictable, so it's perfectly understandable when you find yourself going from searching for Zombrex to pushing a wayward granny on a wheelchair in a zombie-infested shopping mall. In any other deliciously weird Japanese game - for example, Deadly Premonition - I really wouldn't have been bothered by this nonchalant transition from one bizarre, unexpected situation to the other. It was here I quit the game and proceeded on with my real-life chores for the day. The screen went to black and the next thing I knew I was in a torture chamber surrounded by triplets and semi-naked slaves. only to be instantly arrested on the spot by the very same constable who had not just forty seconds ago congratulated me on my heroic service. This is where the game teaches you that taking a photograph means saving your progress.Ī little while later I learned that that game allows pickpocketing of downed enemies, so I went ahead and started doing just that.

When this was over, an anachronistic photographer offered to take my photograph, so I struck a pose (which in this game means standing perfectly still with an awkward look on your face) and I was sent to the save game screen. Because I was very new to the game's mechanics and controls, I was unable to unsheathe my sword - so I defeated the dozen warriors with nothing but my bare hands. Not wanting to miss out on the action, he accompanies me and in a fashion similar to Zack Fair from Crisis Core, becomes jubilant and excited at the sight of the antagonists.

After scoring with a local geisha by complimenting the weather and suggesting she looks rather elegant in her clothes, I went to the magistrate's office where a Pagan Min look-alike British delegate ordered me to take out a dozen of rogue warriors who take their swords to random passersby to test out their efficiency.

Game samurai 4