With Way of the Samurai 3 hitting our shores in the near future I decided to check out the first two games to see how they hold up as well as put together thoughts on what I'd like to see changed or improved upon and see how the upcoming game compares. As you can tell by the title of this update however this isn't the case. Samurai Western is developed by Acquire. If you haven't heard of them do know that they were the ones behind the Tenchu series and eventually went on to do the Tenchu-esque Shinobido as well as the Way of the Samurai series. Wow a developer who makes nothing but Ninja and Samurai games. Can't ask for much more than that right?
In another tale of East meets West a young man from Japan heads out to find his missing brother and wacky hijinks ensue. There's a corrupt mayor who vaguely resembles Dr. Robotnik, a comical sheriff who would go on to appear in Way of the Samurai 1, a saloon owner who forgot to wear a dress that covers the top half of her butt-crack, a mysterious stranger, art-obsessed psychopath, a couple of no-good twins, and so on. Despite the colorful cast they don't do a whole lot to make this adventure very interesting. Furthermore, the hero has zero charisma. All you ever hear from him is speeches about Samurai honor and wanting to kill his brother. It is my recommendation that if you pick this game up you mash the start button through every cutscene and skip them all.
The concept is simple. You're the lone Sam Rye and you have to face off against many guys with guns. How you accomplish this is also simple. Your sword is capable of deflecting bullets and sending them to the enemies that fired them. There really isn't much else to this game and despite running at over 20 levels you'll soon discover that there's little variation outside of the concept I just described. In each area you slash through several foes until eventually the level ends, or you trigger the boss-fight. There aren't any goalposts to run through or arrows that lead you to the exit. Heck the game doesn't even point out which enemies are the ones that'll end the stage. In fairness, a couple of exceptions exist. There's one stage where you actually have to reach a goal and another where you disarm bombs by slicing them up with your sword. Outside of these two stages you just kill people until the game decides you're done.
Killing people is extremely simple. Despite your lack of gun, you have more than enough options to get close and run outlaws through. To start with the game has an experience point-based system. When you complete stages, you get experience. With each level-up you earn three points to distribute among HP, MP, POW, & DEF and potentially unlock new swords or accessories. All equipment is leveled up through the collection of gold & silver coins. The swords are divided into five stances, which essentially determines the style of play. If you go with dual wield for example, you become basically a whirlwind of destruction as two swords are more likely to deflect shots, and few enemies can stand such an assault for long. These stances also come with a Master mode. What this does is it adds a particular ability but gives a disadvantage as well. For example, dual wielders can become invincible but every attack they make drains life. Master mode is tied to your MP and when you max it out you can trigger Ultimate Master mode. This mode basically turns the game into something like Pacman. All of the enemies go down in one hit and even deflected shots will cut foes clean in half. Couple this with an exceptional running speed, invincibility, and the ability to do super combos on bosses and levels become no problem. To keep UMM running you have to keep killing foes, which depending on the location can either be very easy or extremely difficult.
Accessories do more than just make your Sam Rye look goofy. By equipping them you gain stat bonuses and if you acquire certain pieces, you'll create an accessory set. For example, if you wear a pirate hat, a pirate cape, and a parrot you receive a major bonus to a couple of stats. It's a nice touch though once you start unlocking other characters, you'll find that none of the accessories fit them very well. One way to get around this is by manually moving and resizing the accessories.
The controls to this game are surprisingly simple. Deflecting shots is as simple as swinging your sword though I tend to favor the dodge move. By tapping R1 and moving in the right direction I can not only avoid bullets but also pull off a counterattack that does double damage. As a bonus if a multitude of shots are dodged in a row, "Hot dang!" pop up on the screen and nearby enemies will stomp their feet in frustration or look perplexed, leaving them open to attack. Jumping is always handy and jump attacks are easy to perform though for most stances you don't swing in mid-air, which can be extremely frustrating for enemies on slightly higher ground.
That's pretty much the entire game in a nutshell. Once you learn the basics, you'll soon discover that's all you actually need to get by. There's no great train robbery and you're not going to be riding any horses. The game has maybe 7 or 8 environments and all of the levels are split among those. The foes you face aren't terribly creative and most really aren't all that threatening. The major exceptions however are these little blob-shaped guys who throw dynamite or roll bombs. Explosives do a ton of damage to the player and since they can be damaged while on the ground, getting surrounded by dynamite after being knocked down is a guaranteed death. Other than that, the only real worry is possibly being juggled to oblivion by several guys with machineguns. Besides if things aren't going you way you can always trigger master mode to get away for a moment.
There's a scoring system in this game and at the end of each level you're handed points for a variety of conditions. Taking damage means you lose points but by doing combos, kill-combos (enemies you slice up while in UMM), not getting knocked down, and playing skillfully you'll achieve some impressive scores. It's a fairly well-done system though unless you're really into the game you'll probably only beat the high scores to collect more unlockables.
If the player wants to make the game a serious challenge, they have access to two additional difficulties but what they can also do is add extra conditions. What these do is that they create conditions for the player to follow like beating the level without grabbing anything (wait I didn't mention the grab? well that's cause it's useless), without getting knocked down, under a certain time limit, and without using master mode or being stuck with it for the entire level. Breaking any of these conditions will kill the player instantly. Successfully completing them will unlock some additional bonuses as well as double or even triple the experience gained from beating the stage.
This can be quite an ordeal due to the shoddy level design though. Most of the time stages are pretty bland and are little more than an arena for you to cover in blood. The one major exception is the coal mine stage. There are a lot of cliffs, bridges, and generally things to fall off of. In fact, towards the end there's a long vertical shaft that presents many headaches. If you're trying to satisfy the Ultimate Master Mode condition in this stage, you'll soon find that there's nothing worse than missing the last enemy and falling all the way to the bottom. Did I mention that there's fall damage? Better tech those falls or else... Thankfully all of these challenges are completely optional. It still doesn't excuse the level-design, but I guess it's just as well when the focus should be on killing people and not intricate platforming or figuring out mazes. All that said, if I ever replay Extra Stage 13, I will lose my mind.
The mechanics for this title are a bit too sound, I think. When attacking enemies there's no grey area about which parts of your attacks are fatal. If your sword doesn't touch them, they don't bleed. This can be annoying depending on the stance as some enemies are likely to be placed on top of crates or other objects where most standing strikes will miss them entirely. Thankfully there are other options to take them out, but some kind of throwing knife would have been nice. A second player can actually join in as a gunman, but that requires a friend or random person you hired off the street to play videogames with you.
The framerate is probably the worst thing about this game. It starts off at 60 fps and that's great, but it can drop to as low as 10 or even 5 fps and that's really bad. This is of course due to the number of enemies and the complexity of the environment (don't forget the special effects!) which cause the framerate to jump everywhere. Over time this game gives me serious headaches, but I suppose I can only blame myself for my steadfast refusal to take frequent breaks. The levels are short enough that this shouldn't be a problem and maybe it's just me but eh there you go.
However, it's worth mentioning that if you have the PC for it, Samurai Western runs better on PCSX2. There are still frame-drops in a few areas, but nothing near as bad as on actual hardware. I put in an unhealthy number of hours just the other night and didn't come away with a headache. Plus, it's how I got all these screenshots. Aren't screenshots grand?
If you're a fan of unlocking this is a good title to pick up. Besides the unlockable accessories and weapons, hidden wanted posters unlock new characters, and there are a few extra stages. If you're the type of gamer who plays games simply to unlock everything this is definitely worth picking up. On the other hand, I did pay $8 for this game so I'm liable to be more favorable towards games I get at cheap prices. Whatever the case, I wholeheartedly recommend Samurai Western. It's simple to nearly a fault, but the constant satisfaction that comes from laying waste to the Wild West, is hard to deny. Another point in the game's favor is its open-endedness. Each of the five sword stances suits a particular style of play, and you're free to try all of them or focus on whichever sounds the most interesting.
Give it a swing the next time you get a craving for some obscure Playstation 2 action.
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| I probably should've talked about the bosses some, but most of them are quickly undone by a strong weapon and Ultimate Master Mode. |
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