The life of the Samurai is one of modesty, patience, and discipline; following the way of Bushido often means shunning what’s new and fashionable in favor of embracing the hard-earned truths of the past. Here is a game that practices what it preaches. Think of Way of the Samurai as Acquire’s interactive homage to the films of Akira Kurosawa, movies like Yojimbo and Sanjuro about a wandering guy with a sword and no identity who just stumbled into town one day and made a mess as he left. Samurai puts you in the role of that wandering guy, drops you in a place called Rokkatsu Pass, and leaves the rest up to you: From the moment the game begins, it’s completely up to you to decide who you believe, who you’ll join, who you’ll fight, and who you plan to double-cross as the drama unfolds over the next two in-game days. Yes, Way of the Samurai is a very short game, Rokkatsu Pass is a very small territory, and the story is more family drama than fantasy epic…but that simplicity is a blessing in disguise. The real joy of Samurai lies in the replay as you repeat the game, experimenting with characters and conversations armed with what you learned last time around in a Groundhog Day–style effort to try to get things “right.” A single play through shouldn’t take you more than two hours (about the length of a movie), but if you should die stupidly along the way, it’s sayonara, samurai…that’s your story. There are no second chances or mid-game save points; now it’s time to start over from scratch. After each game, you’re graded on an “honor” scale that takes into account such things as how many people you’ve killed, whom you’ve betrayed, and how close to the Bushido code you’ve stayed throughout your life. Your rank earns you a certain amount of points, and those points unlock things like new heads, costumes, and playable characters and arenas for the game’s Vs. mode. You’re also allowed to bring whatever swords you had in your possession (unless the game ended with you dying) into the next game, meaning you’ll be better prepared to take on some of the tougher opponents next time around. These great little touches really help bolster the game’s already high replay factor. Samurai’s presentation is rough but aesthetically pleasing nonetheless. While the backdrops are crisp and beautiful with lots of depth and nice day/night cycle effects, they’re spoiled by some unfortunate aliasing problems. The character models reflect lots of personality, but they’re a bit crudely constructed and tend to give way to little glitches. Battle sound effects are solid, and voice-acting is limited to little grunts to indicate who’s speaking next. The wonderful music, with its orchestral cross between soaring violins, flutes, and Spaghetti Western–flavored twanging guitars, does a great job of lending lots of movie-like atmosphere. The control isn’t very forgiving at first—random camera angle switches leave you confused, and the weird “off balance” combat system comes off as clunky—but this is a case where patience is rewarded. After about the fourth or fifth play through, combat begins to click, and you’ll be constantly surprised by the seemingly endless depth and variety of moves, stances, combos, and sword techniques at your disposal. The subtle nuances of defense alone are far more complicated than those of your average fighting game—practice and discipline are definitely in order if you hope to succeed. Way of the Samurai is a uniquely great game in its own composed, disciplined manner—the video game equivalent of a critically acclaimed art house indie film in a sea full of summer blockbusters. Don’t be surprised if a small, dedicated flock of disciples come to learn its Way.
