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Great Sword Slashing Fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: June 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In Samurai Western, you get to play either a sword wielding samurai or a gun-toting cowboy, running around the Old West and fighting your way through endless enemies.

We're big fans of the Way of the Samurai series. You can see clearly that this was made by the same people by the graphics. They're reasonably detailed, with inscriptions on tombstones and faded wear marks on barrels. Dust comes up from your feet as you walk down the center of Dodge City, and there are shadows beneath the tied-up children you have to rescue.

The movement of the characters - especially the sword-fighter in action - is quite nice. Again, it's where Spike's experience in this genre really shines. The spinning sword strokes, the rolling attacks and spinning deflections are smooth and realistic. There is quite a bit of blood here - especially in power-up mode where you can literally slice an enemy in half. So the game definitely earns its mature rating in that area.

The sound isn't great - and again it's on par with the Way of the Samurai series. You get a generic music track background, and then "Ah!" and "Oh!" random grunts from the characters. But really, most people don't play games like this for the high fidelity sound. They play it for the action. There is a cool touch that when the samurai is talking to other Japanese people he talks in Japanese - but when he talks to the westerners he switches to English.

The main gameplay and plot involve the samurai coming to the western US in the Old West days to find his brother. Mostly the game is about a samurai in a given town, facing hundreds of enemies and hacking and slashing his way through them one by one. Sometimes there are special tasks to achieve. Mostly you are hacking, hacking, and then slashing.

As you go, you earn improvements for your character - such as improving his skills and bonus-providing accessories. This lets you customize the character to match your combat style.

Oh yes, you can be the gun-slinger too if you want, but we of course really like the samurai :)

There is a multiplayer mode where one of you is the gunslinger and one is the samurai. This can be fun with a friend, although the camera sometimes gets annoying.

The game is generally historically accurate - there aren't robots running around or laser pistols - with a few minor exceptions. So you do get a sense that you're back in the days of the Wild West.

Well recommended if you enjoy the hack-and-slash world of samurais and gunslingers!

Had potential

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Pros:
- Collection of swords and therefore sword techniques creates potential for fun.
- Old Western grainy film mode is a nice touch.
- Telephoto shots used in cutscenes is classic of Westerns.
- Fun to hack and slash as quickly as possible when your Master Gauge is full- reminds me of Tate in Shinobi.

Cons:
- Very repetitive gameplay
- Very repetitive characters and horribly repetitive character dialog
- AIs respawn at the same location
- AIs are pretty stupid- shooting at their Boss as well
- You have to fight the camera and the AIs at the same time.
- Heel chafes.

This game really had potential for some offbeat comedic elements and some unique gameplay, however its repetitiveness shows that the game designers couldn't come up with anything clever beyond the initial concept. Giving players new swords and capabilities is good but to have to get them through long drawn-out, repetitive fights is not worth the effort. At one point I got so tired of fighting, I just stood in a part of a room where the enemy couldn't reach me and would repeatedly try to shoot or lob explosives at me, only to miss and hit their boss.
After waiting for this to go on for about 15-20 minutes the boss will die. One could kill the boss of course but the rewards and risks aren't worth the trouble.

Pick it up only when it hits the bargain bin and if you are a huge fan of samurai-based hack and slash games, otherwise rent it.

If you have to bring a knife to a gun fight, this is the knife to bring!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Samurai Western is a unique idea for a game. The concept is simple: Stick a master swordsman in the old west amidst six-shooters galore and see what happens. In the true old west, they probably wouldn't have lasted too long, but in this game, they stand a chance.

You control Gojiru, a Samurai wandering the West in search of another renegade warrior. Along the way-and despite your best efforts to stick to your peaceful roots-you make a few enemies (namely, almost everyone in town) who shoot at you on a regular basis. The idea is to deflect their bullets with your sword (or dodge them) and then cut the bad guys up to gain points. The more experience you have, the faster you level up from student to ronin, all the way up to master swordsman. And if the enemies get too overwhelming, you can enter a "Master" mode that lets you kill everyone in sight with just a single strike and lasts as long as you can keep the meter full with kills.

The game has some strong points. For one, you have to give them credit for a pretty original game idea. The controls are pretty solid too. There's no learning curve with this game. As long as you can move and push a button, you've got this one down pat. The music is great too, for the most part. It adds an authentic western feel to everything.

But there are problems too. The camera has a mind of its own at times. You can be in a crowd slicing and dicing away, then have to fight someone off camera. While it stays behind you most of the time, it lags often and can leave you in trouble. And the objectives pretty much remain the same each time: "Defeat 's henchmen". Scramble around and kill them all, then find their twin brothers waiting for you in the next level. Not that I'm looking for some car chase scene or something, but a little difference here and there couldn't hurt.

The graphics are nothing ground-breaking. This could have easily been a PS1 game. While the environments are fairly decent, the characters are bland with very little definition. And as for the cut scenes, sometimes the mouths are out of sync with the words. Add the horribly-rendered characters (one woman's arms are actually squared off rather than round), and you have an almost-laughable scene where it's supposed to be dramatic. Also, there's no clear way to tell between a box you can pick up and hide behind, and one you can't. This can be frustrating when you're getting shot at on all sides and looking for something to help even the odds a little.

There's a setting to turn off the blood, and that's probably a wise choice. Otherwise, those guys pop like balloons and send blood spraying everywhere. This is one of the bloodiest games I've seen, but it looks like one of those old samurai movies from years ago. One swipe will send an enemy spraying a crimson fountain around him. Also, their banter gets monotonous quickly. While shooting at you, they say "Hold still!", and when you kill them it's either "Who are you?" or "Aarrrrrrggghhhh!" With a dozen enemies onscreen, you can see how this would get on your nerves after a while.

All in all, this is a great rental, but there's not really enough replay value to merit owning it. It's fun deflecting bullets and knives while Ginsuing your way through rough hombres, but it gets old quickly. Still, it's a nice diversion if you're looking for something different on a rainy afternoon.

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