Samurai Shodown

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local), 2-10 Tournament (Online)

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Review:

Samurai Shodown, despite the simple name, is a re-imagining of the series of classic Fighting Games that takes the 3D visuals of more recent entries in the series and marries them to an art style closer to the series’ anime-esque sprite-based roots, using some subtle cel-shading in a style that implies brush strokes reminiscent of the midieval Japanese era the game takes place in. While the graphics marry the modern and traditional, the gameplay is all old-school, with deliberate fundamentals-focused gameplay that eschews the fast-paced play of most modern entries in the genre. This game was released on multiple platforms in 2019 and ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2020.

It’s clear that in porting this game to the Switch, the developers made the choice to focus on playability rather than visual flair, and this choice was probably ultimately for the best. What this means is that the visuals here are downgraded from other versions of the game, with backgrounds in particular looking pretty dull, but that the game maintains steady framerates and an overall excellent resolution. As a result, while the game is perfectly playable and still has its own nice visual style, it’s not really impressive on the Nintendo Switch. At the very least the game’s nice art style is complimented by the soundtrack inspired by traditional Japanese music, and the untranslated Japanese voiceovers.

As for the gameplay, Samurai Shodown was always only going to be a game that appealed to a narrow sub-section of the Fighting Game audience, with its slow-paced combat and lack of variety in its move set. That’s not to say that the combat here is bad, by any stretch, but rather that its focus is on making smart use of the simple four-button scheme and the small selection of special moves your character has access to.

That’s not to say there aren’t complaints to be made, even when making allowances for this design philosophy. Firstly, given the simplicity of the characters, having access to only 18 of them (with an additional eight available via paid DLC feels extremely limiting, especially since players had access to 26 characters without paying for DLC over a decade ago in the previous entry in the series, Samurai Shodown Sen, and the entry before that, 2006’s Samurai Shodown VI, had nearly double that number of characters. Beyond this, the Nintendo Switch version of Samurai Shodown is riddled with long loading times, and the online lobbies at this point only seem to have occasional players to match with (though the matches I could find worked flawlessly).

Still, despite the lacking online play and content-poor nature of Samurai Shodown, its quality gameplay will still be worth playing for those who find its simple and slow-paced nature appealing. Granted, that’s not likely to be most players, but the subset of Fighting Game players that appeals to will probably be satisfied with what’s on offer here.

tl;dr – Samurai Shodown is a Fighting Game with simple, slow-paced, and deliberate gameplay that won’t appeal to everyone, but those looking for a less flashy entry in the genre more focused on strategy than speedy and complex play should find it worthwhile… at least, as long as they don’t mind the limited amount of content, long loading times, and lack of online opponents.

Grade: C+

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