One Strike

Genre: Fighting

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

One Strike is a Fighting Game released on PC in 2017, ported to Nintendo Switch in 2018, and ported to PlayStation 4 in 2020. This game puts players in the role of dueling samurai warriors battling in feudal Japan.

One Strike goes for an old-school presentation using pixel art visuals and a decent chiptune soundtrack. There’s nothing especially noteworthy here, but it works well enough for the game and keeps things simple and the focus on the game’s combat.

As for the combat, this game takes the core gameplay of a Fighting Game and boils it down to its basic fundamentals. Players can move left or right, dodge left or right, attack, or block, and that’s it. Beyond that, different characters have different advantages and disadvantages in terms of range, speed, their ability to block, and so on. The first one to land a strike kills.

This works out pretty well, and combat is usually pretty swift and makes for a good mind game of positioning, feinting and trying to land a blow without it being blocked. I will say that I feel like some characters are a bit unbalanced – one character with a chain attack, for example, has such good range that he can hit from halfway across the screen, which I tend to find more than makes up for any lack of speed.

While One Strike may not be perfectly balanced, it is nevertheless a fantastic, simple Fighting Game that does a great job boiling the genre down to its core mechanics. Especially for its $5 price tag, this is a great addition to the Nintendo Switch library, especially for Fighting Game fans looking for a game to play in quick sessions.

tl;dr – One Strike is a Fighting Game about dueling samurai warriors, and it features extremely simplified “one hit kills” combat mechanics and a retro-inspired presentation. The game isn’t quite as well-balanced as I’d like, but overall this is still a superb Fighting Game for brief sessions, and one well worth the $5 price tag.

Grade: B-

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