ACA NEOGEO Samurai Shodown V

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local / Online), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Samurai Shodown V, elsewhere known as Samurai Spirits Zero, is a Fighting Game released in 2003 in arcades and on the NEOGEO AES home console, later receiving ports to numerous other platforms. In the current day, this is probably SNK’s second best-known Fighting Game franchise after the King of Fighters games, and this is the twelfth game in the series, with this release of the game on Nintendo Switch coming in 2018.

…What, did you think I was gonna’ say it was the fifth game in the series? Okay, to be fair, this was the fifth game to be released on the NEOGEO AES home console, and could be considered the fifth mainline game, though that depends what you consider to be “mainline”.

Generally regarded as a low point in the series, Samurai Shodown V still has some good things going for it, such as its faster gameplay than previous games and its large roster of 24 playable characters (plus one hidden character). This large roster is a trade-off for this game ditching the Slash/Bust alternate versions of characters from Samurai Shodown III and IV.

While I do overall enjoy the gameplay of Samurai Shodown V, I think it is undone by some pretty nasty balancing issues, often favoring the new characters introduced in this game. What’s more, in single-player play, some of the boss characters get some absolutely absurd advantages that sap all of the fun out of fighting them. Players who enjoyed the violence of earlier games will also be disappointed to see this has been greatly toned down here. The result is a game that has a lot of potential, but is far too flawed, especially compared to its upgraded sequel, Samurai Shodown V Special, which addresses many of the complaints about this game.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes both English and Japanese versions, and gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

While these settings are nice, there’s one setting noticeably absent here that was present in the Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection – the ability to map combinations of button inputs to one button. Given how this series assigns important commands to multiple simultaneous button inputs, this is a glaring omission, and a big point in favor of getting the collection.

In the end, I honestly do not see any reason why you would get ACA NEOGEO Samurai Shodown V. If you’re a series fan or a collector, you’re much better off getting the Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection. It will cost you more than just getting this one game, but you’ll save on buying multiple games in the series, plus it has the better control options and bonus content you just won’t find here. And if you’re only looking to buy this game, you are much better off getting Samurai Shodown V Special instead – it fixes this game’s balancing issues and adds more playable characters. As a result, there’s just no good reason to get this release.

tl;dr – Samurai Shodown V is a Fighting Game with faster gameplay than its predecessors, and a much-expanded roster of characters, but it also drops features from earlier games that series fans enjoyed, and its roster has some pretty bad balancing issues. The result is a game that isn’t quite as good as multiple other games in the series, and it’s particularly not worth getting when you can get its much-improved successor, Samurai Shodown V Special, instead. Plus, this release lacks control options and bonus content in the Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection. No matter which way you slice it (ha), I don’t recommend getting this release.

Grade: D

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