ACA NEOGEO Samurai Shodown V Special

Genre: Fighting Game

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

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Review:

Samurai Shodown V Special is a Fighting Game released in 2004 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 thirteenth game in the series, with this release of the game on Nintendo Switch coming in 2019.

Samurai Showdown V Special is, quite frankly, the game that Samurai Shodown V should have been. Not only does this game expand the roster to 28 characters, including boss characters from earlier in the series, but it also fixes many of the issues with Samurai Shodown V, rebalancing the characters, getting rid of the most infuriating bosses, adding back in violent finishing moves that were present in Samurai Shodown IV but removed from V, and adding in new “overkill” moves.

Again, this game lacks the fluidity of many modern Fighting Games, as well as the complex move types many of them have. However, I do think that players craving something a bit more simple than many of these games will find this to be a worthwhile alternative.

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, Samurai Shodown V Special is a solid, if somewhat dated, Fighting Game that’s still enjoyable today. However, if you’re considering buying this, you may want to instead consider 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. However, if for some reason you only want the Samurai Shodown V Special, and don’t mind missing out on all of that, this is a good choice.

tl;dr – Samurai Shodown V Special is a Fighting Game that fixes much of what was wrong in Samurai Shodown V, expands the roster, and restores the violence of earlier games. The result is a game that, while still somewhat simple compared to modern Fighting Games, is still quite enjoyable even by today’s standards. That said, this release lacks control options and bonus content in the Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection, so you may want to consider getting that bundle instead. However, if you’re just looking to buy the one game, this is a very good choice.

Grade: B

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