Samurai Shodown review

Reviewed on: PC

By Anderson do Patrocínio

For more than two decades, arcades held a prominent position in the world of video games, reaching their peak in the early 90s with the release of Street Fighter II, still a reference among the greatest games of all time.

At some point in that era, the mere presence of an important fighting game could dictate the consumer’s preference when choosing a console. Two leading companies stood out, each with quite distinct characteristics when putting one more fighting game on the market: Capcom, which needs no introduction and which always played it safe by working on top of the gameplay established in Street Fighter II, and SNK, which in its golden days showed a creativity that seemed never to cease. And it is the latter that interests us from now on.

SNK is known mainly for its fighting games, and in contrast with Capcom (which, as said, had in SF II’s gameplay a safe harbor), it always brought a specific system for each of its main series. The boom of SF II clones brought some wear to the genre, but SNK always knew how to stay out of the more immediate comparisons and delivered successful series over the years, with Samurai Shodown (Samurai Spirits in Japan) being its greatest hit outside the Japanese market. By bringing measured gameplay, the use of bladed weapons and a theme based on Japanese culture, SNK started one of its most prestigious franchises among critics and public.

But after all, what is this new Samurai Shodown about? Find out with us at the end of this review!

Simply called Samurai Shodown, the title that reaches stores does not bring a numbered sequel, serving as a reboot for the franchise by bringing under the same umbrella almost all the characters of the debut game along with others that would only appear in later episodes (but who aligned with the debut chronology). That is, we have in a single game the main events of episodes I and V, which I consider great for pleasing fans of both phases of the saga and giving this reboot more richness than the mere recreation of the first game. In addition, we have the debut of 3 characters that complete the roster of 16 fighters, besides the final boss, not selectable (at least so far). The new characters have their charisma, but the traditional cast shines as if we were in the 90s; it helps that SNK respected the original (and almost always flawless) design of all of them.

The gameplay follows the standard the series has kept over the years, with a system that has always been more about controlling space and watching the opponent’s behavior in order to strike with measured and accurate attacks, rather than filling the screen with spells or elaborate combos. The series’ tension has always been in punishing gameplay; here, heavy attacks are REALLY heavy and the strategy revolves around not giving the enemy an opening, who at the slightest slip can decide a fight in just two blows, if well executed.
By keeping the series’ original intentions almost intact, the title preserves itself from the conventions of current fighting games, which are almost a rhythm game in their sequential button pressing. This is reflected in the genre’s main design, which in Samurai Shodown is composed of four attack buttons (light, medium, heavy and kick) and a special bar. And believe me, you won’t need more than that to understand that the game is quite complex for those who set out to master it.

Samurai Shodown is also a very beautiful game, even if arriving late compared with Street Fighter V, Tekken 7 and Soul Calibur VI. Here, the beauty doesn’t come from technical exuberance but from a high degree of artistic refinement. The overall visual composition is very reminiscent of Street Fighter IV and features well-crafted characters and effects, although some stages seem monotonous. Unlike its 2D works, SNK was never a technical marvel when exploring three dimensions, but you can tell that in this game they took many steps forward and delivered a product that is technically far superior to what they had been creating in recent years. In online battles the netcode worked very well, which is a surprise given the dreadful online infrastructure of SNK’s recent games.

The series’ sound design has always been very characteristic, with music stuffed with Japanese instruments and a very clever use of silence interspersed with other sounds, which contributes to the dramatic tone of the battles.
Between new compositions and reinterpretations of series classics, we have fans familiar with the comfort zone and newcomers introduced to a design unusual for the genre.

However, Samurai Shodown also has its limitations: as a product, it is something quite simple and here it could have drawn inspiration from the genre’s current conventions. The story mode is nothing more than the old Arcade mode, where each character has an intro and conclusion that explains their trajectory in that universe. Once a popular belief, the claim that “fighting games don’t need a story” fell apart as of the last generation, but SNK seems not to care about this and kept not only a simplistic choice, but also dreadful stories for a good part of the characters, which stands in contrast to having enriched the original game with characters from later chapters of the series.

Traditional modes such as training and survival fulfill the role of enriching the game menu, but let’s face it, few people devote themselves to them after a certain time. The promised mode of fighting ghosts that learn the players’ style also proved uninteresting, having no appeal after a while. Although the cast is quite varied, let’s face it, 16 characters is very little by current standards and also for the series, which in recent episodes brought a much larger cast. Even though there is the already announced DLC pack, the burden of spending more money still falls on the player, who deserved more characters as compensation for the lack of variety in game modes.

In the end, this episode of Samurai Shodown proves quite competent within the series’ history and an excellent gateway for new followers.