Samurai Riot

Review

The War between the clans of True Honor and Horizons has been going on for many years. The Great Master of the clan of True Honor has appointed Tsuramaru as his Art of War advisor and this move seems to have turned the tide of this war towards his clan. However, the plan to infiltrate a rebel threshold on his own province has failed and this gives a slight hope for the Horizons clan! And that’s not all . . . there are few twists to discover in Samurai Riot!

Samurai Riot is a 2D Beat’em up arcade game where you control either one of the warriors, Tsuramaru or Sukane, in single player mode, or play with one of your friends on the same computer in a cooperative mode.

Whichever character you choose to play in the single player mode, a cut-scene will follow with the warrior you have chosen, reflecting what it could have been just before his/her death. Then the game will start at the Castle of the True Honor Clan. The reason for this cut-scene is that the game offers eight different endings (including the two endings for whichever warrior you choose to play) and you might change their fate. You will also have to choose a warrior school before starting the game. There are eleven in total but only four will be available for selection on your first game play. You‘ll be able to unlock them later on but it will cost coins to do so. The school will determine what your warrior is good at and if he/she has special abilities. The main school threads are: health, strength, agility and fury. Each of these threads has five bars. If you have five highlighted bars on your health thread it will mean that the school you have chosen will give your warrior more life, and so on and so forth.

Tsuramaru will fight with a katana and he will be kicking opponents too. He has a grenade as a special weapon which can kill enemies very quickly if you throw them well and at the right time. He will also be able to throw knives in mid-air. Sukane is a master of martial arts and will fight with her fists and feet. She has a pet fox who has great attacks. He can also attack in mid-air, become a bomb or charge towards enemies on the ground. The only downside with the pet is each time you use one of his attacks it will take up to a minute (depending which one) for the fox to re-appear.

In terms of enemies, the generic ones are munchaco warriors, lance warriors, ninja warriors with guns, sumos, turtle warriors and armed women. That’s basically it throughout eight of the levels until you reach the mini boss of the stage. The colour of the uniform will tell you how difficult they’ll be to eliminate. Make sure to destroy pots, rocks, telephone boots and more, as they hide either new life, sushi (which regenerates your health) coins or other goodies. Each stage will take you roughly between fifteen to twenty minutes to clear.

The gameplay is really fun and very well done, in my opinion. You’ll have two swords at the top. One will represent your health and each time you are hit it will get darker from left to right until it reaches the handle and then your character will lose a life. The other sword represents the fury ability; for each hit you successfully inflict, it will charge the sword and you’ll be able to activate the fury ability. You can have up to three fury charges at any given time. As you progress within the game, you’ll have to make a few choices and they’ll lead you to the different endings, which offers great replay-ability (and this is apart from the four levels of difficulty available at the start of the game).

Graphically, I really enjoy the 2D artwork. The soundtrack is pretty good and the controls work fine.