It's fun to look at, but it's not enough
After a busy week of work, you have ushered in a full weekend break. Unfortunately, after lazily doing all the chores, you suddenly realize that there is less than a day left until next Monday, and it is impossible to use this time to play a AAA game. Then the only options left are those small and fine indie games.
The game "Samurai Shodown" seems to be prepared for such a time. If you're willing to spend a day, you'll be able to beat the game through to the fullest while having fun.
Samurai Shodown is a Japanese indie game published by PLAYISM in the genre "Japanese Wind Action Rougelike". Set against the backdrop of a well-known Japanese myth and legend, the player takes on the role of Susanoo, who was driven out of Takatenhara and challenged the Great Snake of Yagi in order to rescue Kushinada Hibi, who was captured as a sacrifice.
Unlike the legend, Susanoo in the game is defeated by the Yagi Great Snake due to his lack of strength. Although he was immediately resurrected by his sister Amaterasu, he lost all his power. In order to help his brother regain his strength, Amaterasu summoned the fierce generals from the Sengoku period, hoping that Susanoo would find the power to defeat the Yagi Serpent from them.
After a short period of story, Susanoo loses all his abilities, and this "nothing" opening is also a classic of this type of game.
After that, players have to be prepared to deal with death threats that cannot be traced back in a randomly composed level map, and through some form of "reincarnation", they can gain more power.
By fighting different enemies and repeatedly exercising yourself, the ultimate goal is to defeat the Yagi Great Snake. In addition to the unique 3D pixel graphics style and background setting, the main gameplay of Samurai Shodown is based on a formulaic Rougelike framework.
Like most games of its kind, Samurai Shodown uses the most common level-based gameplay mode. In each level, there are a certain number of random enemies and rewards, and players need to continuously defeat enemies, obtain corresponding bonus items or warrior equipment, and gradually strengthen Susanoo's basic values by completing the corresponding mission objectives. Even if the player is defeated in the middle of the way, they can respawn while retaining the base value bonus and skill scroll.
Completing these challenges increases the maximum number of Susa's SP and Combat Skills combinations, which can be retained forever
In addition to these obvious Rougelike elements, Samurai Shodown also has its own unique system, that is, a "combat technique" system that can be freely combined.
"Creating your own combat skills" is the biggest fun and play point of this game's combat system. In the level, for each enemy unit defeated, the player has a chance to obtain an item called the "Battle Skills Scroll". This item can be picked up indefinitely and taken to the next game after death. A series of operations, including jumping, dodging, basic attacks, and unleashing skills, all need to be combined with these "battle skill scrolls".
In Samurai Shodown, the game production team presets a total of five operating fields, where players can freely set their required skills. But more importantly, these abilities can be combined with the reels to have different effects.
In the game, players can get up to twenty-six kinds of "Battle Skills Scrolls", including seven "Basic Attack Actions", six "Special Effects", three "Special Attack Actions", six "Additional Attributes", two "Bit Mobile Games", and two "Additional Passives", as long as they do not exceed the maximum number that can be stacked, the player can arrange and combine them at will.
For a simple example, if the player puts "Sweep", "Inflammatory Attribute" and "Wave" in a certain operation slot at the same time, this action will become a flame slash that can hit a shock wave, otherwise if you put in the "Bow and Arrow", "Thunder Attribute" and "Guide" at the same time, this action will change to a "Lightning Arrow" that can automatically track the enemy.
"Jump" plus "Tough" becomes "Super Jump", and after combining multiple segments, it can even give you the illusion of "flying" in the sky
The final presentation of a skill is not only affected by the way it is combined, but also varies depending on the type of weapon the player is currently using and the number of scroll stacks. In addition to the examples given above, players can create more complex action templates by adding displacements to attacks and special effects to displacements, and through combos, to get the most efficient attack modes.
It should be admitted that the existence of this system has greatly expanded the gameplay of the game. Once they find themselves losing in battle, players can revisit their skill mods and start experimenting with more efficient attacks. Even if you are unfortunate to lose, the skill scrolls currently used will not be lost, and at the beginning of the next round, it is possible to directly apply the skills studied earlier, ensuring that each round of the player's game will have a corresponding "growth" - this is a way to reduce the difficulty of Rougelike, but this system also has its own flaws, which we will talk about later.
There is also an interesting way to play "Samurai Shodown", that is, "Warring States Warrior Collection". As the title suggests, this game is a "brawl" style of work, and the enemies that players can encounter in the level, whether they are ordinary miscellaneous soldiers, ordinary warriors or elite warriors, are all from the Japanese Sengoku period. Among them, the elite warriors are all famous generals in history. Here, you can simultaneously fight against Oda Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Takeda Shingen, and Date Masamune.
Like skill scrolls, these elite warriors will be defeated and will drop the corresponding "Equipment (First Level)". The passive skills that come with these equipment can greatly enhance the player's various attributes. Although these pieces of equipment will be lost at the same time as the player is defeated, the record of the warrior's defeat will be preserved, allowing the player to directly change the corresponding appearance and preset skills during the preparation phase. In a sense, it is also equivalent to giving players the option to switch roles, and for players who like warring states warriors, this is probably the most worthwhile place to spend time "brushing" in this game.
The collected martial arts will be displayed in the respawn preparation screen after death, and players can also directly apply their skill templates for the next round of the game
To be honest, the idea of "custom skill sets" and "collecting Warring States warriors" is really very interesting. They can help you quickly understand the mechanics of the entire game and have fun quickly. But on the other hand, in addition to these two points, most of the places in this work are extremely thin and mediocre.
First of all, the map of this game is generated in a semi-random way, and the terrain includes cities, plains, mountains and forests, and so on. However, due to the low operational difficulty and the existence of the skill stacking mechanism, the existence of the terrain has lost most of its significance, and all the player has to do is to reach the enemy stronghold and break the enemy general, which is very simple. In addition, the game's reward mechanism and the single random element make it difficult for players to pass through the level and get extra surprises.
On the other hand, as I said at the beginning of the article, it only takes less than a day for you to beat through the game. Because the size of the game itself is not large, and the system is relatively simple and easy to understand, players can quickly realize the process from getting started to proficient and experience the greatest fun of the game.
But that's at best—at worst, the game ends up playing when you assemble your skill to be powerful enough to defeat the Yagi Serpent at will.
In the fourth week, my character was basically invincible
As we said, the main game goal of Samurai Shodown is to "defeat the Great Snake of Yagi", in order to challenge the Great Snake of Yagi, Susanoo needs to defeat eight yokai first, and they are the only eight bosses in this game. That is to say, in addition to the famous and surnamed Warring States warriors, what the player can do each time they respawn is to repeatedly challenge these eight enemies. But that alone is obviously not enough to support a Rougelike game with a "brush" element, because their behavior patterns don't change with each round of the game, and all you can do is try to beat them faster.
In order to alleviate the boring feeling that repeated the same behavior for a long time, the production team added the concept of "days" to the game, and the longer the player plays, the stronger the enemies in the game will become. But in the face of players who have been strengthened for several weeks, this remediation system will soon cease to work, and it is even less likely to bring real changes to the game.
With the enhancement of the sense of work, even the obviously fun "custom skill sets" will expose their corresponding shortcomings - this seemingly "free" game system actually has a large degree of limitations.
In addition to the "1+1+1=3" skill combination method, the completion of many unique skills in this game requires the completion of various conditions such as scroll type, number of combinations, and character equipment. If you try it out on your own imagination, it's hard to combine special skills with cool independent mods, and while players can learn skills from other warriors as they prepare for resurrection, it also means that players have to give up their current game progress, which is somewhat paradoxically speaking.
Of course, aside from these questions, Samurai Shodown does a good job of bringing you most of the fun that a good Rougelike game can bring you in the first ten hours or so. In a sense, it is also a condensation of the content that this type of game usually takes tens of hours to present, all in one breath.
If any element of the game is right in your good ball area, and you can't, or don't want to invest too much time in a game, then maybe Samurai Shodown is really worth playing — just a little bit of polishing and digging in from becoming a "quality" mini-game.