Way of The Samurai

Way of the Samurai is a PlayStation 2 action-adventure game released in 2002.

Plot
The story of takes place in 1877, after the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the start of the Meiji period, during the Satsuma Rebellion, a time when the Samurai were once at the top of Japanese society are all but outlawed.

Gameplay
At the heart of Way of the Samurai is a combat system that should be familiar to players of Bushido Blade. It's a little simpler than that, even in comparison to the stripped-down Bushido Blade 2, but the stance mechanics and how they affect attack combinations clearly echo that earlier samurai simulator. It may seem somewhat slow and clumsy to begin with, but in large part that's intentional -- the protagonist is meant to have a limited repertoire early on. This is an adventure game rather than a pure fighter, so character progression, learning new moves, as at least as important as the application of ones you already possess.

There's a nice succession of layers to the way in which attacks develop. Simply repeating the basic attacks available to start with will lead to the slow and gradual development of new techniques (executed by combinations of the face buttons), but there's a very low ceiling to the learning process if you aren't very creative about it. Learning a broader range of attacks at a greater rate requires a more creative style of combat -- fighting from several different positions and stances, and perfecting the timing-based evasion and parry abilities.

Collecting new weapons is the other key to exploring the corners of the combat system. There are axes, hammers, clubs, and other unusual destructive implements in addition to dozens of swords, all with different characteristics and repertoires of attacks with which they can be used. It's also possible to take weapons by the smithy and modify their capabilities further, providing you have the cash (or providing you'd like to pick a fight with the blacksmith, but that presents its own problems).

In combat, character facing is a bit of a problem early on until you get the hang of how to swap between large numbers of targets. As Kengo II promised to do when it was a known quantity, Way of the Samurai presents several enemies at a time in certain battles, sometimes as many as five or six. After a while, it gets easier to deal with large groups like that, although troubles with the camera never quite go away. The automatic camera direction is equipped to deal with environmental obstacles most of the time, but there are still situations where you can get stuck in a corner with objects in between the camera and the battles it's meant to be presenting. That's a small complaint, however, and after a while it's not so hard to avoid situations where the camera is likely to become a problem.

This is because you're likely to play through this game more than once, indeed much more if you find a fondness for the breadth of exploration options. Way of the Samurai is structured in very open-ended fashion, both in terms of its plot construction and its character development. Each adventure begins the same way -- an encounter on a bridge, where a group of thugs menace a young girl -- but beyond that point, there are any number of paths to follow.

Consider, for example, that first encounter. You can be a hero, whack the bad guys, save the girl, and accept her invitation to lunch. Variations to the above include killing their leader, letting him go, scaring the young lady off by forgetting to sheath your sword, or simply skipping out on lunch and heading off somewhere else. Alternatively, you can be a complete thug and help out in their kidnap attempt, with attendant variations on that theme as well, or just walk on by like nothing's wrong. All of the above lead to slightly different tweaks in the course of the three-day adventure, and while it's possible to miss out on most of the fun through apathy or mischance, it's also surprising how many actions have distinct consequences to the plot and the character rankings at the end of the game. Collecting all the various titles requires careful modulation of your actions throughout the story.

This is a fine piece of story structure, which is why it's unfortunate that the design work isn't matched by anything very compelling in the screenwriting department. The plot is based on Tinkertoy elements that should be old hat to anybody who's seen a couple of samurai movies or old westerns, and the characters are more amusing than genuinely engaging, with dialogue that doesn't usually rise above "workmanlike." You can only develop so much of an emotional investment in a samurai with an afro, no matter how funny the concept may be. Nevertheless, just exploring all the plot forks and strange corners of the game world is enough to occupy plenty of time.

Information

 * IGN.com