Now playing: Way of the Samurai 4.
I remember liking this game series way, way back when the very first game hit PS2, when your allies included a black samurai with a giant afro and... that's the only one I remember (he was memorable as fuck and not stereotyped at all -) and you had 3 days in which to quell a dangerous situation. Unfortunately I never got to play the rest of the series, so I'm going back in time about four years to see what I missed. (I'm also trying out WotS 3, but WotS 4 finished first.)
And... gameplay is pretty much the same. I liked combat in the series, so this is a selling point for me. It's a slightly nuanced system in which you have to learn moves for the styles you wield. What I don't like is the Unlock system. Every time you get a Game Over you get Samurai Points based on how well you did, and you have to complete certain objectives to unlock the unlockables before you can spend them. First thing I did? CheatEngined that shit out of here and unlocked everything, because fuck you, I want to customize my guy.
Surprisingly, I don't need to do a lot of customizing. The default "Tender" protagonist is right up my alley. I mean... look at this.
Who wouldn't want to play an albino Samurai with a hilariously garish kimono and obi? I can fuckin' dig it. Gameplay is exactly the way it was in Way of the Samurai, too. It's a game built on replayability. You keep replaying to find the right sequence of events over the days you're in town, so that you can achieve the best ending and highest Samurai points. Or you can dick around and be an asshole, that option is there, too. What Way of the Samurai always did right was factions; they alter the story pretty dramatically as you go around and ally yourself with whichever. In this game, the factions are a bit lackluster; you can have yourself a little romance with the British Ambassador, though, so that's nice. So far as I've seen, the factions are: British Embassy, Magistrate's Office, and the Prajna, a revolutionary faction opposed to opening the borders and welcoming westerners. (If there's another, I haven't found it yet.)
And, really; it's about living life as a wandering Samurai and getting involved in politics the way politics was meant to be done - with a fucking sword. Or spear. Or martial arts! Yeah, that last one was a surprise having only played the first game, getting to literally punch people to death. The "Casual Martial Arts" unlocked at the start is pretty fucking good, though I have to wonder how well it stands up compared to upgraded swords.
The ability to take disparate parts of disassembled swords and spears and create your own is nice, and I understand it's a returning feature from Way of the Samurai 3. It's great, getting to customize your weapon to the way you want, but the system is a little... obtuse. And cluttered. Mind you, the only part that really
matters is the blade, as that determines base Damage and Durability (as well as the type of scabbard you have) while the tsuba and handle are more for chaining together descriptors to add abilities to the weapon. It's that last point that makes it cluttered; you can disassemble all the weapons you want, but if you really want an ability it narrows down what you're actually going to do. Which sucks, if you really like a certain tsuba or certain handle, but they don't have the right tags.
The sword durability thing is irritating me. I mean, they get low on durability after about three minutes of combat and beating the crap out of people, and money is scarce for purchasing whetstones which only restore durability at 400 a pop. Blade oil removes degradation for about five minutes at a time, but finding that is rare. I may just cheat the durability loss out of the game entirely, because a lot of these combats are fucking HUGE. Though granted, I'm only using blades with like 850 durability at most, and upgrading goes to 2000, so maybe I won't mind it so much once I have a 2000-Durability weapon.
That said, I'm having a blast. I think I'm a little too old now to really enjoy repeatedly going down the rabbit hole and figuring out the right minutiae to hit the last ending, but the combat is fun and the dangerous opponents are surprisingly dangerous, and the AI is good enough to give you a run for your money, actually parrying and guard breaking the same way you do. Mind you, I have yet to try the Hard or Ultra-Hard difficulties, but I remember in the first game difficulty options only inflated HP values. I can't forgive that all the prompts are for a controller when it's on the PC, which prompted me to actually play it with a controller instead of the mouse and keyboard.
The biggest complaint I have is the cutscenes are fucking long... but at least there's both a skip AND fast-forward option. Fast-forwarding cuts out the voice acting, though, which is quite nice when you listen to it.
I have briefly stepped into Way of the Samurai 3, and the graphics are nicer (having been recently re-released for the PC on March 23)... but there's no prettyboi protagonist for me to play as yet. Maybe once a CheatEngine table gets released that unlocks all the character creation options I'll give it another go, because fuck playing as any of the ugly bastards it lets you play as.
