Way of the Samurai 2

"Let the blood splatter to overshadow the tedium and repetition."

Turning on Way of the Samurai 2, you are greeted with an awesome little opening cinematic that makes you think “Wow. This game looks like it might be worth playing”. Then, after spending 10 minutes making your way through the beginning “explanation”, you spend 10 minutes playing the game and you think to yourself "Wow, it took me a while to get here but it seems worth it. It looks like I should keep playing it!”

Now all of this is a very clever technique, because if I were to play the game for 10 minutes in EB, I would want a copy. Now lets take a look at this opening- you are forced to answer questions put to you by a child, questions which will inevitably decide whether or not you have to protect it, teach to write and read, abandon it, or whatever. If you do tell it to piss off, you can just run around killing people- and of course, this is what I did at first. Because pulling out a sword on unsuspecting allies is oh-so-much fun. And the blood that splatters everywhere a-la-Kill Bill looks awesome, thanks to the quite impressive graphics. But then I started the game over and decided to play through the game properly, and protect the child and teach it to read and write. While I was having fun for about an hour, by the time the second hour came about, I realised I was doing exactly what I was doing in the first hour, and it was much less fun. Every hour, the repetitiveness began to get to me- it just became TEDIOUS. All I wanted to do was kill everyone on the screen! But the fact that there are fourteen different endings interested me enough to continue- because if they expect people to play through it that many times, then SURELY it must get better. Mustn't it??

So three hours went by….
Four hours……
…..and so on……..

By this point in time I was on something like my third round of the game (each round takes somewhere between one and four hours) and I still wasn't having any more fun! The story still wasn't making any sense, I was still doing the same stuff I was doing five hours before that point, and I was still finding the game way too easy. Eventually, I beat the game, got an ending and thought to myself- “Well maybe I just chose the boring path? If there are 14 paths to take there must be a few in there which are much more interesting and challenging!”

As of this writing I have given up on the game halfway through my second time through it, as I got sick of everyone's crap and just killed everyone, leaving me with nothing to do and no tasks to perform! Oh well!!! Killing everyone who loved me was far more interesting than listening to the booooring conversations with the crappy voice actors- and just like everything else in this game, it was oh-so easy. And this is all thanks to the upgrade from Way of the Samurai, the Counterattack, which makes killing an ease. One thing I highly recommend you do in this game if you DO buy it is, Dynasty Warriors style, see how many people you can kill before you get arrested or even hurt! I think to got to something like 30 before I even got scratched. I must admit, this is about all the game has to offer in terms of fun. So heres what I recommend- forget about the fourteen endings, forget about the 60 swords they want you to collect, just go on the path of evil and kill everyone- it's the most interesting thing you CAN do in the game, and it does keep you interested for at least couple of hours. The music, too, which is of a cool Japanese style (as you would expect) is pretty good and kept me from turning the sound off to ignore the bad voice acting.

In Conclusion, don't let your first 10 minutes of the game deceive you into buying the game- its worth playing, but only to rent. Unless, of course, you are someone who enjoys tedium and repetitiveness in video games, in which case you are probably suited to a real life role of samurai (who knows, maybe in Japan this is a samurai recruiting program!?). But at least you get to wear some cool outfits that way. Give it a go, spray the blood, but give it a rest before you find yourself asking you the same question I did- “Will it be any better the next 13 times?”

FINAL SCORES (out of 10)

Graphics- Not bad, the characters flow pretty well and everything looks realistic- but this is what we have come to expect from video games nowadays isn't it? The Opening Cinematic is pretty cool as well. 7.5

Sound- I could have done better voice acting with helium in my lungs… but the music is pretty cool. 6.0

Gameplay- I suppose you can play through it one time like I did, but please don't listen to them when they say you should play through it another 13 times- its simply not necessary. 5.5

Replay Value- Technically, you CAN play through it 14 times, and witness different events, missions etc. But will you want to do that? Well hopefully not if you listen to the advice of yours truly. Good on them for trying though. 5.0

Final Score- Rent it. Kill the Good Guys, let the blood flow. And then return it. It deserves your attention, but will you be able to give it your attention for more than 2 hours? Probably not. I would have liked to have seen a multiplayer mode too. 5.0

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/31/04