Samurai Spirits IV: Amakusa Kourin Special

"It improved slightly but can never match the orginal Samurai Shodown"

Storyline-8/10
Well there is some more characters into this game. There is a rivalry between two brothers A guy with fire and a guy with water. There is the return of some of the other more interesting characters from the past. Yes they finally realised that the characters in Shodown 3 were not as interesting as the cast of Shodown 2.

Graphics-8/10
There is hardly any improvement. It doesn't really looked too good compared to other games made during its time.

Soundtrack/music-6/10
Seriously I wonder why KOF can be given such good music while this series has to make do with inferior ones. Hey even the music soundtrack of the classic games like the Fatal Fury 1-3 were better.

Gameplay -7/10
Well they did make more variations here and there to make the characters seem more balance and useful. Well they did
introduce a few interesting charcters and the return of some interesting ones to the terrible cast in shodown 3.
They even introduce more and intersting moves that were missing in shodown 3.

But something is still wrong. Yes I know its that if you choose a guy to use you can only fight against some of the characters in the game.Yes there is no way you can fight against some of the characters if you choose a certain character. This makes the replay value a super low since your opponents are only about half of the total cast.
This game does try to follow Tekken 2 and introduce a sub boss who is a rival of the fighter concept.Which could be interesting if you fight different guys before you get to him. But since you fight the same few guys when you get to him you really won't be playing it more than twice.

As for Cham Cham. Seriously I don't care about Cham Cham.
I would have prefer the return of the most unique fighting style of Tachibana Ukyo from Saumrai Shodown I or II.
Hey even the return of that German Knight in Samurai Shodown II is better than the return of Cham Cham.

Conclusion- Although this game made some improvements over the disaster known as Samurai Shodown III it seems that the series will never return to the glorious day of
Samurai Shodown I. This is also the last Samurai Shodown game in 2D. I never did liked the 3D ones since they were even bigger disasters which lead to the end of the Samurai Shodown series. As for me I can only say I moved on and become a Soul Calibur II and Soul Edge fan instead. I also became a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series where I see more and more characters who were based on the character designs of some of my favourite characters in the Samurai Shodown series.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/11/03, Updated 06/11/03