Soul of the Samurai

"The way of a samurai is an art form..."

The Sony Playstation has been around for almost ten years, and in it's time we have seen tons and tons of games released for it. With so many first party titles stealing the limelight, do any of the other games stand a chance? Granted, Soul of the Samurai, (SOTS), is made by the same company who launched the monster franchise, Metal Gear Solid. Still, this company has put out many other great games that just don't ever receive the credit they deserve. Soul of the Samurai is one of these said games. In no way was it perfect, but I believe before it had a chance to shine, Bushido Blade and other popular releases at the time, stamped it out of the running. That's a shame too, this game is quite good for what it is, and many people and reviewers don't seem to appreciate it. Why do I say this? Let's take a closer look.

Story: 8/10

At it's root, SOTS's storyline seems kind of run of the mill. Two warriors are the only ones who can stop a horrendous plan from being put into action, and as such, fight through many missions to achieve that goal. Sure, if you take that as the storyline, you won't be very impressed. If you throw in a few other factors, it might liven it up a bit. Both warriors are from two different cultures, and each have their own distinct fighting style. They each are looking to fulfill a personal goal, and in turn become entangled within a heinous plot, and find themselves fighting to save a village from ultimate destruction. Kotaro, the samurai, is reuniting with his old childhood friend, and thinking of childhood memories. Lin, the ninja, is already engulfed in the plot, and seeks more information. But they both get more than they bargain for. They discover a magician, working for the leader of the village, is creating zombies in using these "soul bugs" in corpses. They have to get to the bottom of this, as well as fulfill their own destinies. So you see, the plotline is not the greatest ever, but it is infinitely better than the average.

Graphics: 8/10

Judging graphics for an old system, especially compared to modern systems, is very hard. However, one can see in this game, that a lot of effort was put forth in order to make the game look good. It's mostly atmospheric touches, and not so much the actual visuals. The actual visuals are nice though, hand drawn, pre-rendered backrounds, and polygonal characters. The blend is a nice one, the characters on screen and the backrounds mesh pretty well. The character animation is a little clunky, but for the most part it works. When characters or enemies die, a pool of blood slowly pours out. When they are struck, blood pours out. The game is very violent, but it fits the subject material. Samurais were not tidy warriors, they did what they had to do, however they could do it. The atmosphere, as stated above, are what make the visuals seem better than they are. You actually feel like you are in a japanese village, characters look authentic from the Edo era, and the speech is handled in the same manner as well. Overall, it looks and feels like you are playing a game from that time period, and that is nice.

Sound: 6/10

Sound is probably the weakest part of the game. It comes in a variety of slashes, sword clangs, splashes, screams, groans, and death cries. The sound is pretty nice, it is what it is, and there is nothing wrong with it. The main reason of the score being what it is though, is the music. While some may say techno music is cool for slaying zombies and enemies like mad, I say it absolutely slaughters the mood. For a game that is trying to be mature and take itself seriously, the music ruins it. Techno music is cool, but when you try and combine this with japanese/oriental melodies, it fails on every level. But even taking that into consideration, you may find yourself humming the music every now and then. It's not that the music is particularly bad, it just doesn't fit the game well.

Gameplay: 9/10

Now here is what the game does best, and of course gameplay is what REALLY matters, so that is an excellent thing in this case. Playing as either Kotaro or Lin, you will have a blast slaying the hundreds of zombies and evil samurais. There is just something that never gets old about slashing an enemy a few times, blood streaming out, and his agonizing scream as he falls to the ground in a pool of blood. Call me sadistic, but this brings across the feeling that Samurais really have no feelings, and kill when they have to. You will kill hundreds of enemies in this game, and the whole time, you will love it. So, walking from screen to screen killing enemies, picking up a item, fighting a boss, starting over, is in essence, what the game is all about. The story of course helps bring the repetitiveness down a bit, that, and the fact that it is so much fun regardless.
So, as either character, you will gain many new weapons and abilities to slay the hordes with. You will gain experience as you kill, learning new moves that take away magic power. Magic power is earned at the same time as experience is gained, so no tedious magic replenishing items to be collected here. Also, aside from said special moves, each sword has different combos to be pulled off. You can do a variety of combinations within this system, so the game doesn't have to be just mash one button and kill everything. This also takes off any repetition that might arise from the linear gameplay.
Even with combos and special abilities though, that does not change the fact that this game is H-A-R-D hard. You will die many times in attempts to defeat bosses, and in some cases, regular enemies. This annoyance is further exaggerated by the fact that everytime you die, the game resets and you have to load your game again in order to continue.
This brings up the next item of importance, saving. Saving is relatively easy and all, (press a button by specific flowers) and is actually pretty cool, because you get a new Haiku everytime you save in a new area. Save points are few and far between though, so either you backtrack alot to save, or you just do an entire area each time you die. Some save points are right before bosses, so thats not as bad, but why do this when you have to restart your game everytime you die to continue. The difficulty and save point speculations are the ONLY thing that kept this category from a perfect score.

Control: 8/10

Controls are pretty easy to get the hang of: square button for slashes, triangle button to sheath your sword and unsheath it, x button to jump, circle button to use items. R1 guards, L1 runs, and L2 changes items. It's all pretty simple. Control can sometimes be clunky, but most of the time, feels pretty good. Controlling with bad camera is another issue. Boss battles in this game have notoriously bad camera angles, making it very hard to land hits sometimes. You will figure it out eventually, but this is one detail that bumps the control score down a little. The only other is blocking. Sometimes, the character is surrounded on all sides by enemies, and can only block one. This allows every other enemy around you to hit you, and makes for some pretty quick deaths sometimes. Maybe this is more realistic than the other option, having them attack one at a time, but it makes for some pretty difficult situations. Luckily, you do have an attack that you learn eventually that will allow you to cut down every enemy around you in a circle, but when you are out of magic, your stuck. Regardless of the flaws, the game handles pretty well, and the flaws are understandable, save the camera issue.

Replay Value: 7/10

Well, you have 2 different storylines to play, one for each character, and there are 3 endings to be found. Once you've done that though, the game offers no other modes, and you would just play through again if you wanted. A cool feature is however, once you beat the game with a character, you can save and play through again with all of your moves, swords, and abilities form the previous game. Also, there are a few hidden extras that are not easy to see if you don't know about them, but they are there. But overall, you will play it a lot once you start, but might not find alot of reason to after getting everything, which doesn't take a long time to do.

Overall: 8/10

The game is not perfect by any means, but I believe most of the shortcomings are outweighed by what is good about the game. There is a lot to like here, but sadly, the game just isn't very long. It is wonderful fun while you are playing through the first time and after to unlock extras, but after that, you probably won't play it that much. Even so, the game is old and you can find it at very low prices, which asks the question: Why not get it? Its a blast to play, and while short, you will definitely enjoy it fully while playing. You shouldn't pass this up if you see it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/21/04