Samurai Spirits Bushidouretsuden

"Dedicated Myamoto Musashi and Mahatma Gandhi."

Samurai Spirits/Showdown Bushidouretsuden was released in 1995 by SNK. As usually seems to be the case with many great games, it sadly was not released in the U.S. I remember when I first heard about it before it was released I though it sounded kind of interesting , but at the time I was not very interested in imports, nor did I have a Saturn.
But over all that time I still hadn’t forgotten about it.

Early this year one my friends had happened to have the rare fortune to find a copy of this game. The moment I heard he had it I kept bugging him to let me borrow it. When I finally stopped bugging him about it, he lent me it a month later.

Gameplay:9 SS Bushidouretsuden is an RPG based in the world of the Samurai Spirits/Showdown fighting games made by SNK. Out of all the SNK fighting games made, this series has always been my favorite.

Much like any other RPG out there you journey across the land trying to help those in need and have random enemy encounters.

When in towns you can stock up on supplies, forge your weapons, ( I’ll get to that later.) Rest at and Inn, Save your game, or talk to people for information.

When outside of a town or inside a dungeon you will run into random battle encounters. The battles are turn based and are done very well. Each member of your party has a gauge that fills up and when it does, that character can attack. All your characters have many special moves they can use, which are all their signature moves from the fighting games such as Ukyo’s Apple slicing attack or Charlotte’s “Power Gradation”.
Each character also has an angry gauge that will fill up when they take damage. When it gets full you do more damage and you also have access to some ultra powerful moves that will devastate most enemies. Even most of the bosses rarely ever lasted long if they got one of my guys into angry mode.
Also even though the battles are turn based, they still manage to make it seem like a lot is going on by having the enemies and your guys defend, dodge, & counter attacks. I know they do that in most RPG’s. But it’s done very well in this.
One other cool thing about the battles is that in some of boss fights an NPC character will fight by your side, like Basara or Hanzou.

I do have one problem with the battles though. You run into them rather frequently AND it takes like 20 seconds before it loads. In most places it’s not that bad, but in a couple places it is insane. I would run into enemies like every 5 steps.

As I mentioned before, you forge your weapons in this instead of buying new ones, which is bit more realistic. How much you can forge them depends on your level. The stronger you get, the stronger you can make your weapons.

Besides being able to forge your weapons, you can also get their alignment changed. There are SEVEN different alignments and they are: None, Holy, Fire, Cold, Wind, Thunder, & Evil. And depending which alignment your weapon is you may do more or less to an enemy, so you may have to use some strategy when choosing weapon alignments.

The game itself takes place in two different chapters. First the Amakusa chapter Which is based around the events in the first SS game. Then there’s the Mizuki Chapter and it takes place during the 2nd game in the series.

When you start up either chapter you have a choice of one of SIX characters that you can start out the game with. They are: Nakoruru, Haomaru, Galford, Genjuro, Cham Cham, & Ukyo. You will get two other people to fight with you as well. Although in the Mizuki chapter you can only choose one because the 2nd one is already chosen for you.
In the Amakusa chapter I chose, Nakoruru as my lead and Charlotte & Ukyo for my others. Then in the Mizuki Chapter I chose Haomaru as my lead and chose Cham Cham as my other.

Besides having characters join you, you also run into a fair share of them that you will have to fight. Such as Genan or Earthquake.

The Amakusa chapter took me around 20 hours to beat and the Mizuki Chapter took me around 30. Combining the time of both chapters I had around 50 hours of game play.

As good as this game was though, I probably never would have played it as much as I did without the excellent walkthrough that I found for it. It told me what I had to do, what was going on, and even what some of the Japanese characters for commands were.

Story: 9 As I said before the events in this are based around the 1st & 2nd SS games. In the Amakusa chapter Amakusa Shiro has been resurrected and you must find a way to stop him before he can do any harm.
In the Mizuki Chapter you must find and destroy the SEVEN Bells in order to stop Mizuki.

I know neither of them sound like anything spectacular, but both are very interesting because you get to find out a lot more than you ever do in the Fighting games. (Like why it is that the villains are doing what they're doing.)
Also depending which of the SIX characters you choose to play in the Amakusa Chapter, you will start out the game differently. That adds a little replay value to it.

Graphics:8 While on the world map the game really doesn’t look like much, when you get into battles man does it get good. Where ever you run into an enemy is where you’ll fight them. (No crappy blank screen here.) And most of the backgrounds, as well as the Enemies are all very detailed. And both you and the enemies animate very well.
Also when you have conversation you will sometimes see a character portrait and their facial expressions will vary.

Sound: 10 Both the music and the sound effects in it are excellent. All of the sound effects, like when you are attacking an opponent and they block you can hear the chinking together of blades. And all of the characters speak out loud during certain events and whenever they do their signature moves.

All of the music in the game sounds much like the music from the fighting games and some of it is pulled right out of them. Like the Earthquake theme for instance.
There are many different tunes, especially for boss music. There is one boss tune it makes a lot in the Mizuki chapter and it is my personal favorite just because it sounds so heroic.

Difficulty:8 While I never actually lost once, this game was still pretty difficult because there a lot of very cheap enemies that will get you very mad. The unfortunate thing, is that most of the bosses are not very hard. And even if they are at first, the moment you enter angry mode and launch one of your super attacks, they’re goners. Only a few bosses in the game actually gave me a run for my money and survived a single angry move.
Or maybe it's just that I was just was really good at choosing characters.

Replay:8 The fact that each character begins the game differently makes for some decent replay value and I can definitely see myself playing through this game again.

Rent/Buy: You’ll have no choice but to buy this one since it’s an import.
And if you’re someone who is a fan of the SS games, RPG’s and is into imports, then I highly recommend that you check this baby out. You wont be disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/09/02, Updated 12/26/03