Samurai Shodown V

"Defined 'the art of samurai fighting', claims the box. Well, maybe not; but it's still a decent game."

Before I begin with my review of Samurai Shodown V, allow me to precurse it by saying that I'm probably not the most qualified person to be reviewing fighting games. This heady admission doesn't stem from a lack of affection for them - infact, I have several in my collection - but rather from the fact that the way in which I play them usually entails a sort of timing-based button-mashing, rather than the learning of combos. But please, try your best to sympathize with my situation - you're reading a review written, after all, by someone who didn't learn which way was left or right until he was eleven years old, and whose Grade 6 teacher advised his mother in confidence that he may have a patterning disability (i.e., X+B+Y+Right Trigger).

First, allow me to put aside any worries all two of you SNK purists who own Xboxes may have about Samurai Shodown V: it is not a broken port, and nor is it one which foregoes Xbox live support (Why does GameFAQs spell checker place glaring red underlines under the word 'Xbox', but MS Word's doesn't?). Rather, it is a faithful port of an "arcade classic" (according to the box), released in that oh-so-classic year of 2003. In spite of its relatively recent release date, though, Samurai Shodown V does little to expand upon the innovations of its predecessors: its graphics are grainy, its story is told through a filter of laughably poor translated dialogue, and its gameplay does little more than evoke nostalgia for a long-gone era of bubblegum pop and court libels over 2D fighters. So why did it receive a 7/10, again? Because, like an unflattering high school photo you might warmly inflect upon in your adulthood, some weird magic is called to the fore as soon as you pop Samurai Shodown V into your Xbox, and all these criticisms are, miraculously, forgot. In this sense, the game's shameless retroism is probably its greatest strength.

Without getting too poetic, I can say with confidence that the game's ability to quell any doubts its engager may have about it within five minutes of playtime has to do with its fighting engine, which is inscrutable. SNK have never been slacks at any point in their history, and the fact that a Samurai Shodown released in 2003 that adds little (if anything) to the core formula of the series is still a blast to play is a testament to this. The art is fairly enticing too, as in spite of possessing all the graphical prowess of a Lite-Brite the game still manages to conjure up some interesting variations on tired Anime archetypes: for example, Kusaregedo, one of the game's characters, is a towering orange-red behemoth with scraggly gray hair and an insatiable desire for human skin. As you can imagine, the comic possibilities of this are endless. Here is an actual quote from the in-game dialogue:

[Kusaregedo stumbles upon the carcass of someone Yumeji, one of the game's semi villainous characters, has just offed, and conversation ensues. Keep in mind at this point in the game little light has been on the plot.]

Yumeji: I won't pursue far you can go.
Yumeji: Are you good enough to serve Gaoh?
Kusaregedo: You seem rather delicious.
Kusaregedo: I'm gonna eat you.

...Charming isn't it? While we're on the topic of the game's dialogue, I should mention that all of the game's story is conveyed entirely through dialogue boxes, which are more funny to read than almost any deliberate gesture of humour I've seen in a game in recent memory. The audio, too, is poor, as the game opens with that cheesy fighting game voice guy that every Japanese developer in history has managed to hire, followed by a stunningly bad songtrack which resembles a techno remix of a traditional samurai theme.

Fighting aficionados will be glad to know that Samurai Shodown V, aside from possessing a neat "Rage Gauge" feature which allows characters to unleash devastating on their opponents by pressing the little black button ("Wait? Isn't that supposed to be my grenade select?"), will also school your assyrian. I can vouch for this game's inane difficulty: I defeated the last boss, Gaoh, on the easiest setting after 3-4 hours of solid playtime. Compare that to Soul Calibur II's easiest difficulty setting, which I could probably complete blindfolded while eating hash* while in the throes of a seizure and you have a single-player mode which will probably last you for quite some time. The controls, too, are responsive, and get the job done - though I've stated before that the Xbox controller is by no means idyllic for fighting games.

Alas, all is not roses and aged wine. While Xbox Live support for Samurai Shodown V is certainly fun, and a nice alternative to the lag experienced while playing, say, DOA Ultimate on it, it has some serious imbalances. These relate to the fact that Samurai Shodown V's developers, SNK Playmore, decided to allow owners of the game's console iteration to play as two characters that were previously only available as uber-cheap opponents: Yumeji and Rasetsumaru. Okay, fine. Unfortunately, they also made the mind-numbingly stupid misstep of allowing these characters to be utilized while playing over the Internet; meaning, essentially, that everyone online with any interest in winning uses them, and only them. In the words of a another GameFAQs reviewer, "very lame."

Ultimately, Samurai Shodown V is an engaging 2D fighter that manages to succeed where it counts: with its core gameplay. The question of whether or not you should purchase it really comes down to how enthusiastic you are about 2D fighters: if you've already voraciously gobbled up the genre's other, better offerings on Xbox such as Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO and Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, and incurred sleep deprivation due to their Xbox live components, then by all means, pick it up. If, however, you haven't, or are just some strange soul who finds abysmal graphics, poor audio, and blatantly flawed online play somehow a turn-off, then leave this game to people with patterning disabilities like myself to play - people who haven't noticed SNK Playmore's pattern of flagrantly rehashing old titles. Now, if you'll pardon me, I have to go receive a compulsory @$$-whopping from Gaoh.

*1. a dish of diced or chopped meat and often vegetables, as of leftover corned beef or veal and potatoes, sauteed in a frying pan or of meat, potatoes, and carrots cooked together in gravy. No drugs here, kiddies.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/17/07

Game Release: Samurai Shodown V (US, 01/18/06)