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Tasunkawitko's Way of the Samurai (PS2)

[January 15, 2008 02:09:36 AM]

SESSION 1

SUMMARY
Way of the Samurai is an action adventure game for the Playstation 2. It is set in a remote village in Japan during the late nineteenth century. The player controls a samurai who wanders into the village and becomes entangled in the local socio-political situation. The player decides his own path according to the choices he makes when interacting with the game’s characters, and hones his swordsmanship through the myriad swordfights along the way.

GAMEPLAY
The first forty-five minutes of play in this game seemed to pass rather quickly. It was intriguing and thoroughly enjoyable. The game’s story is somewhat interesting. It is refreshing to have a game without a grandiose epic storyline. It seems to be fairly straightforward, on the surface it is about two factions, (the Kurou Family and the Akadama Clan) and their struggle to possess the nearby village. The most interesting part of the story comes from the relationships between the characters. The thing I like best about the story though, is the fact that it can change at the whim of the player. This first time through I chose to ally myself with the Kurou family, but I had the option of allying with the Akadama clan or not allying with either. Even now I can choose to leave the service of the Kurou and the story would not end there.
The game thus far is primarily task based; you’re superior tells you to go with him to drive some people away or to accompany him on a walk, you do so, inevitably some kind of altercation arises and afterwards you get paid. I find the actual sword fighting to be quite entertaining. The sword fighting aspect is much like a traditional fighting game; one can use several different kinds of attacks and combination of attacks as well as blocking. The kind of techniques one can use depends on the type of sword the player is equipped with. Each type has its own set of techniques and more can be unlocked as the player battles more and more. The player obtains swords from the foes he has killed, thus making it very tempting to kill everyone you can find just to see how good their sword it. The enemies vary in skill level, as they should, thus fighting an enemy thug is fairly straightforward whereas fighting an enemy boss can be quite challenging and rewarding.

SESSION 2

GAMEPLAY
The game ended up being shorter than I thought it would be. About twenty minutes into my second gameplay session I beat the game. After disposing of the enemy faction, the Akadama clan, the government invaded the village and betrayed the Kurou family with whom they had made a deal. The last part of the game was fraught with combat, pitting the player against dozens of foes at once. After completing the game I received ending number four. So being naturally curious I decided to play the game again to try for a different ending. This time I sought to ally myself with the Akadama Clan. Upon doing so I found that the characters that before had only been my enemies were revealed to have a certain degree of depth. Also, the Akadama path provided me with new a perspective of the goings on in the village. This path had an entirely different plotline and it was interesting to see the differences that one person could make in such a situation.
Aside from the story the second gameplay experience was about the same as the first. There were a few differences however as I got to keep the swords I ended the game with the last time and so had better techniques with which to fight my enemies. Also, after accumulating so many points from last game I was able to choose from new costumes. During my second play-through I also discovered the sword smith’s hut, where I could improve the stats of my swords making them stronger. It seemed strange on the first play-through that I kept getting paid money but did not have a place to spend it, now I realize that this was that place. All in all playing this game was a positive experience and I intend to play through all of the different paths to see everything that is going on in this seemingly innocent little village.

DESIGN
The most innovative part of this game is the freedom that the player has to take the story in his own direction. There are several separate plotlines that the player can choose to follow. The player may follow one plotline exclusively or switch between them according to the interactions with the other characters. The town in which the game is set has several different areas for the player to explore, and there is something different happening in each of these areas at the different times of day. This provides a multitude of options to the player. Also, every time the player interacts with another character he is given a list of choices of what to say, each choice carries with it certain consequences as the choice may affect how the character reacts to you which may in turn have a great deal of influence on how the game progresses. For instance you may choose to insult your superior, at which point he may throw you out of his faction or even pull out his sword and try to kill you.
Graphically the game is fairly well designed, given that the game was released in 2002. The game also features a vaguely entertaining soundtrack composed primarily of traditional Japanese-sounding music. Unfortunately one drawback is the lack of voice acting in the game. The characters communicate through text with an accompanying grunt or yell. After an hour or an hour and a half of hearing nothing but grunts, yells, the clanging of swords and mediocre music one might start to become exasperated.
The replay value of the game is immense as there are not only several storylines to play through but also several swords to collect, titles to earn, and costumes and special features to unlock. In my opinion this offsets the short duration of the game itself, making it an enticing and well designed game.