Way of the warrior: Samurai Riot review

Samurai Riot is a 2D cooperative beat’em up arcade game with a twist! Playing as Sukane or Tsurumaru, two charismatic warriors who are torn between their duty and beliefs, follow your own way of honour through multiple scenarios that lead to numerous different story endings!

The main plot of the game consists of the two main characters hunting for a rival clan which brought dishonour and war against The Clan of True Honor, of which Sukane and Tsurumaru belong. Part of the story is told when completing boss battles, you get to choose the fate of the boss which then impacts the way the story ends. Personally, this was a good touch for a basic game as I felt I had to think ahead about what the outcome would be if I made one decision over the other.

When entering the game, the art style is amazing. In the world of 3D Beat’em ups, Samurai Riot fits in nicely with its cartoon style and plenty of detail. One example is how there are different waves of characters representing a different skill set with their art style, and the vibrant colours used, give the game just enough visual pleasure that it doesn’t draw you away from the game and its play style.

Moving on to the level design, I feel it was detailed enough to not take you too much away from the gameplay but it didn’t grasp much imagination. Being a side-scrolling beat ’em up I understand that there isn’t a lot you can do with the level design, even though the developers did well fitting the style they were going for, I personally didn’t feel much effort was put in.

When it came to the game’s audio elements, even though very simple, it was pleasing to listen to while playing. I didn’t feel that the sounds agitated me while I played, as normally would happen within a beat’em up, for example, like when you spam that one easy move and have to listen to the same sound effect every single time. This personally didn’t happen in Samurai Riot as the sounds were subtle as you played through. I must also compliment the game’s soundtrack. As soon as I booted the game up, I fell in love with the music and just wanted to sit on the main menu and listen to it, but it’s a videogame at the end of the day, not a music video, so I eventually had to jump in and kick some ass.

Moving away from the design elements, the actual game itself is rather easy to grasp once you jump in. There are just two button inputs, the first being punch and the second kick. You can bash these buttons to just hit any enemies within range, or learn to press them in the right order to form combos which perform special attacks. Even though this makes the game sound easy I started to realise that wave after wave of enemies would actually make Samurai Riot quite a challenging game with only one player. I feel that having two players within the game would take the edge off the difficulty but could then make the game a little too easy for a true Beat ’em up a fan.

Overall, if you are looking for a Samurai side scrolling beat ’em up with an amazing soundtrack, easy to use controls, colour co-ordinated enemies and expansive levels; Samurai Riot is the game for you and will bring you hours of fun.

The TL;DR:

• Subtle but good sound design
• Colourful art style
• Good story mechanic
• Not much variety in enemy
• Could get boring quickly

65%

Samurai Riot is developed and published by Wako Factory and available now on Steam. For more info on the game and to purchase it, click HERE.