KATANA KAMI: A Way of the Samurai Story Review

When I first started playing video games, I was under the impression that only two kinds of games existed: versus games and story games. Versus games were any game where the point was to play against another human or an AI-controlled opponent in matches that took at most half an hour. On the other hand, story game were single-player games that had a narrative story and lasted for tens if not hundreds of hours. Then in 2002, my parents bought me Way of the Samurai for my 13th birthday and I had no idea what was going on with this game. It seemed like a cool story game where I was an adventuring samurai, but then it was over in only a few hours. Since I was too busy being an obnoxious teenager, I quickly dismissed it as a “bad game” and ignored the series from that point on. But two weeks ago, a spin-off game from the Way of the Samurai franchise came out and I decided it was time to reassess the series.

In KATANA KAMI: A Way of the Samurai Story players take on the role of a wandering samurai who happens to have either very fortunate, or very unfortunate, timing. Upon entering an area known as Rokkotsu Pass, the player encounters a swordsmith in the midst of having his daughter kidnapped. The smith, Dojima, has accrued a massive debt and his daughter, Nanami, is being taken as collateral. Because the protagonist of KATANA KAMI is actually a huge jerk, he waits until Nanami and the debt collectors are long gone to offer his help with paying off Dojima’s massive debt in exchange for the right to marry Nanami once she is freed. That night, the player discovers that a magic portal to Jikai, a purgatory-like afterlife, appears in the trunk of a tree outside Dojima’s workshop every night and decides that the best way to pay off Dojima’s debt is to plunder the land of the dead for swords and swordsmithing supplies. On top of this, Dojima says he will be able to make more money selling swords if tensions between local gang members can be heightened to the point of all-out conflict, which will prompt the gangs to buy more swords more often, so players must also become amateur warmongers.

I won’t blame anyone who thinks that KATANA KAMI sounds overly complicated, but I’m sorry to say that I haven’t gotten to even half of the systems in the game and that’s the game’s biggest flaw. When I first picked up the game, I thought it looked like a samurai-themed take on Moonlighter, one of the better games of 2018, but there’s much more to the game. KATANA KAMI has 66 unique tutorials and, after 17 hours with the game, I still haven’t seen 10 of them. At the game’s core is the player’s forays into Jikai for swords and materials. During these excursions, players fight skeletons, snakes, ghosts, demons and wizards to take their swords to be sold at Dojima’s shop. Players upgrade their equipment by taking it off the bodies of the slain, but must strike a balance between making themselves more capable by equipping powerful swords and selling powerful swords for money to keep up with Dojima’s debt. Besides keeping valuable swords, the player has to carry extra swords to be used to repair their equipped swords, so the player can’t simply carry a pack full of the best swords they find or else they’ll be throwing away good steel just to keep going. In addition to these two considerations, players must also fight with swords to learn their unique attacks, specific to each of the 132 different kinds of swords as well as level up their proficiency with each sword, a trait unique to each individual sword. I think the game might have been better had it stopped here, but it added a lot more to the player’s plate in the form of daytime activities. During the day, players inhabit the mortal world, where they must manage both their inventory and the inventory of Dojima’s shop, prepare and ship orders of swords to the various gangs, foment tension between the gangs by intentionally shipping them different qualities of swords, maintain friendly relationships with the gangs by not being obvious about the disparate sword shipments, take on quests, and establish a romantic relationship with Nanami by mailing her gifts. There’s too much and, though it’s all perfectly serviceable, none of it is especially well done, like a buffet that has dishes from all across the culinary world that are all prepared in a microwave.

The one thing that kept me going with KATANA KAMI through all of its mediocre mechanics, aside from a sense of obligation, was the game’s sense of humor. Though there’s very little story, the game still manages to be amusing through physical comedy. Aside from swords, the only thing players can equip that changes the game is accessories. These accessories give passive bonuses like extra bonus health or additional inventory slots, but there is a hidden humor in them. Each accessory has 3 different ways it can appear on the main character, and almost always at least one of the three is intentionally absurd. My favorite example of this is an open-top backpack. Obviously, the player can wear it on their back as intended, but another one of the three options is to put it over the player’s head like the world’s worst helmet. Other gems include wearing masks on the hands, baskets as shirts, and guitars as masks. In that same trend, a lot of the negative status effects the player can receive have humorous accompanying animations, like pantomiming a shaky old man when afflicted with the Weakened status. Possibly the most unexpected source of humor is the game’s Prostrate button. At the push of this button, the main character falls on hands and knees, bowing their head. Most of the time, this catches enemies off-guard and they stare at you, making uncomfortable gestures because they don’t understand why the player has suddenly decided to beg for forgiveness. This is doubly funny when the player does it without the other person having done anything. Humor is different for everyone, but the oddball humor of this game definitely tickled my funny bone.

KATANA KAMI: A Way of the Samurai Story is a game as overburdened as its title. It’s almost like a small indie game trying to pay homage to other games and developers the creators liked, but instead of being a little $5 passion project, it’s a $30 awkward B-tier game made by a major studio. With how jam-packed the game is, you’ll definitely be getting your money’s worth out of it for weeks or even months to come, but the lackluster execution of all of the mechanics and systems means I encourage you to find it for less than full price.

Buy this game on sale

It’s worth playing, just not at the price they’re asking