Samurai Shodown Sen Review

I’ve been a huge fan of the Samurai Shodown series since the very beginning.  I can remember going to arcades in the mid-90’s to track down the original Samurai Shodown to prove my skills with my favorite fighter, Nakoruru and her pet hawk Mamahaha (no, seriously, that

The good news is that like pretty much anything else on next gen console systems, the graphics look great.  The bad news is that the environments are often so dark it

In keeping with earlier versions in the series, all the commentary for the fights are spoken in Japanese with English subtitles.  The developers even have different Japanese dialects being used that are historically and geographically appropriate for the fighter

Controls for this game are standard and responsive, and are completely customizable as you would expect.  In a fundamental design change from previous Samurai Shodowns, the types of attacks you have available have changed.  Prior to this title, you would have the option of a weak, medium, or strong kick or slash.  Samurai Shodown Sen has changed this to having only one kick, and the slashes have been broken up into horizontal or vertical attacks.  You would think that this could open up all sorts of new strategies to implement, but the game never feels like it takes advantage of this change in design.

Unfortunately the gameplay is where the wheels really fall off for this game.  Historically the Samurai Shodown series has been one of the more difficult fighters to master.  Depending more on timing and counters than button-mashing, there

If you can get past the uneven gameplay and the paper thin Story mode, the online match performance is actually pretty good.  Matchmaking responds quickly and you are able to directly invite people on your friends list into a private match.  Another problem crops up when you start playing ranked matches.

 

As you would expect, ranked matches go on your permanent record and contribute to your overall worldwide ranking.  This ranking doesn