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Save Your Money!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: October 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is garbage. It is all talk and no action. The first one was much better.

I never played it, never will..

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 41
Date: July 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

From so many reviews, they suggest highly for this game and give it a 5 star rateing. I trust in the bad reviews, why write a bad review if it is'nt honestly true. I usually would rent it and write my own pearsonal review on the game but not this time. Theres alot of samurai, ninja, and whatever else there is in a name for martiel arts games comeing out. I'll wait for Onimusha 2, Shinobi and many others that seem to have boggled my expectations. This "Way Of The Samurai" tends to lack alot for me just from reviews, images and personal recomendations that suggest, don't bother. Don't waist your money, save it for a future release. I give this game 1 star for attempting to scam me, and I give BAM! $0.00 of my money for there badly designed game.

Way of the Returned Game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: November 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Here's my Haiku:

Great Idea
Original and Unique
Very Badly Done

I rented this game with no instructions. The first thing I noticed was that there was a tutorial. This tutorial was slow torture, but I learned some things. Then I started the game. The Graphics were pretty good, and I sensed that some great stuff was going to happen. I started off nicely, explored around, and I got killed. So I started again, explored some other parts, and got killed again. This time I decided to avoid getting killed.

That's when this game got dull. Really, really dull. I played for two hours, painfully walking from one place to another. The fighting, though interesting at first, was monotonous. The setting soon became boring. Worst of all, I wanted to save. For the love of Goodness I kind not find out how to save. The controls and tutorials taught me everything else but how to do. After playing for three hours straight, I turned off my PS2, hoping the game was saved automatically. It wasn't, and I wasn't going to repeat those three hours of gameplay, so I said forget it.

I promptly returned it to the video store, hoping that the few hours that the game resided in my house didn't lower my property value. This game was cheap. First of all, there were no voices at all. Voice actors are not expensive, yet they couldn't even afford that. Secondly, there is no compass. Many times I would want to go north, but I could only hope I was walking there. I could only check when I reached a new area whether I went north, south, east or west. Finally, you can not save immediately. Granted, I could have looked it up how to do it on the internet, but by that time I realized this game wasn't even worth it.

It's a great idea, terrible execution. Avoid this game at all costs.

Ulti Gamer

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: December 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This was a very disapointing game. I bought it after reading the reviews on line and I must say that I was thouroughly disapointed. I totally wasted my money. First off, the players move way too slow, and you are limted with only a few moves. I kept playing hoping that it would be better, but gave up after a couple of days out of bordom. I would compare the gameplay, fun rating and overall playability to that between atari and the first nintendo. Don't waste your money. It just goes to show you that some of these reviews are illegitimate.

a 76 year old gamer

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 24
Date: June 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Based on the screenshots I've seen of this game, the graphics look very PS1-like, so don't expect anything groundbreaking in the category.

ARGH!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: June 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Words cannot express how much I hate this game. There are very few games that I flat out HATE, but this is one of them. This could actually be the worst game I've ever played, so that's saying alot.
The game tries to be a "choose your own adventure" samurai story set in the last days of the Tokugawa Shogunate era of Japan, but completely fails. Here's why:

-Even though there are multiple paths you can take through the game, you can beat the game in about 45 min. either way. Not even most 16-bit games are that short, and those are certainly a helluva lot more fun!

-The swordfighting is boring, due to the slow pace, lack of moves, and under-evolved fighting engine. And since that's the main gameplay hook, it leaves you with little reason to play. Dynasty Warriors and Devil May Cry both sweep the floor with this one.

-There's no voice acting. Just grunting and giggling sound effects. For a game that wants to have a story, this sure is a raw deal...

-The save system is just messed up. Period. There were occasions where I'd save my game, die, and find out that my file had mysteriously been erased. And a quick look at some of the other reviews tell me I'm not alone on this one...

-The black guy with the afro. Seriously, what the hell is this guy doing here? Maybe if he actually said something funny once in a while, it'd be pretty neat, but as it is, he has no personality, and seems to just take up space. Leave him alone.

-The game world is tiny. It consists of 9 (I think) areas, that are each about the size of a football field. For a game that wants to have adventure game elements, this totally destroys everything, and is the final nail in this game's coffin.

Run Forrest, run!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: September 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game at the store. I'm not at all impressed with it. I was expecting a realistic game like Bushido Blade, but with a good plot. It ain't. The game is anachronistic and you do a lot of "hack, hack, slash...hack hack slash". I still play it but only to finish it. The save system is screwy. I lost my game for some unknown reason. This game ain't Tenchu, it ain't Bushido Blade. There is no feeling like a Samurai. They might as well have made this a 2D scrolling action game. The best thing about this game is the intro...and it don't get any better after that. I wish I could have rented the game. I won't even give this game away cuz I might lose a friend.

Fun for a couple of days only

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: June 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I really wanted to like this game, but ended up returning it after a few days of gameplay. Since other reviewers have gone over the good points, I'll just highlight the bad points that killed it for me:

1. There's only one save file allowed and this file is erased as soon as you start playing. Maybe the designers did this to emphasize the "story" or "seriousness" aspect of the game, but it prevents you from saving at a decision point in the game and efficiently checking out the what-if's. I didn't have the patience to play ALL the way through the same point over an over to find out how things change based on my answer to the 4th question in a conversation late in story. And especially not when it takes me a good 30-40 minutes of walking through mostly-empty environments punctuated by careful combat to get to that point.

2. When you die, the swords you took with you from your warehouse go away permanently. The game boasts something like 20 different swords with 400 possible moves among them. Great. But are you going to take your best life-enhancing, attack/defense-maxed swords into the story with you knowing you'll lose them if your character dies before reaching one of the story endings? (Note: there's at least one path that leads to premature death and it's not in combat, so you have no chance if you make the wrong decision). Also, losing the sword means losing all the advanced moves you've learned for it. If you start the game with another sword of the same type, you are forced to unlock the moves all over again! Like the save-game system, this seems like an arbitrary obstacle to really exploring the depth and richness of the game because it forces you to be very conservative about your choices. They should have made the sword skills part of the character instead of attaching them to the specific swords to encourage people to try out the other weapons. It's a painful choice: you don't take your best, well-used sword for fear you might lose it and you don't take a new fancy-schmancy sword you just got because you don't know any moves for it and you'll get killed (and lose the sword) by the first grunt. What's that leave? Well, I got very, very good at using the basic moves of the default sword....

3. You can't skip or fast-forward the dialog scenes. Let's face it, by the time you're trying to hunt down that last elusive story path, you'll have read the same dialog bubbles a hundred times. Since they don't change and some of them take a loooong time to unspool, you'll be futilely mashing buttons to try to get them to go faster. The inarticulate grunts that were inserted in place of actual speech don't make these passages any more palatable. I figure they account for about 10 minutes of inactivity during any given 30-40 minute playthrough of the story. Given that you'll have to play the story many many many times to get all the story arcs and sword skills, that adds up to a lot of wasted hours.

Too bad. There are a lot of cool story arcs and side-plots in Way of the Samurai and much replay potential in perfecting one's sword combat with each weapon. BUT, the game designers seem to have done everything possible to _discourage_ you from exploring the game. If your idea of "finishing" this type of game was to get all the story endings and all the swords with all the moves, then be prepared for a long, tedious journey that has purposely been made much more frustrating than it has to be.

Horrible game save design

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: June 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Just imagine that you have spent hours playing this game and your dog comes walking by your PS2 console and pulls the plug from the wall. No problem right? WRONG! You will have to start from the begining of the game. You lose all of your game data because this game allows you to only load the data one time! So if you can't make it to a save point while playing (which there are very few)or you reset your PS2 by accident, you have to go through everything all over again. In all fairness it would have been a great game if it wasn't for that small detail. Depending upon the decisions you make, you can determine the outcome of the game which is pretty cool. I should also mention that the game has also frozen up on me a few times and of course, I had to start ALL over again. A good idea for a game but just not playable. Save your money, maybe the game developers will get the message.

I take it back. I'm annoyed by this game the more I play it

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is an OK game. Actually it's not even OK. I got more and more annoyed with it the more I played it. I thought it was good, I beat the 6 endings. Then I saw how much more I had to do to unlock even 1/4 of the stuff and so I sold it. Diminishing returns on the replay keep it from being worthwhile. I liked that your fighting style changes when you equip a new sword and you unlock the moves as you fight with it. I liked that part. Another plus is the different endings. However, there are things in this game that keep it from being outstanding and really bother me. One is that you cannot advance the text during conversations, so the dialogue really slows down the game. That bugs me the most. Secondly, and I've seen this complaint the most, the camera angles while fighting can be annoying! A slight shift in position and the camera can lose you and get stuck behind a tree or a hill or a wall. Finally there is the messed up saving system. That is the most annoying part of the game. I went in hoping that this would be more like Tenchu 1 and 2, but it was more like Bushido and I found that to be disappointing, but that was my fault. I'd say rent it first and then see what you think.

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