While its early problems with character balance (read: Genjuro being head and shoulders above everyone else) have been patched out at this point, the boss at the end of arcade mode is the same kind of frustrating brick wall that SNK loves to put at the end of all its arcade modes. Most of the flaws the game has are the same as the other versions.
#Samurai shodown 4 special review portable
The Switch port is admittedly a little blurrier around the edges than other versions are, especially if you try to play it in portable mode, but you don’t lose any speed or frames for it. It didn't quite feel like playing in my living room, but it was a perfectly acceptable online experience. I put SamSho on Switch through its paces for a couple of days, then took it online for a few ranked matches, and didn’t run into any problems with framerate drops or slowdown.
#Samurai shodown 4 special review Ps4
The Switch port is a little uglier than its PS4 or Xbox One versions, but not distractingly so. Top screen: PlayStation 4 bottom: Nintendo Switch You can definitely argue that it’s not particularly casual-friendly, but SamSho is still a really good “gateway game " it’s a cutthroat, high-impact way to learn fundamentals that you’ll use in almost every other fighting game. Victory in SamSho is mostly about landing one or two big hits at the right time, rather than learning elaborate combo attacks. None of the characters have more than a handful of special moves, either, so there’s a relatively low execution requirement. A single heavy slash can shave off a quarter to a third of a character’s life bar, projectiles do almost no real damage, and most of the attacks in the game leave you wide open for a crucial second if they’re blocked.Īs such, SamSho places a heavy emphasis on a lot of the genre’s intangible elements, such as mind games, matchup knowledge, and tactical approaches. While this isn’t necessarily uncommon in fighting games, particularly at high levels of play, SamSho takes it to extremes. The 2019 Samurai Shodown – technically the seventh mainline game in the series, but intended as a franchise reboot – is a high-risk, high-reward fighting game, where every character is no more than one or two big hits away from losing a round. Specifically, it’s a very educational sort of game.
Samurai Shodown Switch Review: Portable Swords
If you’re strictly a Switch player looking for something new to do with your fightstick, however, SamSho is a hallmark of the genre for several very good reasons. If you already played and made up your mind about SamSho, the Switch version won’t change your mind.