The Craft of the Samurai Reviews

[h2] Sum-Up[/h2] [h1] In-depth analysis further down.[/h1] [table] [tr] [th]🟩Pros[/th] [th]🟥Cons[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]As a Self-Voicing option that acts as Text-to-Speech, since the game is a linear story this can turn the experience in to a film.[/td] [td]Short Visual Novel, takes you under one hour.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]-/-[/td] [td]No choices can be made.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]-/-[/td] [td]While sticking true to its inspiration, the Story does seem promising but fails miserably.The style of writing is a bit confusing for the reader to follow, a mix of two different types of writing.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]-/-[/td] [td]The game has four Backgrounds, no character sprites. There isn't enough variation in the backgrounds for all the story.[/td] [/tr] [/table] [h2] In-Depth[/h2] [h1] Premise, Setting & Writing.[/h1] The Craft of the Samurai is set in Japan in the 17th century, follows Hanshiro, an old farmer, as he once again travels down the path of a samurai in order to save his loved ones. This visual novel takes inspiration from cinematic works of famous Japanese directors like Masaki Kobayashi, Akira Kurosawa, and Hideo Gosha. [h1]General Gameplay[/h1] There is none!, you just start the "game" and press space bar to keep reading. There are no choices.

It is a short visual novel (30 min. long) that reminded me of the works by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima. In all, I enjoyed the story. The art was beautiful but it would have been nice if more drawings had been used to visually tell the story.

This is a story and not a game, as it says more or less on the tin, so to speak. It is worth your time, you can read it at your own pace. It doesn't have filler or pointless choices like some games have. The art work is excellent. Nice music. If you enjoy short stories and anything samurai, at this price you have nothing to lose. It took me just over an hour to finish it. I hope the Dev plans on making more stories of the same story quality and using the same artist.

Short and Sweet. I appreciate the developer providing exactly what to expect with the visual novel, and that it was reasonably priced. I only heard about this game through some indie game YouTube channels, so I'm glad there's some exposure to this for what may get lost in the shuffle of the many games appearing on Steam daily. The overall presentation was good. The art, sound effects and most of the music complimented the short story well and fits the homages being paid here. I only wish there was even more art to fit the narrative, but I'd expect it to be a limitation. The black and white visual aesthetic definitely gave me the vibe of seeing those classic Kurosawa samurai films with each image nearly looking like a still frame from a film. The story text even stylistically looks like film subtitles in how it's presented in frame with the imagery which I appreciated. While the type of story is a bit familiar, the writing was solid capturing the inspiration the developer has with these classics of cinema. I noticed a couple typos here and there in the writing (Hansiro instead of Hanshiro for example) and maybe some grammatical errors, but nothing that detracted from the experience. This VN is worth checking out if you want to support an indie developer and are looking for a short story to sink your teeth into at a reasonable cost.