Kamiwaza: Way of the Thief Reviews

A cornucopia of Kanto-creativity from the halcyon days of The Greatest Software Library in the History of Video Games. With no shortage of era-appropriate rough edges, [i] Kamiwaza [/i] shines as a gleaming testament to the bygone days of creativity in the gaming sphere. A stealth game that asks you to hurl yourself into the sightlines of the suspicious only to [b] Just Stealth [/b] into a thievish state of imperceptible ecstasy, all while lifting the contents of the pockets of the Edo-era constabulary that wish you harm. An action game that asks you to gently steal from your opponents until they’re so shocked by their newfound poverty they pass out. The cartwheeling and [b] Just Stealthing [/b] didn’t click with me instantly until I realized “Oh, this is like a sneaky play on bullet-dodging from [i] Samurai Western [/i] *,” at which point I began deliberately flinging Ebizo in front of every pair of eyes that might see him, for a good deal of mischief and loot-accrual. God bless Acquire. Is [i] Kamiwaza Katamari Damacy [/i] ? In many ways, yes. Slithering along the surfaces of a small village and its surrounding institutions, filling up my thief’s bag to dung beetle-dung-to-beetle proportions, cataloguing knick-knacks and tchotchkes alongside genuine artifacts and valuables with little distinction between them. Gleefully disrupting normalcy while grooving along to an anachronistic score that has little right being as funky as it is, [i] Kamiwaza’s [/i] handsy gameplay loop and oeuvre of objects quickly reminded me of that classic clump spirit. A grab-bag of goofballery in a digestible little open world. Buy on sale or consider the steep price tribute for all of the games you run off of PCSX2. *I would in a heartbeat buy a barebones port of [i] Samurai Western [/i] on here.