Eternal Samurai Reviews

Fun game! I liked the health pickups and how death shifted you into another form. The treetops section was fun

Eternal Samurai is a short game, I managed to get all 9 achievements in under 30 minutes. It's a very well made game and I'm impressed at how well it plays for its ridiculously low price. It's a 8-bit game reminiscent of the old NES games. You basically walk through levels in order to reach the palace to fight the evil samurai who killed you in the first place. The interesting gimmick is that [b]You possess the person who last killed you.[/b] This means that it is impossible for anyone to lose in this game. Each enemy has its own Jump Height, Attack Strength, and Movement Speed. These stats however don't make much of an impact on its gameplay loop. You basically move around with your usual WASD, but you have the ability to DEFLECT and ATTACK. Your slash ATTACK is how you kill enemies, it'll take about 3 hits to kill an enemy depending on your character that you possessed. However, enemies can also attack you quickly which is indicated by them flashing blue for a split second before slashing. This is where your DEFLECT comes in handy, press the button to deflect to be blue, yet invincible for a few seconds. You can immediately attack the enemy once you've successfully deflected their attack. So basically, you attack, deflect, attack, deflect, attack until they're dead. I really liked the retro style of the game, the intro cutscene was well made and the simple sprites are distinguishable enough to discern which enemy is which. If I had a complaint, it would be that you can't bind your mouse clicks to the DEFLECT/ATTACK commands. I was able to bypass this by having a gaming mouse with other buttons to bind the function keys into as I found the default buttons to be a bit uncomfortable. Anyway, I recommend this game. It's worth the price and the concept of a samurai possessing his killers is well implemented here. Have a nice one, my dudes!

The sword play is pretty basic. I struggled at first, opting for a button-mash approach. That got me killed. Once I found my inner zen, I was able to dodge and hit with relative success. The game did state that enemies had varied stats, but I must admit I didn't really notice any difference in practice. I found success with the exact same approach for each enemy (dodge then hit, repeat). I think this is the biggest area for potential improvement - it would be cool to see enemies with slightly different patterns (e.g. ranged attacks, jumping, dodging, etc). There is some light platforming in the game. This is a bit rough around the edges. The character is a bit floaty, and sometimes there are visible gaps between the character's feet and the ground. This could be polished. At one point I managed to avoid some combat by taking advantage of a secondary path (jumping in the trees). This was neat! I appreciate some of the nice little touches, like being able to knock background elements about with my sword. I haven't tested Duel mode. I beat the final boss, but I don't think I've seen everything in the game, since there are alternate paths I haven't explored. The game is short. It's basic. If the graphics and atmosphere appeal to you, then it might be worth the $1 price tag. Just set your expectations accordingly!

Beautiful game and I don't even mean that ironically. If the artstyle is up your alley at all, you won't miss the $1.

Simple but fun little game! Definitely prefer game controller and mapped jump to A (appreciate the fact that I could remap key bindings). I like that you can play through it easily enough but go back a few more times to find some of the hidden stuff/achievements.