A game ahead of its platform and with far greater potential than it's descendants...

User Rating: 7.4 | Bushido Blade PS
By ubu_for_king | Review Date:
This game deserved to be revived on the PS2. For a fighting game it had many points to praise: the cumulative body-part injuries and the risk of one-hit-death instead of the usual damage meter, a range of different but realistic weapons, the sub-weapons and throwing dirt in your opponents face, the beginnings of background interaction and free-roaming combat. The choice of first person perspective and the ability to link two machines and screens to play a first person versus game was a novel idea, though I never got to practise it. And of course, the ability to give up the fight and commit seppuku...

What disappoints (apart from the now dated graphics) is the small number of starting characters and - as a rather poor player - the difficulty involved in trying to unlock the few extra ones. And why did they have one Japanese costume and one silly post-modern sports wear one? Also, as it's called Bushido Blade there are too many western weapons, a pity, when there's such a variety of Japanese weapons to choose from beyond the katana, naginata and no-dachi.

Kengo and Sword of the Samurai/ Kengo II were disappointing follow ups, offering a great variety of training and stances (not forgetting character design) but lacking any choice in actual weapon or the depth of damage detail. Bushido Blade should have been the basis for the next gen samurai fighters.

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