A stab to the face will actually kill you! Shocker!
The game isn't threshed out very well. It just kind of puts you right into it. Not much of a presentation either. The menu screen is a normal white with a single bar to scroll for modes, which there aren't many of. The small amount of characters, weapons, movesets, storylines and levels make the game seemingly shorter than it should be. Some players might think you can't actually do anything and it's just a game to mess around in. For the most part, it is. The gameplay itself is enjoyable, but it doesn't get any deeper than that. You fight and that's it. No unlockable characters ( that most players will find) or extra weapons or levels. Even the secondary endings for each character are hard to get.
Some player might find this game more difficult than it is. The main difference between this game and most other fighting games is the absence of healthbars. If an attack hits right, it will kill you, period. Maybe a slash to the legs will make your character drop to their knees or a somewhat inaccurate strike will chop your foe's arm. The game knows the difference between a kill and a maim, and which one it thinks just happened is of grave importance to the rest of the fight. Not that it's a bad system though. Most of the time it won't glitch and it's definitions of whats what are correct.
The controls aren't hard to figure out. The D-pad is used for sidestepping and moving forward and backward, and to run while holding L1. The face buttons are used for attacking and blocking. Triangle hits high, circle medium, and X low. Square is for blocking. Any of the buttons can be used together with cracker jack timing to execute different attacks. You can change stances with R1 and R2. Depending on your stance, you will have a different moveset, able to block certain moves easier or harder, and hit certain areas easier or harder. You need to do a lot of experimenting to get a good feel for your weapon and character. You need to take in every possible factor before you make a move on the opponent. How strong your character is, the weight of the weapon, distance, their reaction speed, what will happen if I use this attack, so on and so forth. Strategy makes a rare appearance in a fighting game, but not so much that any character or weapon becomes unbalanced and too light, heavy, fast or strong. The balance is surprising to see with so many different factors for each fight. As few modes as there are, they aren't overly boring. Arcade will let you play through the game while following the samurai code( literally. If you don't, game over.) Slash mode will pin you against 100 foes, POW will play the game through first person, and training will let you sharpen your skills. Multiplayer never disappoints either. If only the game had more backstory or more characters or something to make the game more interesting.
Other than the totally original fighting, there isn't much to say. The graphics are ok. The sound is just about non existant. There are shouts and clash sounds, but no music of any kind. As standard to any fighting game, there are arcade, training, survival, and vs modes. That said, the replay value is pretty low. It isn't the kind of game you sit down and play to have fun. It's the kind you pick up every now and then, play it for a while just to mess around, then quit. With such an original fighting game, it's a shame they didn't go anywhere with it. There a small story, but nothing worth mentioning. Really, the big appeal of this game is vs mode, like any other fighting game. The arcade is nearly exactly the same each time. There's a large map to run around in during the fights, but there just isn't any feeling to the game. The unique idea didn't bring it all the way, but it seems the developers thought it would. As a result, it ends up being a fighting game among a realm of fighting games. Not greatly better than any other. 8 out of 10.