Allow me to blow your mind and say Way of the Samurai 4 is one of the saddest games I've ever played. I know right away most people will call bull on it but the fact is outside of Silent Hill 3 a game hasn't made me feel this sad in years. I'll start of by saying Way of the Samurai 4 is strange. It seems to exist as a parody of everything ignorant westerners assume about Japan. It's a hilarious satire and the game knows it. The hilarious names of the English characters, the absurd fighting styles and appearances, the fact that the game is playing itself completely straight but it knows it's absolutely insane and of course there's the Night Crawling. Night Crawling seems to have been made as a parodic deconstruction of everything that moral guardians think these games are. You woo the lovely lady or fella of your choice with some truly charming dialogue options then when night comes you find their house sneak in and beat up unaware occupants who might get you arrested if you're spotted. After that you find the bed of your beloved remove the covers and go to an inn. At the inn you engage in a "battle" and if you land enough "attacks" you "win" and earn yourself a hysterical fade to black with horse neighs, sword sound effects and character noises. Simply put it's satire brilliance. The combat is nothing to sneeze at as there's a massive variety of styles to use and different weapons to gain and train in and even develop your own custom style. It's massive and in depth but you can still rely on the starter style to get you through. Square is for light quick attacks and triangle for heavy slow attacks. There's also Spring Harvest or as I call it the Red Circle of Death where with enough energy your character can cut through a horde of enemy in seconds. It's fun and later a necessity to ensure victory. Defeating enemies also allows to use parts of them for custom outfits on later play throughs and this is a must if you want to be female as the default character is a male samurai no matter what. You also gather points to unlock stuff like more parts for your character, more weapons and even the hard difficulty. Overall there's a lot of replayabilty for such a short game. Then again it kind of needs it. The actual plot of the game is bit straighter, you are a samurai from another land who arrives in town during the start of a conflict between the Town Samurai, the xenophobic Prajna and the foreigners. You have 5 days to shape a path. Who you side with, who you antagonise and who you kill all play an important part in the story. And this is where my sorrow starts. I instantly sided with the foreigners because it was quite clear that they were the only group who weren't obviously flawed. I spent my time doing missions for them winning their favour whenever I could. And then the Chief Minister Kinugawa showed up and instantly I knew something would go horribly wrong. Not to spoil anything but it did. I'm gonna give away massive spoilers for the route here so be warned. After Prajna members kill foreigner Jet Jenkins the only sane character in the plot Laura Lita tries to reason with them. It's absolutely heartbreaking watching this idealistic girl realise all her help and effort was unwanted. After a brutal fight with the Prajna forces leaving them wiped out for good Kinugawa showed up explaining his intentions to have Laura killed and her death blamed on the Prajna. His men swarmed the streets and I, with minimal health and several swords on the verge of breaking tried my hardest but it was all for nought. Laura died and I was left to hold her corpse. The day ended there. I was angry. Angry at myself for letting her die, angry at Kinugawa for his actions, angry at his men for blindly following orders and killing an innocent girl who couldn't defend herself, as my character sat in the harbour I had one thing on my mind : revenge. I went to the foreigner area one last time to see if anyone was still around and it was empty. Devoid of all life. I knew I couldn't leave this be. So I decided to make myself known. When a guard asked me to state my business I didn't say a word. I drew my blade and made my intentions known. None of them where going to live through this. What followed was an amazing one man army final mission not unlike that one really long fight scene in Kill Bill with the Crazy 88s. I was outnumbered but I didn't care. I killed countless men in pursuit of revenge. And then I learned from the ministers daughters that he was find left for another land. I didn't let them live either. I don't know if I got revenge. The game ended telling me no one was sure what happened next, that the battle had been lost to history. Whatever the case was i still felt empty, it wasn't bringing Laura back and it wasn't correcting my mistakes. I let the one person who didn't deserve to die die and I had to live with that fact. And to think this started off so light hearted. Way of the Samurai 4 did something I didn't really expect it to do. It made me feel genuine regret for my actions. I did not go into this game expecting to feel like I did when I failed. If I wanted misery I've got games for that but the fact is it's impressive in it's own right the game did this to me as a gamer. Sure there's grounds for ridicule here but still it's something special for a tongue in cheek game that satirises the Japanese as a whole to do this. If emotion isn't what you're after the fact is the game itself is pretty fun, with a decent amount of replay value and a wacky sense of humour. Definitely worth looking into.
