Brutally challenging combat meets gorgeous watercolored landscapes in a masterful game for mobile devices.
Beautifully painted environments are just gorgeous: Even when covered with the blood of your enemies!
Challenging Sword Fighting Play: High Difficulty, even on "Normal" especially towards the end
Level up combos: Surprising depth of play with only 2 attack moves
Grand storyline in comicbook-storyboard sty*le: game has surprising weight to it
Controls feel unresponsive at times, steep learning curve to master combos and fighting
Maybe A little too difficult: Can't change difficulty settings after starting a game, can just get stuck
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Samurai II: Vengeance by Madfinger Games (from the Czech Republic) is a real treat. In the first place, it's one of the best non-puzzle games on the Moblie platform, providing a rich experience, difficult combat, and absolutely gorgeous painted environments. Second, there's only a few games that require a high degree of twitch and combat skill, which Samurai II brings in spades. It's certainly almost too difficult at times, especially since you can't adjust the difficulty setting after starting the game, and the controls take some getting used to, but those are small gripes for such an overall quality package.
The stage is set initially through some beautifully rendered comic-book screens, which detail how as a renouned samurai warrior, you begin your journey by defending peacefull villagers from some local thugs. As you might expect, when you kill a bunch of thugs their bosses get mad - in this case a very evil boss who made a deal with the devil - which of course propels our hero forward through a grand quest to save the land. Through numerous chapters, composed of series of checkpoints to save your progress, it's your mission to kill the hoards of oppressive soldiers who've taken the land under their control.
Though it's a mission the likes of which Kratos wouldn't be a stranger to, you sure are lucky to tag along. That's because every inch of this game is dripping with gorgeous watercolor painted levels that will have you stopping and staring in between slicing and dicing. Though the overall aesthetic is clearly Japanese, each level has a distinct color pallete and design, though the levels are laid out in similar manner to each other. Down corridors and often into wide arenas, you'll face wave after wave of enemy thugs who won't go down easy. The visual design is just pure bliss throughout, and helps to lift the game up even when the combat gets brutal.
And brutal is an excellent word for the combat. Despite having the ability to level your health meter up through gaining Karma (from killing enemies and chopping barrels) no encounter is a breeze. Each enemy can kill you with a couple swings, which makes the fights both challenging to pass and thrilling when suprassed. Combat works by way of using the direction stick on the bottom left in combination with the roll, light attack, and heavy attack buttons on the bottom right of the screen. Hacking and slashing won't get you very far past the first Chapter, however, so you'll need to master the combo-moves which you can buy with your Karma points. Combos consist of 5 button combinations between light and heavy attacks, and are essential to master to be successful and, more importanly here, to stay alive. Until you understand that Samurai II expects you to string combos, the controls will feel non-responsive. The screen tracks the moves you make in a given combo string, and switching out of a string takes a second in play. Furthermore, since you're initially likely to urgently tap the attack buttons, each move takes a specific amount to time to execute, so mashing the buttons isn't effective at all. In part, that's what makes combat so enjoyable and thrilling here. You'll need to strategize, see the whole screen and move around, and since you can't block, you'll need to stay on your toes to avoid getting ripped apart - all the while, you'll want to plan out combos that will devestate your enemies.
And devestate them you will. Slicing them in half lengthways and widthways, lopping off their heads, and running them through, defeating your enemies is immensely satisfying. Blood will saturate the ground, and occasionally spash the screen when you really tear into someone, which stands out all the more on top of the watercolored environments.
By far the biggest downside is that, even with precice control and hours of practice, you might find Samurai II: Vengeance to be just too hard. Especially in the later Chapters, you'll face arena after arena of multiple waves of multiple enemies. You'll thank God that you just defeated one wave with a sliver of health, only to find your fight's not over. Dying 10 times in a row at these times isn't unusal, even on Normal difficulty, and it can be enough to make you want to throw your device at the wall. Since you can't adjust the difficulty after you've started a game, having put in so many hours to get stuck is frustrating for sure. Of course, you can chalk that up to not having mastered the combo fighting yet, which is clearly the case, but you ought to know that this game has little forgiveness in the later stages and it might be best to start on Easy.
On the whole, however, Samuria II: Vengence is a phenomenal game for Mobile devices. It's really hard and really beautiful, and it's got enough weight to make you want to play through the pain to achieve the final victory. If you enjoy Infinity Blade type games with high production values and challenging play, don't hesitate to pick this one up too.
9.2/10