Samurai Riot Definitive Edition Review

Initially released in 2017 Samurai Riot has been re-released as a definitive edition. The definitive edition brings new additions like all-new animations and dialogs as well graphical and optimization improvements .

Samurai Riot has a hand-drawn animated aesthetic which is heavily inspired from French animations, the game was developed by French developers Wacko Factory so the art style makes sense. Characters move smoothly and animations have an extreme anime look to it, attacking looks and feels great the environment is a mix of traditional Japanese culture and folklore being combined with modern buildings and technology this gives it this weird aesthetic of traditional and modern, the only thing that I didn’t like about the art style is that once in a while it’s hard to distinguish breakable objects from unbreakable ones but that’s more of a nitpick than a complaint.

Enemy designs are solid but there’s not much variation, you have your basic guys and enemies have color variations which dictate their attacks, health and movement, you’ll fight these guys in combined groups each one presenting their own difficulties and you will have to learn their attack patterns and how they are best dealt with in order to complete each level successfully. In the standard beat-em-up formula initial bosses will return as common enemies, boss design is excellent and it feels daunting sometimes to fight some of these yokai or just huge enemies that you face at the end of the levels. The soundtrack is pretty good, it incorporates the hip-hop genre with eastern flair.

Samurai Riot follows your standard beat-em-up formula, the player has a light attack, heavy attack, jump button, block or dodge depending on who you choose and a grab. What this game does to differentiate itself with other beat’em ups is that you will have to make several choices as you progress through the levels, most of these will involve a choice at the end of a level usually deciding whether to execute someone or making a decision that’ll change the tide of war, while the game doesn’t change much as you will still be fighting the same enemies it does change up the story, level order and the conversations that you will have with other characters in between levels there are also certain levels and bosses that you can only see depending on certain choices that you’ve made. If two players are playing and both of them make a different decision then the game will go into a PVP mode to decide the outcome.

When you complete your first playthrough, the player will receive all the coins they’ve collected and these coins can be used to unlock schools which affect character attributes and grants special properties one school allows the player to double jump while another poisons enemies, these schools add further replayability and through playing the game you can find a school that fits your playstyle and helps you succeed the game in higher difficulties.

Overall, it’s a great time to pick up Samurai Riot with the additional added content from the definitive edition and I recommend it especially if you are a fan of the genre.

Purchase Samurai Riot Definitive Edition on Steam!