Our Samurai Riot Review

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From the amazing art style, great animations, and cool lo-fi hip-hop background music, Samurai Riot brings new breath into this genre for me. This is our Samurai Riot review.

I grew up on side-scrolling beat’em ups.  I have always loved playing them from Double Dragon, Ninja Turtles, to Battletoads and Streets of rage. The list is quite long; there was quite a lot back then. I would like to believe for me that Samurai Riot is a refreshing taste of that genre again.  From the amazing art style, great animations, and cool lo-fi hip-hop background music, Samurai Riot brings new breath into this genre for me. This is our Samurai Riot review.

You have the choice to play as one of two characters in the beginning Sukane and Tsurumaru. If you have a friend you both can enjoy playing this game together as it is local co-op, they can play the other character.  Both characters play differently as one is a samurai and the other is a shinobi.  When you first select a character you can choose which kind of school you come from.  In the beginning, there are 4 schools you can choose from on each character.

Each school not only changes the color scheme of your character but they also add an additional benefit as in a buff to a stat. As you play you will pick up the currency in the stages that you can then use to unlock additional 7 schools. The fact that changing the color scheme of your character has a slight impact on its play style a very good style choice to me. Like the art style for the game, it really sets it apart from many other beat’em ups in the genre.

From the amazing art style, great animations, and cool lo-fi hip-hop background music, Samurai Riot brings new breath into this genre for me. This is our Samurai Riot review.

Combat is done really well too in most aspects for Samurai Riot. The animations make combat seem really fluid. You are able to string combos together, granted it is pressing 1-2 buttons, but you can also combine it with jump attacks or a dash to evade an incoming attack.  The only real problems I had in combat were when it came to using Tsurumaru’s grenade and Sukane’s grab ability. While the grenade makes for a good knock down to get away from enemies, it needs to hit them to be effective.

From what I’ve seen when playing most enemies tend to close the gap and walk right past it. Sukane’s grab ability has her fox wrap around an enemy and stops them from moving. Other than that I don’t exactly see how useful her grab ability is when there are usually multiple enemies coming after you. I have to spend some more time figuring her character out. With the chill lo-fi hip-hop tunes playing in the background I have no problem playing more and figuring her character out.

The AI for the enemies in game is also very good. You can denote their difficulty based on the color of their outfit. I found enemies that were wearing read to be more difficult. They will evade attacks, block, throw, and use abilities of their lower tiered clones. Having a strong AI for the enemies is what made the combat truly enjoyable to me. When I got stuck on red spearman, my first run in the first stage was really surprising. I thought he was going to be like the rest until I attacked and he dodged. I can tell you my exact thoughts were “Uh oh, he can dodge.” Well I lost that one, came back though and defeated him.

From the amazing art style, great animations, and cool lo-fi hip-hop background music, Samurai Riot brings new breath into this genre for me. This is our Samurai Riot review.

The music is the other really great part about Samurai Riot. It reminds me much of Samurai Champloo in that regard. Just think about the intro song to that anime or put the song on, and look at a screen shot of Samurai Riot and you will see how the art style, game play and music make this one really awesome game. There is also a great perk, if you like the music as much as I do, on steam you can also buy the soundtrack.  There is one more thing I want to mention that is kind of important. From what I’ve played the story of the story you can make choices that affect it. So that tells me that maybe there is more than one ending to this Samurai Riot tale.

If you have played it, what do you think of the game? Also what do you think of the music? It’s great to me. Also if you think you have to use keyboard to play this, you don’t.  Samurai Riot has full controller support.

Note: Our Review was done on PC with a code provided by PR.

Samurai Riot Review Score – 9/10 

Pros:
  • Fun and challenging gameplay
  • Co-op (local only)
  • Great art style
  • Amazing Soundtrack
  • Full Controller Support
Cons:
  • Only local Co-op

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