Samurai Warriors: Katana

The moment Samurai Warriors: Katana is loaded into the Nintendo Wii, it’s clear that this game is going to be attacking all of your senses with a very stylized and stereotypical look of feudal Japan. Playing as a nameless up-and-coming warrior in the mindless battles between different factions of the Japanese aristocracy is enjoyable, even with all of the annoyances that exist in the game.

There is a lot of fun to be had; I put over 30 hours into unlocking most of the game. It's just too bad that it's all solo gaming; the multiplayer aspects of the Wii are totally lost on Katana.

A fun and promising new direction for the series, enough to make me anticipate a more polished, more multiplayer-friendly follow-up.

As creative as the controls are, they can't hide the repetitive grind of the straight-up slaughterfest for which Koei's Warrior titles are known.

Melee attacks in light gun games always suck. It’s too hard to judge the effective distance of your weapon, and much of the fun of melee combat as a concept is tied to the use of space and the tactics involved in controlling the flow of the fight. Unfortunately for Samurai Warriors: Katana, it’s basically a light gun game with melee weapons.

Samurai Warriors Katana is not a bad title by any means. However there are still a handful of issues,and the problem of repetitiveness that really holds the game back.

Samurai Warriors Katana is not a bad game. Heck, it verges on being decent, but is ruined by a couple of poor design choices.

There’s some fun to be had here, and there’s no denying that with more attention to detail, pride in the visual presentation, and more focused design the Katana series could evolve into something truly unique on Wii. Knowing that this is most-certainly the first of many games in the series, and taking into account the full $50 price point ($30 is far more realistic, and $20 would be even better) we’ll encourage you to pass on this one, and wait for the inevitable sequel.

The campaigns are repetitive, the action is fairly mindless, and it's not all that rewarding to play. Masochistic players who really enjoy the series may get a mild kick out of this new spin, but everyone else would be better off chalking this one up to ancient history.

Samurai Warriors will hurt you in ways that you've never been hurt before. [Apr 2008, p.80]

Overall, the game almost has an experimental feel to it.

As much as we enjoyed playing Katana, we really can't recommend it to most gamers. While the Wii Remote sword combat is the best we've seen yet, there are other games on the horizon that will likely do it better ("Dragon Quest: Swords" or "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" perhaps?).

If an easily amused player can get over the difficulty and monotony, they’ll find an afternoon’s worth of enjoyment here.

Unfortunately, any degree of polish was inconsistent at best and it left Katana, a game with a lot of potential, to flounder in mediocrity.

As a budget title, it might be easier to overlook the flaws, but there's not nearly enough polish to justify the full price.

Considering the combat by itself is so inelegant, propping it up with a cardboard narrative and banal set-pieces inflicts upon Samurai Warriors: Katana a far more serious wound than any of the in-game arsenal could manage.