Shin Samurai Jazz

Just like its predecessor samurai_jazz, this game may come up as a tough sell. But I'd REALLY love to see a speedrun of this game! Samurai Jazz is, in a way, a hymn to traditional games that goes beyond what we may be used to: not only it looks retro, it also feels retro in terms of timing-related difficulty spikes. Following the foosteps of samurai_jazz, you control a beret-wielding samurai that must slice through its enemies. Unlike the original samurai_jazz, however, this game plays like a typical platformer with jumping at its core. Expect the precise timings of 'jumping' and 'dashing' to be your main cause of trouble from this game, but also the most exciting part to look at. Ironically enough, this switch in gameplay mechanics actually works for the better, when compared to its predecessor: you won't accidentally access some areas by mistake and there aren't that many issues caused by perspective, for you only go right, let and jump. My main issue with this game, though, is not the fact that it's too difficult or that it seems cheap: it is, indeed, challenging and it should have autosaves for each time you change a room, but that sets the game apart, in my opinion. Rather, it's the fact that, sometimes, it feels like there are either bugs regarding jumping mechanics or something that wasn't explained to begin with. Right at the end of the game, for example, after sliding through a wall, I could jump, dash and then jump again. But some other times, I could only dash and jump. I can assume this is a bug, and it's a big game-breaking in my opinion, but not that serious. There seems, however, to be a way to jump higher which I never managed to completely understand, and that was REALLY important at the end of the game: I believe it was caused by jumping while pressing the trigger for dashing, but I never managed to fully grasp it. It might've been just dumb luck! I had another major issue concerning the interface. Like the first game, one might have difficulty setting all objects you can interact with apart. I felt this to be the most troublesome in a stage containing many gates that seemed well shut and, at the end, only one of them could be accessed to at a time. I had to watch a walkthrough to pass this part of the game, and since timing skill is the main focus of the game, this type of situation doesn't benefit the game itself. It just seems cheap! I do still recommend this game, though, and it seems more polished than the original samurai_jazz. And for the price of a buck, I can still see Shin Samurai Jazz getting a cult following around speedrunners.

Segunda entrega del olvidable samurai_jazz. Supera ligeramente al primero, pero sigue distando mucho de ser un juego de calidad. Las mecánicas serán las misma que en su predecesor, si bien ahora los movimientos de nuestro personaje serán algo más manejables y variados. Y su dificultad en los niveles de plataformeo, linda a veces con lo desesperante. Graficamente es prácticamente idéntico al anterior título. Es decir, pobre. Y la música tan olvidable como la que disfrutamos con la primera parte. La historia sigue siendo contada en retazos de frases que más que explicarnos demasiado, nos sorprenderán por no aportar prácticamente nada positivo. La jugabilidad sigue rayando a un nivel bastante pobre, y la dificultad se ha incrementado notablemente (seguramente esto tiene mucho que ver con lo primero). En definitiva, el desarrollador ha cogido su primera obra (de pésima factura) y le ha añadido alguna mejora insuficiente para crear una segunda entrega que se presenta casi tan olvidable como la primera. NOTA: 5/10

Soundtrack is great, some really nice loops and smooth beats. Unfortunately the game is very frustating to play though. The melee combat is not good with only one button attack and one button parry (that you can use against like 3 types of enemies). All melee enemies approach you extremely slowly and once you start attacking they are stunlocked and easy to take down. The problem is every time you die or leave the screen all the enemies respawn. This makes getting through the game extremely tedious as there is a sort of overworld hub you have to go through multiple times and you just want to jump past the enemies without fighting them because it's so dull but they will get some cheap hits in and kill you. You will die more times to accidentally standing in an enemies hitbox while trying to attack them than you will from any actual attack the enemy does (touching them hurts you for some reason). Even the boss battles are trivial when you start attacking them and they can't move as you just keep spamming attack. The later acts will spawn a ton of enemies on the platforming sections which makes retrying them a slog as you have to slowly kill these same enemies over and over each time you miss a jump. Don't let the store pages spedup video footage fool you, the game is not really fast paced as you have to do a lot of finnicky platforming in this game to get through most sections. The platforming is not very good in this game, although the jumps and dashes are quite responsive the actual movement felt very floaty to me and there would be times trying to attack a midair enemy and a melee enemy at the same time I would die because I kept swinging over the enemies head as swining your sword stops you from falling. There is a developer update note saying they improved the platforming so god only knows how bad it must've been before. A tip for anyone that has the game is when platforming just press jump or dash to get off the wall, don't hold jump or press any other inputs or try to combine jump and dash at the same time. You usually want a very light jump to get past some spikes then you use the second jump or dash to get to the next empty part of wall. Once the platforming 'clicks' it feels a little better that you can move around but you will keep clipping spikes here and there due to the weird floaty feel and some questionable design of a few sections. Unfortunately the difficulty for the rooms is not linear and seems to spike all over the place between hard and easy rooms. The game is an okay way to spend an hour and a half and I suppose you can't be too critical of a game that only cost $1.50. Try their newer games for bitesized action though, there's a few without the platforming sections that makes them more enjoyable. I'll throw this game a thumbs up for the soundtrack even if it is lacking a lot in the gmaeplay department, keeping in mind the cost. If they were charging $5 or more I would give it a thumbs down.

I think I played more than the recorded 0,4 hours. It wasn't very good. The controls were stiff, platforming sections iffy, but I can appreciate the basic idea behind it.

Man that is a cool game, thx for publishing it 10 years ago :D

Dificil pero muy entretenido título, muy minimalista, muy simple, y genial

not a fun game, hard to control no real story

Idk, don`t like this

8-bit glory!

A cool ninja platformer with a nice music which doesn't make you go crazy. Stuff is going on and you are there do something about it i guess :D Regarding the gameplay, the beginning is easy, but gets a bit tricky after as you need to master this tricky jump which i took a lil bit to understand, but its still quite tricky to do. The fighting.. its easy, you can get hit and be fine, you don't have to worry about it very much. The geishas remind me a little bit of that NES game, Legend of Kage and a bit of Streets of Rage(Sega Genesis) on the fighting part. I don't know what happened to one of the geishas to have their neck absolutely stretched out. They hit you with a banger, they must have developed uber muscly necks for them to recover after dropping off so quickly. I guess they have their own odd niche thing there in Japan. I guess i shouldn't have been surprised by it..