Sword of the Samurai

Its a jank ass treasure.

You ain't gettin anywhere with these beats man you ain't ever leaving Soundcloud

Playtime: 14 minutes [b]Review[/b] Sword of the Samurai is one of the most interesting games i've ever played. It has elements of grand strategy, real-time strategy, role-playing and shooter games. You pick a Japanese province and try to increase your power. Each turn you can raise/train troops, practice fighting, donate to the temple, raise taxes or travel. Travelling lets you straight-up attack rivals or infiltrate their homes to kidnap/kill someone. In my case i could sneak in to steal a sword that the lord was supposed to bring to his boss. This involved the game turning into a topdown shooter. I also tried to attack a castle with my army, which involves some clunky "strategy" in which you pick an army and a target. It's an incredibly ambitious game, especially for 1989. I've never played anything quite like it, though it's vaguely reminiscent of Crusader Kings and Lords of Midnight. It's also really clunky and vague, and you have to look up the controls elsewhere. Fascinating, but not something i'd recommend to anyone.

Very old-school game. Basically text-based. Can be complicated to learn and play. Mostly since some of these older games do not pull punches. Decent.

BUSHIDO!11!

Sword, swing, talk, die, repeat

It's games like this that remind us just how good developers can be, even under such major constraints. The sheer scale of this game, the charming art, many distinct and fleshed out modes of play... overall it's so impressive. Shocking how great of a game it was considering it was made before the internet existed.

It's a classic, a precursor of many genres. It combines (with its flaws) the RPG, strategy and action genres in a dynamic Japanese setting. Each bit has some exploits and unreasonable results, but all in all, it's entertaining enough to overlook them.

I'm not a great fan of strategy war games. I played this out of curiosity, but found it amazingly addictive. The gameplay somehow remembers me 'Pirates', a game from the same studio, which i love. In common, these two games have arcade sequences that determine your standing in the battles, which is very cool. The game supports VGA graphic cards and Roland MT-32 audio, which for 1989 is great. Both can be emulated in DOSBox. Definitely recommend this game. 8/10 imo.

Very good once you understand how it works.