Putting a spin on the roguelike genre and mixing it with a similar aspect you would expect from a rogue-lite title is exactly what ALPHAWING Inc managed to do with their newest title, Samurai Bringer. This action-filled title, published by PLAYISM, has brought a pixelated adventure that will challenge players through a frustrating series of ‘fight-till-you-die’ runs. Even though these are almost annoyingly difficult fights, there is quite a bit of entertainment in this game for the players.

Story

A powerful deity has challenged Susanoo to defeat Yamata-no-Orochi, the eight-headed dragon of Japanese mythology, to save Kushinada, who was to be sacrificed to the dragon. However, he was bested by the dragon and his power was taken from him. Cast down to the land of Nakatsukuni, now he must fight a multitude of samurai and demons summoned from across space and time to regain his lost strength.

Gameplay

When you start out, the game does just kind of throw you into the action and gives you a try to fight off the final boss. It is a pretty impossible fight, so it won’t be long before you are defeated and sent to the start of the actual game. Here you will go through some basic tutorials that show you the fundamentals of the game, such as basic fighting, movement, and the trickier aspect that plays a huge role - attack customizations.

The attack customizations are easily the aspect of this game that makes it stand out above the rest. They really let you combine just about anything you want and make it clear when something works or not. If something doesn’t work, usually because you don’t have the right weapon for the attack, it will gray out the add-on. However, most add-ons work together. You can do anything you want and adjust the attacks for a combo of attacks as well. For instance, typically users will be utilizing three stricks from their base attack button and each of these attacks can be set up differently. The first attack could have a few swipe downs for a base attack with a slash thrown on for a damage boost then add wave, power, and fire to the mix and you got an initial attack that will push lighter enemies away while burning them leaving the next attacks for harder enemies. This goes on for the second and third attack, not to mention you can add power to your jump and run options to make them faster and stronger, then your power attack can get amped up, and finally, your thrust attack (which I often made into a throw attack of kind).

You’ll have to play with some customization options in order to find what works best for you, but there is almost no limit to what you can do with these setups. It does help that as you complete runs and challenges, you will unlock samurai sets to equip as a sort of quick outfitting. Equipping a samurai set will give you their armor and weapon, along with their general move customization list. You can even use these presets to find the weapons and attack styles that work best for you.

Other than fighting hordes of enemies, samurai bosses, and actual demons, you will also find challenge areas. These challenges will give you some of your power back when completed. Since you have A LOT of power to regain before you can hope to fight that mythological dragon successfully, you’ll need to complete as many challenges as you can find. There is usually at least one in each warplane, so be sure to look for the gate. The challenges are typically a puzzle or platforming sort of challenge.

When I mentioned in the beginning that this is a roguelike with rogue-lite elements, this is what I mean. While every death will take you back to the same bridge of samurai statues waiting to be unlocked and portals waiting to be used to take you to the battlegrounds, you maintain the progress of what you have unlocked. Skills, general character growth, and the samurai unlocks that you achieve. There are also statues to interact with that will give you some of your power back as you complete various challenges on the list.

Audio and Visual

The pixelation is actually quite well done and appears to have provided a sort of scrunched hyper-pixelation. The graphical quality is somewhere between the two aspects and makes the game very aesthetically appealing. Not to mention the colorful world and the cool samurai outfits!

When it comes to the music and sound effects, I would say they are pretty standard. There wasn’t anything outstanding in either department that made it stand out and more or less is just set up to do the job that needs to be done - provide accurate sound and ambiance.

Replayability

I’m not sure I can see anybody starting this game over from the beginning, but you will definitely be replaying the game after each death!

What It Could Have Done Better

The teleport pathways are a smart way to bring the player from one war ground to the next, but there never seemed to be any real control over where I was going. This was frustrating when I was trying to fight a specific samurai that I had just lost to because I wanted their weapon to use. Maybe I just got some portals mixed up and was never able to straighten them out, but even when I took the same portal more than once, I didn’t seem to go to the same place. I just don’t think randomized mapping was a good fit for this game.

While I like the concept of the challenges, there were definitely too many that were stupidly easy. It felt more like a waste of time to do rather than a positive aspect of the game most of the time. I would rather have had fewer challenge areas to go in and have them been super hard to complete than have so many with only one putting up any form of challenge. Just make the reward a bit bigger instead.

Verdict

Samurai Bringer definitely brings its own form of action RPG to the roguelike genre! I was surprised at how in-depth the action customization aspect was in the game. It truly seemed like I never set up the same way twice! Granted, of course I did because I had my favorites, but the vast variety of options available is crazy. This was definitely an interesting title to play through and a difficult one at that, but it was still fun despite some of its quirks.

Samurai Bringer is now available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.