I’ve been waiting to cover this one for a while, but i had to wait for it to go on a decent discount, since D3 Publisher went extra crazy and asked 50 bucks (70 for the Deluxe Edition that includes all DLCs, mostly costumes and music from other D3 franchise like Bullet Girls) for what was obviously another budget game of theirs.
Having played all Oneechanbara games and waiting for the Namco Bandai owned company to finally announce the western release for EDF 6 (which was supposed to be out this spring but was eventually delayed to late July 2024), i did want to play Samurai Maiden earlier, but the absurd price really held me off, i’m not fucking paying 70 bucks for a complete edition of a digital only release of a D3 Publisher budget hack n slash anime game.
Curiously, despite the publisher involved and the premise of hack n slash action using a japanese anime high school girl, this is NOT the fanservicey fest you’d expected, i guess after the “prude crusade” Sony went (for whatever reason, since they were the main platform for most Senran Kagura games before), niche titles like this had to tippy toe on their tits to see what’s ok now.
the plot sees regular high school girl Tsumugi transported back to the Sengoku period, isekai’d directly during the Honno-ji incident so she can chat up Oda Nobunaga and have three female anime ninjas explain she was summoned there because she’s a discendant of a so called “Miko Of Prosperity”, and a prophecy involving her and a Demon Lord was foretold, etc.
The story is mostly presented in VN style cutscenes, cheap ones, and i’ll cut the crap, it feels they were done this way not because of a precise stylistic choice, but because it’s a lot cheaper to do it this way. The narration is as basic as such a “kill the demon lord “ kinda plot you get, and yet i can’t deny i was somehow let down, it just feels lacking, despite there being a twist mid-way through, as it hard to NOT see it coming even before playing the game with it having a Demon Lord and Nobunaga Oda in a fantasy sengoku setting?
Honestly by that point i stopped caring at all about the plot, despite it not being that bad overall and actually having some sensible explainations for some of the plot points.
The art direction is actually decent, though generic and not much inspired… and then there’s Nobunaga. No, he’s not a woman in this one, which is even weirder, as he’s the only one historic figure that looks as you’d expect, though has a very boring design, and kinda feels out of place in a game with moe-fied genderbent loli Shingen Takeda and Uesugi Kenshin.
That aside, in terms of aesthetic the anime designs offer a decent balance between sexy and cute for its main cast , but i think the problem lies there, as in the designs are decent for the style chosen, clearly works of a professional character designers, but them hitting such common anime girl archetypes without offering anything that doesn’t already come prepackaged with said archetypes, as in the normal,slightly peculiar but mostly normal modern japanese school girl, the big boobed oneesan with the dead shonen mom hair, the naive and earnest kunoichi in training, and the “classic” 1000+ years old almost “lolibaba” with fox ears and tail that’s also a twintailed tsundere.
They try to give them some spice but given how much the dialogues are the insipid fluff you’d expect, and the yuri is actually hidden behind a lot of cheap cutscenes, and it feels so tame you’d wonder why even bother, when at least Valkyrie Drive and Senran Kagura had the “gal balls” to be horny on main, so to speak, Oneechanbara had that grindhouse horror aesthetic and b-movie cheese, Samurai Maiden instead has an idea but never does anything of note with it, or barely anything, stat.
Gameplay it’s the basic hack n slash affair you’d expect from this kind of character action titles in the vein of Oneechanbara, Senran Kagura and such epygons like the already cited Valkyrie Drive, especially the latter since the yuri element is integral to the gameplay… kinda. Not really, as the only visual yuri content is the “Valkyrie Drive”ish brief sequence that plays when you activate the Devil Trigger equivalent with one of the girls, and it’s suggestive but nothing of note happens.
There’s also some basic platforming that arkhens back to the Oneechanbara days, as in it really shouldn’t be there, but it is for no real reason besides giving some semblance of exploration and hide the collectables, one of the ninjas has even a robotic arm used to swing around by locking into magical spheres, so there’s that, but let’s be frank, platforming works here but it’s never really fun to do. Just a thing the game has to pad itself out. Mostly, as the side missions (the Bubble Pockets) do offer move in terms of platforming challenge and even some puzzle elements in using the ninja tools, so there’s that, but it’s nothing major.
Sadly this is one where you get the feeling the developers, Shade Inc, weren’t sure if to make it an old school beat em up like Devil May Cry or a musou, so they compromised, and as much compromise is the cornerstone of diplomacy, this is a videogame, not a treaty.
This doesn’t become immediatly clear, because right off the bat you see Tsumugi using the expected moves, like the equivalent of the Stinger from DMC, the launching attack that propels, and structurally this isn’t a musou but a PS2 style beat em up, you fight smallish groups of enemies at the time but then the game escalates the number in a way that feels frustrating more than challenging, again, because the devs seemed confused of what kind of beat em up game to make, and compromised in a way that mostly highlights the worst of both subgeneres.
So for most of early game you get a lot of short ass missions where you move around linear levels (some which somehow manage to be confusing), have piss easy, excessively short and sporadic bout with some braindead enemies, then eventually you get to fight waves of dozens of enemies, BUT the enemies themselves have the IA of the usual Warriors peons, the officers are more sturdy and aggressive but feel spongey, heck some don’t stagger at all. It’s an unwise combination leading to shit like having 2 big guys that use a long lance and do not flinch alongside fodder enemies and like 10 fuckin archers that stagger your ass into stunlock pincushion hell in some instances.
I’m not joking when i say that most often than not the pre-mission cutscenes last longer than what the mission itself takes to finish. Which i kinda expect for it being such an obvious budget game, i can forgive its PS2-ness but i can’t forgive the fact it’s not even much fun at the core.
It’s just kinda there, functional but mostly limp and dangerously close to be dull, and it’s not helped by this odd mish mash of combat design that’s uncertain if it wants to make you feel like Dante or a playable Dynasty Warriors character, as the hits lack impact, i’ve lamented that the later Senran Kagura titles felt at times like you were wacking stone enemies with a comedy japanese fan (again, the musou style design to fodder base enemies that are basically paper dolls waiting to be wacked), but even those manage to do better in terms of makin the combat itself feel punchy and satisfying.
It’s no completely devoid of some “oomph” to it, but it feels – here’s that word again – lacking, i’d say just play the game on Hard, but there’s no overall difficulty setting to toggle or choose at any point, you only have Normal as the default and only difficulty setting to do the missions the first time, you need to beat missions on Normal to unlock Hard and on Hard to unlock Demonic.
Another obvious indicator of how badly balanced the game is overall can be had when meeting the first proper boss, Kenshin Uesugi, because it’s not a hard boss, but it can easily empty your life bar in 20 seconds if you’re not careful, as it deals obscene damage with each hit, and it’s a speedy opponent, so of course it will inevitably throw you off as most previous mid-bosses or generic mini bosses were mostly stationary tanks that didn’t flinch to your attacks.
Again, a side effect of this uncomfortable compromise between regular character action/beat em up and a musou-esque approach, and yet the difficulty it’s still on the easy side, once you tune yourself to the bizzarre approach about difficulty and enemies, heck, even the bosses that you re-re-refight become easy to exploit, as they don’t change much in terms of patterns or strenght..
Speaking of moves, the game doesn’t have a move list per sé, nore does have the shop where to buy combos, items or abilities by spending the in-game currency thingies obtained from slaying enemies and completing missions, you spend those to enhance weapons and shit, but enhancing weapons just improves HP and attack power, with some passive abilities unlocked upon reaching various level of development/upgrade for each weapon, because doing things normally isn’t Samurai Maiden’s thing.
To unlock more combos and abilities you’ll have to improve your affinity level with each of the ninjas and watch a cutscene/memory event that you’ve met the requirements for, which often also require doing a side mission, the aforementioned “bubble pockets” where you face some challenge stages using a specific ninja as support, or something of the like.
At least this gives you a concrete reason to switch out and use their ninja attacks as much as you can, because you directly control only Tsumugi and the ninja girls are there just to unleash special attacks and such on command, just assisting, and the friendly trio is actually the perfect example of the pile of many minor questionable design choices that wouldn’t be horrible in themselves but just pile up and we end up in a “death by thousand cuts” situation because these issues have an odd – and most likely unwanted – synergy of sorts.
Why the healing item doesn’t work instantenously but instead has to require you selecting Iyo to place the “healing urn” on the ground and then have the healing fumes recover HP? Just makes it nearly impossible to heal during the bigger boss fights, why even bother giving you the healing item to use when you want if the game fights it natural usage when you need it mid-battle?
Even more since the checkpoint shrines also have a healing urn, which makes sense to have cracked open for use when you reach it…. not so much to have it still releasing healing gas even when you restart from the checkpoint at full health.
Which you always do.
Then again, it’s odd how you have to select a specific ninja to have her carry and throw items like bombs items made available by the stages themselves… not to be confused with Iyo being necessary to use the items, which including some types of bombs, healing urns and decoys, and “dead shonen mom ara ara” one being necessary to “equip” in order to swing on mystical grappling hook spots.
There’s not even the basic pause menu, i understand not having a map since the levels are so linear, but at least let me see a move list, check the tutorials to see how some combos were done, but nope, pause just lets you resume, exit the mission, or activate photo mode.
Not even an inventory or stat screen to see Tsumugi loadout, stats and affinity levels with the ninjas, since they decided to tie the unlocking of the moves to the characters affinity levels, which just makes things more time consuming than necessary, and while i understand not giving you a parry right away when you have a dodge by default, a good 80% of the moveset simply should have been part of the basic repertoire, like the charged strong attack.
Also, while the game’s challenge and enemy variety and combinations do improve a bit over time, making combat a bit more satisfying, you’d still wonder why they didn’t opt for a more classic combo system, since the one here is simply less evolved and refined, but when i unlocked most of the moves, i finally realized the combat system is this way because they really wanted to do their own Devil May Cry, there’s even a peculiar usage of the double jump, the default stinger move, etc.
While Senran Kagura did want to be Dynasty Warriors but without its map design or strategic elements (heck, it pretty much copied the Charge System for the way you do combos), Samurai Maiden feels clearly like it wanted to be Devil May Cry… but also kind of a musou at times due to the balancing and battles where there are more enemies than a regular beat em up.
On another negative note, the way progression is set up for the upgrading and unlocking of weapon abilities basically destroys any incentive to swap the few weapons you can use and find, which aren’t many and don’t offer different movesets, just some specific passive skills to unlock. But again, the game doesn’t want you to do that, due how much the upgrade costs rise overtime you’ll just keep upgrading the same old weapon you used from the beginning until it’s maxed out until get a couple of swords with a bigger baseline power to upgrade from scratch.
in terms of lenght, it not very long but it does all the cheap tricks seen in low budget hack n slash games like the aforementioned Oneechanbara or EDF budgeted affairs, so there’s like 6 locales that get recycled for its 27 missions, often recycled wholesale or in pieces, or reused but mirrored, so you traverse that place in the inverse order you traversed it some missions ago, or all of that but now it’s raining or snowing or whatever dressing they use to try mask the recycling (like the final set of levels masking a reused locale by putting lava and magma rocks everywhere).
And honestly sometimes some textures are really awful, like, some of the snow blocks on the snow levels feel like shit from some basic asset packs that someone forgot to polish or edit in order to make them look like the rest of the scenario they’re in, to avoid them standing out for the worse, especially compared to the care given to the character models themselves.
The recycle obviously also extends to the main story bossess that you fight multiple times, which just helps making t’s a 8/9 hours long affair to beat, but completition will take more than i expected, since the completition rate is basically dependant on clearing the same missions on other difficulties
Music is actually decent, the theme song is okay and even the compositions for the levels are surprisingly pleasing and offer some decent variation on the expected riff of “ye old samurai japan” music, and performance is mostly stable on PS4 Pro, though you can still see the framerate drop even with very little enemies on screen, i would say they opt for the game to look more refined in exchange… shame it never actually get anywhere to musou levels on on-screen enemies.
Kinda pathetic considering Demon Chaos existed on the PS2, early PS2 too.
Overall, Samurai Maiden it’s not awful, but it’s also a game so full of weird compromises, questionable design decisions made apparently to be different regardless if it made for a better game or not, and it’s kinda odd how it flirts with musou style design in terms of enemy and combat when it ultimately just wants to be Devil May Cry, while managing to retain mostly the flaws of both beat em up subgenres/styles, a “worst of both worlds” situation marred by plenty of cheap budget game design “classics”, such as the recycling of few locations to stretch the campaign/story over.
Combat at the core is passable for a game like this, but – again – some really baffling design choices will leave players asking why is it like that, story it actually kinda dull yet not atrocious, it’s the generic Sengoku era supernatural fantasy story with Oda Nobunaga you’d expect with an isekai’d protagonist, hard to care about any of the characters in terms of characterization or designs, the art style is honestly decent but also very unmemorable,
The most offensive thing is not the “special content”, since the designs are fanservicey but also quite tame, again, probably a compromise to exist on all platforms in spite of some platform holders being oddly prude this generation, so the yuri is barely a thing despite the advertising, but it’s actually way overpriced for what IS a budget release like D3’s own Onechanbara and EDF.
D3 for whatever reason is charging premium prices for its niche releases, and while nowadays sadly 50 bucks isn’t the highest base price for a modern videogame, it’s still a hard sell for something that really feels like it could have come out as a PS2 era budget hack n slash action game, with the anime or anime-esque heroine, the artstyle, the linear level designs and the combat itself.
Honestly, while Samurai Maiden isn’t awful, just kinda mediocre at best, and there’s some fun to squeeze out of it, i don’t really recommend the game to anyone besides fans of beat em ups whom also have played titles of the same ilk like the aforementioned Senran Kagura and Oneechanbara games, but even to those in search of a no-frills straightforward and old fashioned beat em up…. i’d recommend waiting for at least a 50 % off sale. Even for fans of trashy old school 3D beat em ups.
and let’s be clear about it, unless you’re the biggest fan of Bullet Girls’ music , the Deluxe Edition contents (costumes, music from other D3 owned series and a couple of weapons that really don’t add much) are overpriced and pointless, even more overpriced than the base game.
To be even more frank, after finishing it i wonder why D3 didn’t just had Tamsoft do another Oneechanbara game, like remake the others one in a one-for-two pack like they did before with Oneechanbara Origin. That was better than this, absolutely.
Wise Cafe (International) 