Samurai Bringer [Switch]
Developed by ALPHAWING Inc., Samurai Bringer is a very in-depth and detailed roguelite following a classic Japanese mythological tale that sees you playing as the deity Susanoo who, after challenging the powerful Yamata-no-Orochi, is bested - losing his powers in the process. To help you re-learn and regain your powers, your sister - the goddess Amaterasu - has summoned hordes of great warriors from the Sengoku Era, in order for you practice and learn combat techniques so that you may have a chance at defeating the Demon, and rescuing the kidnapped Kushinada from Orochi’s grasp.
The gameplay loop is satisfying, with enemies growing in difficulty with each passing ‘day’, and death being an ever-present force, waiting in the wings for you to succumb to any of the huge hordes of samurai warriors that will swarm you on the battlefields. It can feel very ‘Dynasty Warriors’-like when facing off against these massive swathes of enemies, especially as your skills improve and you can easily wipe them out in droves. Each group is helmed by a Clan leader who is stronger and more powerful than the rest, and finding yourself in the middle of a few different factions can lead to you becoming easily overwhelmed and in need of a swift retreat. Progression is linked to purple portals leading to various bosses, however if these prove to be too much of a challenge, you can return to the main area to continue fighting against the samurai.
There’s a lot of customisation, with various scrolls that allow you to finely tweak your attacks - however, with all that customisation comes a slight downside, in that things can become very confusing, very fast. As long as you’re willing to give it the time and attention to really get a handle on everything, then you’ll truly get to see it shine. Gear can be equipped into pretty much any slot, regardless of what it is, with items showing as Spears being able to be used as different types of armour or as a weapon, as an example. You’ve got an abundance of skills to choose from, with more being unlocked over time, and these can be arranged on scrolls, which carry over into new runs beyond your death.
The art style is very unique, with environments having an almost realistic, but pixelated look, and characters having chunky, blocky bodies. The customisation of your character, both from custom gear builds and from various presets you can unlock, allows you to really take control of how your character looks - and how they play too, giving you the ability to focus on your strengths. The soundtrack is very classic and chirpy, making for a very catchy backdrop - though it can begin to feel a little repetitive at times, particularly with some of the tracks. Dialogue is extremely fast, which wouldn’t be too bad with voice acting, but without, it can be quite the challenge to keep up with - and I’m a pretty fast reader!
There are different places to find within the main game-world, with varying activities that can be completed, and your mini map will point you towards these places and other points of interest such as Treasure Chests. You can speak with the Jizo, which gives you access to the Challenge List, where you can set targets and view percentage stats; here you can also recover lost power, increasing your stats and improving your character. You’ll be able to find Inns, where you can rest for a fee, though time will continue to pass - so whilst they are very useful at times, weighing up the risk/reward for increasing enemy difficulty the longer you take may make you want to push on without a visit. You can take on Challenges via the Torii gates, and there’s a huge variety of these to complete, breaking up the gameplay. Some are simple enough, but others - usually the ones that require specific timing and jumps, can lead to a fair bit of frustration. Additionally, there are Blacksmiths to find as you travel, where skills can be transferred across armaments, such as if you have a preferred visual item but want to assign a better passive skill to it. Each time you come across a new place such as these, a quick tutorial will appear to explain what you can do; especially helpful given that some areas won’t be found until a while into your journey.
Overall, it’s a vastly designed game, and as mentioned before, this can be both a pro and a con in that it works great for people who are willing to give it the time and effort, but can also easily put off the less battle-hardened players. There’s just so much to learn, and with the enemies getting more difficult with each (in-game) passing day, this can make things feel like an uphill battle - as by the time you’ve got the hang of the mechanics, the enemies are already far harder than they were to begin with. Upon death, you will be returned to a small hub world, filled with statues of all 142 of the samurai, beginning as greyed out, but regaining colour as you defeat each one in battle - unlocking their armour set and weaponry, as well as all of their Action Presets, for you to utilise on future runs. This is a pretty cool aspect, as it gives you something to work towards - even outwith the main story - though we do wish there were more things to do in the hub world, such as NPCs to interact with, etc.
We’d love to see a sequel, especially one that builds on what we’ve got here and improves it further. Collecting all of the Samurai presets allows for plenty of replayability, but having other collectibles would have been a fantastic addition too; something we’d like to see added in future or implemented in a follow-up title. Fighting against bosses is challenging and whilst it may take a while to get strong enough to defeat them, this makes it really rewarding when you succeed - not to mention how fantastically detailed their designs are. If Samurai Bringer sounds like something that you’d be interested in, you can pick it up for £7.39 on the Switch eShop, which is a great price - especially given the level of deep customisation and content available to you.
In the end, we decided to give Samurai Bringer the Collecting Asylum rating of 8.5/10.
Are you interested in Samurai Bringer? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Playism for the Samurai Bringer Switch review code!
