Samurai Shodown (for PC) Review
Clashing swords, blood spurts, and tense, measured play define Samurai Shodown, SNK’s beloved weapons-based fighting game series. The simply named Samurai Shodown, a series refresh, carries those elements to PC via the Epic Games Store nearly a full year after the game first appeared on console. If you’ve waited this long in hopes that Samurai Shodown would add many PC-exclusive extras, you may be disappointed; this is largely the same game that appeared elsewhere. Still, Samurai Shodown’s unique, defense-orientated gameplay make it a PC game to check out for sword-swinging, blood-letting action.
A Strong Grip
Samurai Shodown retains the series’ methodical pacing. Unlike Tekken 7, a game with many mix-up attacks and juggle combos, or Street Fighter V, which has rush-down and combo-oriented play, SNK’s fighting game keeps its combat simple, yet effective. That’s an excellent design decision.
Fighting games are notoriously hard-to-learn affairs due to their many melee, ranged, and movement options, but Samurai Shodown’s streamlined controls are more novice friendly than Killer Instinct or The King of Fighters XIII: Steam Edition’s complex combat schemes. The game has an intuitive, pick-up-and-play quality; when an opponent’s heavy slash lop off 20 percent of your character’s life bar, you’ll quickly realize that blocking and chess-like attack strategies are of utmost importance.
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Each of the 16 default characters (a relatively small roster by fighting game standards) employs four main button attacks—light slash, medium slash, and heavy slash, and kick—and a few quarter-circle-based special moves that are relatively easy to master with a little time in the game’s training mode. Difficult-to-execute charge and pretzel moves are nowhere to be found, which removes an unnecessary barrier to entry. Fighting games needn’t focus on how well you can input complex motions; the genre is one in which anticipation and mind games rule.
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In terms of actual combat, you want to carefully space your opponent, land a blow, punish a miss, then move back to neutral to ready another attack or bait the opponent into making a mistake. Samurai Shodown, more so than any other recent high-profile fighting game, is all about footsies(Opens in a new window). There are a few key, high-level mechanics that the game employs, but those few techniques are crucial to your success.
Advanced Moves
Samurai Shodown is simple to pick up, but it has tools that seasoned fighting game players appreciate. The swordspeople dash, perform defensive back hops, and spot-dodge/sidestep like characters in The King of Fighters ’98: Ultimate Match Final Edition and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. These mobility options supply you with effective ways to set up or evade attacks.
Despite being a defense-heavy game, Samurai Shodown discourages turtling by letting you perform a Guard Break if your opponent is an aggressive blocker. This move causes your warrior to push or pull your opponent, depending on your directional input, leaving the foe momentarily open for an attack. That’s prime time for unleashing a devastating blow, like a Super Special Move.
Each Samurai Shodown combatant has a Super Special Move that does a ridiculous amount of damage, and the move is available for use from the jump. As the Super Special Move isn’t tied to a meter, you can pop it during a match’s opening second.
The caveat, however, is that you can only perform this super a single time during the match. That’s match mind you, not round, so if you botch it you can’t use it again until you rematch. Whiffing a Super Special Moves leaves you wide open for a high-damage attack, such as a Weapon Flipping Technique or Issen.
Weapon Flipping Techniques
The fighters are deadly while gripping their swords, but Weapon Flipping Techniques—character-specific disarming moves—reduce their lethalness by knocking weapons from their hands. Weapon Flipping Techniques are tied to the Rage meter, a gauge at the bottom of the screen that fills as you take damage, deflect incoming attacks, or execute a just defend, a defensive move that kicks in when you block an attack at the last second.
Samurai Shodown is rather forgiving, so the Rage gauge isn’t reset to zero unless the Weapon Flipping Technique connects with your opponent. So, should you whiff a Weapon Flipping Technique, you can attempt it again and again and again.
Swinging for the fences in such a fashion puts massive pressure on opponents, but beware: Should your offensive tactics become too predictable, you taste cold steel, instead.
Rage Explosion and Issen
A full Rage gauge also gives your character passive buffs as it fills, generally enhancing your special attacks and increasing your attack power. Take advantage of this full meter; if unused, Rage empties in a short while.
You can also choose to burn your gauge completely in a Rage Explosion to give yourself a tremendous offensive boost. This burst gives you a moment of invulnerability, and pushes your opponent away, making it a useful counter. The offensive boost’s length is tied to your character’s health, so the shorter your health bar, the longer the Rage Explosion lasts. In this mode, your attacks do even more damage, and you can perform your a Weapon Flipping Technique as much as you like with no rage-cost until the rage meter depletes.
Issen, a lightning-fast attack, is another way to leverage a Rage Explosion.
Its damage scales according to how much damage you’ve taken, making it cripplingly powerful when you’re low in health. In fact, Issen can take nearly all of your opponent’s health in a single shot.
Rage Explosion and Issen are tools you must master if you have any hopes of successfully competing against strong opponents, as they enable absolutely shocking comebacks. The downside however, is that you can only perform a Rage Explosion or Issen once during your match. Samurai Shodown demands deliberate resource management, as you can cripple yourself if you expend your resources too hastily.
Bloody Blades
Samurai Shodown doesn’t shy away from blood, though the red rivers aren’t quite as blatant or over-the-top as in Samurai Shodown V Special. Blood sprays from opponents with each successful slash, and clings to both characters for a few moments after—a nice touch that drives home the danger.
In addition, ending a match with a heavy strike bisects the opponent, causing the victim to flop to the ground like a freshly caught fish.
Though the cleaving isn’t as graphic as Mortal Kombat’s Fatalities, it’s still highly satisfying.
Hardware and Ghosts
Samurai Shodown, like many fighting games, isn’t a title that is at PC gaming’s bleeding edge. In fact, you can swing swords with local and online opponents with a mid-range gaming desktop or laptop.
According to Samurai Shodown’s Epic Games Store page, your PC needs to pack at least an Intel Core i5 CPU, an AMD Radeon R9280 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 GPU, 8GB of RAM, 35GB of storage, and the Windows 7 operating system. The fighting game has a few graphics options: Bloom, Shadows, Anti-Aliasing, and Display (Full Screen, Borderless Window, Windowed). On PC Samurai Shodown doesn’t look radically different than its console counterparts, and that’s fine. The game’s samurai-era Japanese aesthetic and vibrant colors give the anime-like graphics an attractive look. The game keeps a solid 60 frames per second frame rate, too.
SNK includes a Ghosts feature that lets the game’s machine learning analyze your play style, and then make an AI version of it that others can download.
It sounds very much like Killer Instinct’s Shadow AI. Considering that Samurai Shodown’s only been out a few hours at the time of this review, it’s too early to make the call on Ghosts’ effectiveness.
Performance Gripes
Unfortunately, Samurai Shodown suffers annoying load times. On my PC, a system with components that lie between the minimum and recommend specs, it took just under 10 seconds to move between one Settings menu to another. Granted, a person won’t dip into Settings very often, but that’s not good. Worse, it can take upwards of 30 seconds for the match to begin after the combatants are chosen. That proves incredibly aggravating, especially when you’re in the midst of a salty run back.
In addition, Samurai Shodown’s mediocre netcode carries over from the console version. So, you can expect somewhat laggy battles every now and then. That’s disappointing, as SNK recently updated its Garou: Mark of the Wolves and The Last Blade 2 titles with excellent rollback netcode that makes online matches feel like offline matches.
Why You Should Game on a PC
A Somewhat Sharp Blade
Samurai Shodown has faults—its netcode and loading times are frustrating annoyances—but its core fighting is deliciously unique and filled with thrills. More importantly, the series reboot is an accessible entry point for fighting game novices, while containing enough advanced techniques to please veterans. This back-to-basics quality gives this new Samurai Shodown its unique flavor, while honoring and upholding the games that came before it.
Samurai Shodown (for PC)
Pros
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Highly strategic combat
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Ridiculously high damage output creates tense matches
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Attractive Japanese-flavored art style
Cons
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Some lengthy load times
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Mediocre netcode
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Relatively small roster
The Bottom Line
Samurai Shodown finally appears on PC, delivering the same tension-filled face-offs that fans enjoyed on console.
Lengthy load times and mediocre online components sully the experience a bit, but SNK’s weapons-based fighter is a fun and strategic fighting game.
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Samurai Shodown Announces Steam Release Date, New DLC Fighter
By
Naquan Malik Harrison-Holland
A year after its Epic Game Store-exclusive availability, the PC version of Samurai Shodown will release on Steam alongside a returning fighter.
The modern revival of the Samurai Shodown series was released in June 2019 for consoles, with the PC version notably missing from the lineup. Prior to its initial release, SNK announced that the PC release of the 2D weapons fighter would be exclusive on the Epic Games Store, following a release of the NeoGeo Collection on the same service.
Patient fans who awaited the release of Samurai Shodown on Steam following the end of SNK’s exclusivity deal with Epic Games can now except the game soon. Alongside the announcement of the Steam version of Samurai Shodown, a familiar face was revealed as its next DLC character, set to release on the same day.
RELATED: Samurai Shodown Prototype From Over 20 Years Ago Discovered
SNK announced over the weekend that the long-awaited Steam release of Samurai Shodown will arrive on June 14, almost a full year since it was first made available on the Epic Games Store.
The second major announcement was the reveal of Shiro Tokisada Amakusa, the official third DLC character from Season 3 of Samurai Shodown following Cham Cham and Hibiki Takane from The Last Blade series. After the announcement only two DLC characters remain to be announced, with the last one confirmed to be a guest character from the Guilty Gear franchise.
Veteran fans of the Samurai Shodown series will remember Amakusa as the final boss of the first Samurai Shodown in 1993. Since Samurai Shodown 3, he has been a playable character in almost every game in the main series and one of the game’s central figures. With the release of Amakusa, he is the second-to-last fighter from the original Samurai Shodown to be included in the 2019 game. The only remaining character is Genan, who has yet to appear in a modern Samurai Shodown title following Samurai Shodown 6.
What’s most peculiar about the sudden announcement of Amakusa, especially for an important and notable character in the series, is the lack of a gameplay trailer.
In the past, characters like Hibiki Takane were heavily promoted leading up to their release. With Amakusa a mere month away, some fans assume the announcement was made in conjunction with the Steam release and not as its own, with a gameplay trailer more than likely arriving soon.
Another critique circling among fans is the lack of a rollback netcode announcement, with the PC and console versions being notorious among its playerbase for dodgy online gameplay. With the recent announcement from SNK that the King of Fighters 15 will have netcode, many players are asking for many other SNK titles to also receive updated playability.
Samurai Shodown is available on PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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Samurai Shodown system requirements for PC. Minimum and recommended system requirements for the game Samurai Shodown
The system requirements of Samurai Shodown display
PC configuration option that allows you to run the game without
perceptible performance drops — with a comfortable FPS (frames per second) and adequate
download speed.
PC
Minimum system requirements
Minimum system requirements Samurai Shodown display option
PC kits,
which the game will run stably at minimum settings without causing any noticeable
discomfort.
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel Core i5
RAM: 8 GB RAM
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB
DirectX: Version 15
Gamepad support: Full
Recommended system requirements
Recommended system requirements
The Samurai Shodown PC requirements are a guideline for how much power is needed to unleash the full graphics and
technological potential of the game. On the configuration specified in the recommended
requirements, the game will be able to start and run comfortably at maximum graphics
settings.
OS: Windows 10
Processor: Intel Core i7
RAM: 16 GB RAM
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB
DirectX Space: 33 5 GB 90
Regardless of the presence of officially stated minimum and recommended system requirements
for Samurai Shodown, they are often understated. As a result, performance
games may not meet the user’s expectations.
Publications Samurai Shodown
Baiken from the Guilty Gear universe will visit the fighting game Samurai Shodown
August 17, 2021 at 12:24
The collaboration between Samurai Shodown and the Guilty Gear series was announced back in February of this year Samurai Shodown will be released together on Steam
9000 with the advent of the new character
May 17, 2021 at 10:08
The PC version of the Samurai Shodown fighting game was released as a temporary Epic Games Store exclusive on June 11, 2020, but will soon reach Steam
Samurai Shodown character Chum-Cham release date and Guilty Gear collaboration teaser
February 22, 2021 at 11:43 am
Publisher and developer SNK has announced the release date for Samurai Shodown’s new fighting character DLC
The third season pass for Samurai has been unveiled Shodown Including Four New Characters
January 08, 2021 at 11:45 AM
Fighting game Samurai Shodown will continue its development with the third season pass
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