If you go there, you'll meet thugs who've shown up to kick the shopkeepers out of town. Help her and she'll offer to make you lunch at the restaurant she runs. You can choose to confront them and save her, offer to help them, ignore the situation completely, or wait a few moments until her friend rushes to her aid. For instance, you begin the game near a bridge where a group of brigands are running off with a local girl. The game itself takes only a few short hours to play through, but there are a number of branching paths that lead to different events and endings depending on the choices you've made throughout. The townspeople are caught in the middle, and your own role in all of this is up to you. Set in the period in Japanese history when the role of the samurai has begun to fade, Way of the Samurai sees you as a ronin who's wandered into a town where a feud rages between two rival clans. You can completely change the course of the game by your actions.
Way of the Samurai is short and doesn't look like much, but it's an unusual game that can be a lot of fun.
This one's most notable features are its branching storyline and, to a lesser extent, its complex combat system. It would be easy to assume that Way of the Samurai might play much like Tenchu without the stealth aspect, but in fact they're distinctly different games. Acquire has tackled a different, although similar, theme with Way of the Samurai: Instead of playing as a ninja in feudal Japan, you act as a masterless samurai, or ronin.
Way of the samurai 1 game series#
Fans of the Tenchu series have been waiting for Acquire's first PlayStation 2 game with no small degree of interest, while a new developer works on creating Tenchu III.