Customer Reviews

Way of the Samurai 3

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been waiting for this game for a while and this game was near impossible to find, but I finally found a copy and got to play for the first time last night. It follows the along the same model of the original The Way of the Samurai. There are tons of swords and fighting styles, that will keep you enthralled for hours upon hours, and once you find that certain sword/style that fits you, you can learn new techniques and level the sword so you can become the ultimate assassin, protector, or just plain ole bad a**. This game is full of action around every turn, and the best concept is that you can choose which path you want to take, if you want to become a rich samurai you can join the fujimori clan, or you can be a sole wanderer a ronin,or you can protect the citizens of a poor city who are being heavily taxed, or you can plot against the fujimori clan and join the ouika clan who are a bunch of thieves and robbers, and the beauty of it is it's all up to you which path you choose. The fighting in this game is superb, depending on which sword you use that is the fighting style used, or you can fight bare handed which is pretty fun as well. I thoroughly enjoyed and am still enjoying this game, if this game sounds like something you might like, or if your like me, I really enjoy old samurai movies especially Akira Kurosawa films, you'll love this game. One of my favorite things about this game is one of the faces you can choose for your samurai looks almost exactly like Toshiro Mifune. In all I give this game a 5 out of 5. Maybe more, this is possibly one of my favorite games of the year.

Way of the Samurai 3 is an open-world game styled like an old-school samurai film. In some ways, it lives up to the standards of the series; in others, it overextends itself.

In WOTS3, you play as a wandering samurai caught in the kingdom of Amana during the Warring States period. There are several factions you can choose to ally yourself with: the powerful Fujimori clan, the rural Ouka clan, or the oppressed farmers of Takatane. The game has an open world, so you can wander around doing what you want - doing jobs and gaining the trust of the various factions to accomplish something in the world, or just spending your time picking fights and upgrading your sword. The game is meant to be played many times - it's short, but there are so many variations in the endings that it's clearly meant to be replayed over and over.

WOTS3 offers you more influence in the world than previous games. While WOTS1 and WOTS2 both allowed you a wide variety of choices as to your behavior in the world, in terms of who you could kill and where you could go, you were severely limited. In WOTS3, anyone can be killed at any time as long as you can get to them. It's possible to draw your sword during almost any cutscene in the entire game; if you want to, you can just cut a bloody swath through every important character, take their stuff, and leave.

On the flipside, if you're actually trying to accomplish something and get a good ending, it's important to be more diplomatic. WOTS3 offers two different concessions to the idea of peace. The first of these is the ability to apologize; in previous games, if you accidentally drew your sword, you had to fight or run away. In WOTS3, it's possible to attempt to reconcile and avoid fighting, which can be crucial if you've spent all your time building up trust with one clan and almost ruin it accidentally. The other new feature is the ability to attack non-lethally; you can defeat an enemy, but they won't be killed permanently. Since every single character in the game is persistent in the world, this can be important if a necessary character picks a fight with you and won't accept your surrender. You may find it necessary to fight back, but also to keep the person alive.

The swordfighting system feels slightly less refined than in WOTS2, but it makes up for it with improved customization. Like previous games, there are a few basic styles that swords can be used in, as well as some exotic options like ninja swords and iaijutsu. WOTS3 changes a few things as far as weapons go. Spears have been added to the game, to go with the more medieval tone of the setting. Additionally, dual-wielding now involves two actual swords, rather than one "sword" that's actually a set of two. Finally, you now have the option to create your own swords or spears from parts that can be found or bought in the game world. These weapons have their stats determined by the parts you use, so saving all your best parts to build a super high-quality sword is usually a good idea.

As gameplay goes, the most annoying part in comparison to other games in the series is how disconnected everything feels. The story is moved along through "inklings", which show up on your map occasionally to let you know to go to a certain area. However, many of these inklings are non-intuitive. For example, while playing as a member of the Fujimori clan, I ended up at a dead end where nothing was happening. As it turned out, I had to go join the rival Ouka clan, then immediately leave. It made no sense and felt really awkward. The jobs you have to do to gain faction approval are a pain, too. Some of them are ok - go here, kill one guy. Others have you hunting around the map for a hidden person or item, many of whom won't show up due to bugs or bad programming. In one case, I found two of three people that I needed to find, and couldn't find the last one no matter where I looked. I then left the map and came back; when I returned, the third person was sitting in a place that I had definitely checked before.

Another gameplay gimmick added is the presence of "partners" - romantic interests for your samurai to pursue. These partners have no role in the main gameplay; rather, you have to go out looking for them and fulfill whatever requirements they have for you to "recruit" them. For example, one partner threatens to attack you to avenge her dead father (she has mistaken you for his killer), and to recruit her you must apologize to her rather than fighting back. Another shows up only at midnight, and can be hired as a bodyguard for the night. However, these partners are more annoying than helpful - some offer small advantages, like remote access to your weapons safe and so on, but they all run much slower than you do and you'll be forced to constantly stop to let them catch up, or just walk everywhere. There are some mini-games you can do that require you to have a partner, and if you hang out with a partner long enough they can become a romantic interest, but other than that there's really not that much they're good for. Overall, they're just a pain.

The game's graphical quality varies pretty wildly - people and weapons are done pretty well, but the environmental textures are bland and unappealing. The main character especially is good at expressing emotion, but the buildings look really fake and the maps are lined with invisible walls and other issues that seem really silly to still have in 2009. Despite some improvements, as a whole WOTS3 is not a graphically impressive game - it's not quite as bad as last-gen, but it's not up to the standards of current generation graphics.

The sound design in the game is similarly varied in quality. The music is interesting and atmospheric. The voice work in Japanese is pretty good, but the English dub is lazy and not even worth bothering with. Thankfully, the game provides both English and Japanese as options. There's a really weird bug with voices, though, which is that the volume of a person's voice is based on the camera's proximity to the speaker - not based on the character's proximity. The result is that, because it's a third-person game, you won't be able to hear anyone unless you swing the camera around so that the person speaking is right in front of you. It's really weird and annoying and just ruins the experience.

As a whole, WOTS3 is an ambitious game, and I can respect that. However, it's so sloppily put together that the few areas where it is fun are overshadowed by repetitive tasks and shoddy development. It's a good example of combining story and gameplay, but in terms of being a fun game it's kind of lacking.

Rating: 6/10.

this game is very realistic, its the best martial art game to come out since tenchu z for the xbox 360. it has great replay value. set in real historic times, it gives you a idea what it was like in fuedal japan. another great point is you have the option to have everything spoken in the japanese language with english subtitles, ive been waiting for a long time for this game to come out and i am 100% satisfied with it. its a game for every martial artist as myself andd also for those with the warrior spirit. it teaches good morals and virtueous character.

Although the game has everything I expected, the lack of the tutorial ensured a costly error within the first 5 minutes of game play. I was prompted to press the L1 button when some farmers arrived and they ran off, thinking i was out to kill them for no reason. Other than that early mistake, and the immensely corny dialogue that was so very rampant in the first 2 games, the game play ends up being a lot of fun. you can choose from three paths now, Good, Evil, or you can take a diplomatic route and avoid combat entirely. All around this is a great game, just read the instructions before you play. There is also free Downloadable Content on the Playstation network. Worth checking out over all I would say $40-$50 is a fair price for this game.

So I'm just going to say right off the bat that if you are one of those guys who purchase call of duty games just because they are called call of duty then you probably won't like this game, if you play gears of war, halo, resistance or any of those high end graphic games you probably won't like this game.

Way of the samurai 3 is a game that requires a taste for repetitive but creative game play. I picked my copy up from game top for 25 bucks as amazon has it for almost 50! (And this game has become a collectible so prices will rise). However after playing it for my first hour I was truly blown away if fable 3 was anything like this game it would have been twenty five times better. Anyway you start the game out as a unconscious samurai who was just in a random battle after being healed by a local elder you are off to complete your adventure.
The game has so manypaths you can take, you can kill the leader of the oukia clan and become their leader however this doesn't really have any effect on anything other than the story and the people bowing to you in the streets.

The game play isn't the best but it is decent you can even build your own sword from other swords and unlock new fighting styles. While this makes the game unique something did bother and frustrate me at points when you are building your sword make sure you have a high defense and offense rating if your offense is to low you won't do hardly any damage to your opponent which of course is normal for RPG type games such as this. However if your swords defense is to low you can't block your opponents attack at all! Armor in this game is for decoration not defense properties so keep your sword buffed.

Just to finish up I'm going to rate everything in the game through a numerical scale then give my final thoughts!
Story- 8.5- very good with the different endings at times though u can feel cheated.
Gameplay- 7.0- With the different fighting styles most of which I haven't used u will have plenty to fight for.
Graphics 5.8- probably the weakest point in the game! People have high amounts of detail but environments are bland and unnatractive. (Again graphics don't make the game)
Soundtrack- 9.0- Authentic Japanese music puts you in the mood for a good samurai game.
Memorability- 7.5- will you remember running through fuedal japan killing people with a sword yea!
Replay value- 10- You will keep playing to get every single ending!

Overall: 8.5
To me this game is like one of those cupcakes in the cupcakes box at a children's party. Its the last of its flavor but one of the kids just sneezed all over it! Do you devulge with the cupcake or do you let a little babies germs keep you from what you know you like. If your crazy about samurai, ninja, fuedal age japan and so on don't hesitate and find this game and get it. If you are like the nowadays stereotypical gamer who plays call of duty all night then swaps over to halo or gears of war or resistance 3 then stay away from this game. It doesn't need more negative reviews from people like you who buy games expecting a COD and don't get it. For fans of samurai or ronin or anything like that get this game and prepare to have hours of entertainment.

Enjoy :)

P.S: I am now awaiting Catherine the game and I will have a review for that once I beat it but I'm sure it will be awesome!

I have been a big fan of the Way of the Samurai series since it started on the PS2. The game has a choose your own adventure branching storyline mixed with a very fun and robust sword fighting mechanic. My main draw is all the different sword types, styles, and combos. This game also allows you to make your own sword by collecting and choosing thru pieces and then assigning it combos of your desire. The fighting system is fluid with tons of different animations for all the weapons. They also added hand to hand combat as well as the ability to use the dull side of your blade. Tons of replay value and addicting sword collection/fighting make this game an easy purchase for any action fan. If you really want a number 8.8/10

I've played WOTS2 and although it was great at the start, the time limit and strange save system drove me crazy that I decided I was not going to play WOTS games ever. When I read that WOTS3 had no time limit and the save system was "fixed", I decided to give this game a chance. I'm glad I did.

You start out walking off a bloody battle, wounded and confused. You encounter two villagers. At this point, it's all in your hands what you wish to do. Kill the two villagers or let them help you. Your choice. The game can end in 15 minutes if you choose to or you play the game for hours on end. Currenlty, I am playing it for 10 hours now.

The gameworld is small, about 8 villages I think set in a province, pre-Meiji period. But don't be disappointed about the small gameworld. There are lots of things to be done in each of the villages; from running simple errands, to setting up ambushes, joining samurai clans, or just picking a fight on a villager. There are consequences to every action you take. So be careful what you do. You can beat up an opponent without killing him/her. WOTS3 introduced a "blunt" system whereby you use the blunt edge of the sword to pummel the baddie or goodie into submission. Killing a person in game affects the entire flow of the game, so be careful on who you pounce. Oh...and during combat and there's a bystander, and you accidentally hit the person with a sword, that bystander will either run, die, or join in the melee. You cannot turn off "friendly fire" in this game. Everyone, except the livestock and children, can be killed anytime, at any point.

Although I am not that familiar with different katanas/bokkens in Japan. Most, if not, all the weapons in the game seem to be authentic or based on real authentic weapons. There are no ninja-gaiden type weapons in this game. Also, the weapons gain levels not the person. So the weapons grows in level as you use it. At the same time, the weapon gains different stances (I think) that you can employ on your character. The game reportedly has 20 endings. I have not beaten the game yet, I am taking my time doing quests and just walking around villages waiting for a fight. The game randomly throws in a samurai or two to ambush you in broad daylight or in the evening. So...be ready to unsheath your sword or yoou'll get sliced and diced fast. By the way, during cutscenes the game will give you a choice to unsheath your weapon (a sign of aggression) or apologize (a sign of submission) or just let the cutscene run by itself. In other words, you can actually shift the cutscene to a different story line simply by drawing or apologizing while the cutscene runs.

For the most part, the NPCs in the game seem to be authentic in their costumes although you'll find a few weird looking costumes that are more anime than authentic. The villages look authentic for it's period. The language in-game can be either english or Japanese. I went for the Japanese language to give it a more samurai feel to the game.

Now comes the saving part. Well...here's what I do. I save my game often. There are what you call village minstrels who you can speak to and have them save your game. They are all over the map so don't worry about not finding locations to save. From what I've noticed, every village has a minstrel that you can save your game. When you save your game, your entire inventory and status is saved, including your current location. Now if you get killed or complete the game, you will get a screen showing you how many samurai points you've earned at the end game. Another screen will then pop up and ask you if you wish to save the results or not. Here's the trick: If you decide to save the results. The game will reset back from the beginning but it will still have all your items, money, etc you've earned intact and complete..so basically you won't be starting from scratch as a dirt poor samurai. But the entire storyline starts from scratch again. This gives you an opportunity to take a different approach to the game. If on the other hand you decide not to save the results, the game will take you back to your LOAD GAME screen, and you can pick up from where you last saved before you were killed. I believe the only time you can see how much samurai points you've earned is when the game ends either by dying, completing one of the endings, or leaving the province of Amana (which you do by simply selecting Leave Amana on your map).

Do I like the game. Yes I love the game because of it's open ended approach. It gives me a sense of actually being a samurai and doing something that affects a person or a community. There are tons of "Samurai" games out there that walks the line between a fighting game and a comic-book rpg. DOn't get me wrong. I like fighting games and anime styled rpg games with samurais but WOTS3 brings the samurai to a more realistic and authentic level. Do I like the graphics? Well...to be honest I'm not easily blinded by eye-candy. I still go for the substance of the game. Graphics is like the least of my requirements when choosing a game. For my own standards (which I know isn't all that high or great), the graphics is next-gen. A lot of people are saying WOTS3 has ps2 graphics. I think they're wrong...or so that's what I think. BGM is a mix of authentic Japanese koto and shakuhachi music and some chill lounge music with a Japanese traditional feel to it.

All in all, it's a great game. It might not be for the trigger happy sword wielding gamers who want to hack and slash for hours. THis game takes patience. The game isn't hard in terms of dealing with NPCs. What makes the game difficult is making the right choice at the right time, and being able to face the consequences of your actions.

For those who have played the first two Way of the Samurai titles, you know what to expect here with the third installment. For the unintitated, it would be best to know what this game is not. It's not GTA with swords or a hack-and-slash game, it's purely a decision-based system in which you tell the story where to go by triggering inklings or scenes or behaving differently. Killing innocents and looting them or saving people from injustice and defending yourself with blunt attacks clearly imply 2 ways you can play the game but they don't necessarily guarantee you the same ending. No matter how you end the game, however, it begins in the same fashion. You're found on the battlefield within an inch of your life by two looters and, one way or another, you are led to a farming village where a cot is set up for you. From this point on, the fate of the town and its people is in your hands.

There are several endings, over 20 of them, which can take you anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours to complete. Beating the game or leaving the town altogether, reseting the game, will result in the end of that play session and the final summation of "samurai points" you have attained. for every act of villainy such as kicking an unarmed villager or slashing/killing people who don't deserve it or are unarmed will decrease your total by 50 while progressing into a story branch and/or obtaining titles through play such as Rich Samurai for having 10,000 mon on you will raise that base total which adds or subtracts from your points bank - rewarding you with new faces/outfits/accessories/safes to hold weapons/difficulties/etc. Wanna look like Gackt in a tuxedo weilding a blacksmith hammer? Go for it.

Now to play devil's advocate: It's fun, definitely, and I'm still playing it. Over 30 hours in so far, personally, but the replay value is different for all people. For the Gears/God of War crowd, this may be too much of a chore with how slow-paced it can be or its lackluster graphics (yes, it's not Killzone 4 but no one's playing this for its looks). If you like the idea of a game being significantly different depending on whether or not you bowed to that woman or spoke negatively about that clan, you're in for a treat because while it doesn't have the same dialogue branching detail as a Bioware title, the story itself goes in another direction. That said, the con side to this is that you don't know exactly what choice will equal a desired result, which either results in trial and error or having to be faithful to a guide written by gamers. Yeah, forget about a strategy guide or in-depth explanation within the game itself, any and all support for all the titles in this series has and will come from the fans.

If you're willing to engross yourself in its world or are playing along with a guide, that's your best bet for knowing all you need to know about WotS3 and you'll still either love or hate this game. But if you're interested thus far, you may end up becoming a fan once you get used to its inner workings and controls. By no means is this a AAA title but it has so many complex nuances that makes it at the very least worth a hard look. And, for fans, it's exactly what should be in your cart/wishlist if you're not already playing it.

I was a huge fan of the previous 2 incarnations on the Playstation 2. I was hoping that this game would be a natural evolution of a game that was great on a simple platform (probably because of its simplicity), upgraded in sophistication for a more complex PS3.

I was pretty disappointed. The graphics are weak, which could be forgiven if the story or gameplay was more compelling. Unfortunately, the full potential of the PS3 was in no way maximized. There is no subtlety or strategy in the "jobs". The swords you can acquire or build are not as interesting or powerful as those in the first games. The villains are easy to defeat. The "instant kill" and "chain kill" effects touted for seamless battling are difficult to trigger, I found myself mostly mashing the square button over and over to kill everyone.

There is a reason that the first 2 games still retail for over $50 for used copies but this game is down to $25. This is not a true heir to the series, in spirit or gameplay.

I have always been fascinated with samurais, and this series has always been really cool at allowing you to play as a samurai. You have over 100 weapons available to you, and you can easily find one that fills your play style. This game compares more to the first game than the second one, while obviously has changes between them. On top of those decisions you can create your own character and choose between different heads and outfits.

This games story plays out differently than most games, and it runs about 20+ endings I believe. You decisions and choices in conversations drastically changes the outcome of the game, and people respond better to some choices than others. The game runs about 6-8 hours per ending, but a lot of endings are related to each other (like one simple choice) so you can speed up other endings since you know what's going on. I like how they did this, while it's not Metal Gear or anything, it's a nice change of pace to play these games every now and then.

The game play is a mix of samurai action and arcade fighter. When you're fighting enemies you focus on one at a time, and when you take them out another steps in. with the variety of weapons available you can do sweeping attacks with some them and take out multiple people, even if you're just focusing on one. The map is broken up into a bunch of different areas, and you can visit all of them from the get go. Blue exclamation marks show the inklings (story) events you can see, and even the order as you see some of these changes the game.

You can kill every person you see in this game (Kids excluded), and this also can change the outcome of the game. If certain NPC's die that can mess up certain events you want to do, and people even get scared of you the more you kill and they run away. One interesting thing they threw in the game is that if you buy a bunch of stuff from one of the stores, and if you kill them you can get your money back.

The graphics are basically good PS2 era. While I know that the graphics where on the back burner for a fun game, I still would like some next gen graphics. It's not too bad though, and doesn't take away from the playability of the game. The sound swords make and what happens to the people when they get hit is pretty cool, but the remix main theme from the game is the best sound effect.

Not many samurai games are out there that let you make decisions and provide you with all these different weapons. If you can over look the graphics and some minor annoyances, this can be a fun samurai game that everything you do affects the outcome of the game. Just a heads up though, this is one of those games that are only on sale for a bit before they stop making them, so if your remotely interested pick one up before it picks up in price. I got mine on sale at gamestop, so I have a feeling that has already happened.

Length: As I said before there are multiple different ends and some can be done real fast, while others take longer to do. The game keeps a tally of the total hours that you have played, so that's nice to keep track of when you're replaying this a lot. If you like collecting items you can exceed over 50 hours or more trying to get everything.

Trophies / Achievements: These games trophies are pretty time consuming. Each different type of weapon group has a stance, and trophies are related to these stances. In order to get the complete move collection you have to collect Every. Last. Weapon. (102+ I think) This takes a long time to do, and keep in mind all the other trophies for getting all the endings, 100 chain kills, and so many others. I'm at 50-60 hours right now and I haven't got the platinum yet, so this can take you awhile to platinum this game.

~ Written: August, 2010

Positives:
* Multiple endings that can change with a simple choice
* Variety of weapons to collect
* No one is safe, and everyone can die
* Goes back to its WoS 1 roots, and feels great to play
* Fun fighting sequences
* I feel like a samurai
Negatives:
* High end PS2 era graphics for a PS3 game
* Some traveling gets annoying with backtracking
* Building up trust with some people takes awhile