Way of the Samurai 2

What the heck was Capcom thinking? I'm guessing it must have been something along the lines of: 'Lets save a buck or two and get the janitor to do the voice acting.'? And to top off the horrible voice acting and even worse dialogue translation, you can't skip the cut scenes ' this has got to be some plane of Dante's Hell, I'm sure of it.

If you manage to ignore the horrendously off-putting cut-scenes and dialogue, Way of the Samurai 2 does offer up some limited fun through a well-developed fight system that allows you to cut and parry your way through a feudal town in a basically open-ended game. In the game you play a out of luck samurai trying to make ends meet in feudal Japan. The story opens with you arriving in the town of Amahara and meeting a girl who gives you a bite to eat. Seconds later a pair of goons, with laughably bad voices and acting, makes generic threats and you are given several possible responses. What you decide to say in return shapes the game; this is true through-out Way of the Samurai 2 and would have made it a really innovative and interesting game to play had it not been for the translations which make much of the dialogue non-sensical and confusing.

The game allows you to wander the town interacting with virtually everybody, and fighting many of them as you try to find missions to accomplish during a ten day period. At the end of this week and a half the game ends in one of ten ways, depending on your choices.

The fighting system is pretty fun, allowing you to slash in a variety of ways and parry your attacker rather realistically, but it just doesn't make up for the confusing and diluted plot. What could have been a good game turns into what feels like random wandering in a confusing town with no real, understandable objectives.

The graphics are passable, but nothing really to write home about and certainly not good enough to off-set the really bad dialogue. I wouldn't waste my time with this game as it was much more frustrating than fun.