Fate/Samurai Remnant is the newest game from Omega Force, published by Koei Tecmo, and it takes place in Japan during the Keian Era uprising in 1651. Players are placed in the world of Miyamoto Iori as he finds himself caught in the conflict and surrounded by supernatural situations, fighting for the power to grant any wish. Team up with a cast of powerful allies along while facing off against strong foes eager to stop his quest.

The gameplay has a main focus on katana combat, letting you change combat stance mid-combat, allowing you to switch from using the two-handed style fighting to dual wielding in the water stance, where your attacks are faster and flow together, but are weaker per hit in comparison. The combat also features a co-op system, where Lori will fight alongside a servant named Saber. They can switch roles in combat once the servant meter is filled, letting you unleash some powerful attacks and magic as Saber. While playing as Lori, you can call on Saber to use spells to deal massive damage in the early game, and these are extremely overpowered as Saber starts at a higher level than Lori.

You can explore cities, visit shops, and even pet dogs and cats, and doing so will heal you per pat you give them. You may even find and grab some side quests here – anything to help you gain some experience and level up. There is quite an impressive skill tree, and I would strongly suggest getting the Riposte skill as your first unlock. It will let you evade an attack and deliver a heavy counter-attack that makes quick work of enemies. Other skills will unlock extra stances, such as Wind Stance, while other nodes of interest will increase core stats, such as strength and defense numbers, so read where the skills are going and perfect your own type of swordsman style.

Servants can run ahead of you while exploring, directing your attention to something they spotted, such as riceballs to snack on, or something they have never seen before, and they’ll have some dialog about it. This is a great feature to keep an eye out for, as when you build the bond with them, you can unlock a stat point to use in their tree, but more importantly, build a connection with them.

Voiced lines are spoken in Japanese with English subtitles, so unless you speak the language, you have some reading to do, and while you’re out of combat and exploring, there is relaxing traditional music that supports the nice sites and towns. In combat, the music will shift depending on enemy types or if you’re going into a boss encounter.

The controls are rather easy to pick up and learn as it is mainly a hack-and-slash style of combat, with a basic light attack and heavy attack mixture to be used for combos. Magic and servant skills are also assigned as sub-actions that can be easily pulled off during combat. In terms of difficulty, there are three settings you can pick from at the start, one of which makes combat encounters a bit easier if you just want to focus on the story.

The default difficulty is a good blend of easy and hard encounters that you would normally come across, where lesser enemy mobs are fairly easy to dispatch, and then hard mode, where combat is the main focus, testing your skills and giving a more rewarding experience, especially after big encounters. There is also a new game plus option, as there can be a few choices where the story changes path, so you can carry over everything you’ve learned and progress and experience the other side of things.

The world of Fate/Samurai Remnant is nice to explore and look at. The opening cutscene is an amazing anime-style opening, where all dialog segments are presented like a visual novel, using static images of the character speaking. The character designs are amazing for the most part, though the general village thug and bandits are basic, but when you start coming across the monsters and higher-level enemies, the design work is fantastic. You will come across badass samurai very early in that has such a great look to his armor and weapon design, and it is honestly my top favorite character design thus far.

My only real complaint is that the pacing can slow down during the combat side of the game. I enjoy the story and do want to know more, but it felt like certain parts were drowning out the combat element – I wanted to spend more time hacking and slashing. I mean, who doesn’t want to be a samurai in ancient Japan? I didn’t really mind the small fights, but at the time, they felt like they were just thrown in as a distraction as you walked from point A to B without anything major happening.

Fate/Samurai Remnant is a fun and great anime-style hack-and-slash. The kind that Koei Tecmo likes to stick with. So if you are a fan of the Ninja Gaiden gameplay and Dynasty Warrior style of combo inputs, this game will not disappoint. It has a great blend of both styles. The locations you can explore feel authentic to the period setting and are treated with a calm soundtrack of Japanese wooden instruments.

Written by: Shane Walsh