That’s not to say that Samurai Shodown! 2 is a slouch when it comes to technical execution, because it certainly isn’t. While Samurai Showdown has never really been about complicated combos and fancy pressure tactics, there is still usually a deep and often overwhelming combat system to learn. Overall, the game is a more simplified version of the Samurai Showdown experience yet still manages to stay consistently reliable to series. Take the popular hawk-welding Nakoruru as a prime example, who will swap out her famous bird of prey ally in favour for the wolf Shikuru when employing the Bust style. In some cases, the changes can also cause a quite drastic transition to the way a character handles. Bust – or Treachery – on the other hand, completely changes up most of the move list of the character to represent a more aggressive, often unhinged version of themselves. The first is known as Slash – otherwise known as Chivalry – which keeps the character faithful towards their own familiar moveset.
But the overall main focus here is to make every single attack count or leave yourself completely wide open to meet a warriors demise.Įach of the 15 characters on the select screen has a choice of two fighting styles. Of course, there are some attack string possibilities, especially when taking advantage of a universal, “Samurai Combination System” to keep the opponent on the ropes.
However, unlike many other fighting games that are often tailored with combo-heavy escapades in mind, the Samurai Shodown series tends to steer towards being a more cautious and meticulous type of fighting game. In the same fashion to other fighting games on the Neo Geo Pocket Color, Samurai Shodown! 2 does an excellent job at faithfully recreating the combat structure set by the series it derives from. It’s a bit like Devilman Crybaby crossed with the Marvel Cinematic Universe in its own little way. As you would expect, It’s up to our cast of brooding cornfield-dwelling combatants to ensure that doesn’t happen. The plot, in short, revolves around a mysterious genderless puppeteer with the dark ambition to collide both the demon and human world into a utopia of evil. This Neo Geo Pocket sequel retells the events of Samurai Shodown 64: Warriors Rage, the second instalment of the 1997 Japan-exclusive arcade series that ran on the Hyper Neo Geo 64 system board – which also happens to be the first 3D fighter SNK ever released. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case, as the 20-year-old fighter recently contained as a marketing ploy finally makes itself available to everyone on the Nintendo eShop.
It was, after all, originally bundled in strictly as a pre-order bonus for the latest rendition of Samurai Shodown released earlier in the year. You could say that Samurai Shodown! 2 is technically the first game to have kicked off the Neo Geo Pocket Color selection range on the Nintendo Switch.