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Immediately upon starting The Spirit of the Samurai I said “wow” at least four times. It takes a lot to impress me, as I have played a lot of games, but this one has a visual style and cinematic presence that won me over. There are some quirky issues with gameplay but the sheer uniqueness and beauty of the game are hard to beat.
A Stunning Stop-Motion Story
As The Spirit of the Samurai begins, the great fox spirit Kitsune tells a tale of Takeshi, a brave samurai from an age past who had to defeat an evil that threatened the land. Kitsune, represented in stunning glory, draws us immediately into the life of Takeshi just before darkness falls.
Takeshi is the defender of an ancient village protected by Kitsune. The story starts with a dire prophecy and quickly shifts to a dark tale of death and adventure. Takeshi is destined to face a dread Oni general and his horde of creatures and undead.
The story unfolds in a stunning way thanks to the breathtaking fully voiced CGI cutscenes and the in-game stop-motion style animation. How the small team at Digital Mind was able to make The Spirit of the Samurai look and sound this good is an amazing feat.
The color palette is reminiscent of older samurai films and the in-game characters and animation remind me of a (much) darker Kubo and the Two Strings. I probably took 100 screenshots of this game, it just looked that good.
The sound design as well is amazing, with classic-sounding Japanese music, impeccable voice acting and genuinely eerie background effects and sounds. I am a huge advocate of sound design being as crucial as any other part of a media experience, and The Spirit of the Samurai is a benchmark example of how effective sound and music benefits a game.
Over the course of the experience we control not only Takeshi, but his adorable cat Chisai, through some stealth sequences and a small Kodama spirit after a key story event. The main controls of all are relatively the same, with some obvious differences due to scale and the lack of a weapon for Chisai.
The story is another great accomplishment. Pulling from Japanese mythology and the romantic nature of the legendary samurai, the developer has woven a tale of supernatural horror that was fun to experience. I loved that Takeshi is so enamored of his cat that he would brave anything to find it, such a nice touch.
Gameplay
The gameplay is where The Spirit of the Samurai does not quite meet the incredibly high level of its visual, audio and story experiences. It’s solid, and there is a good amount of variety, but the adherence to the gorgeous stop-motion aesthetic impacts the gameplay in negative ways at times.
Because of the animation steps the frequent platforming can be frustrating, and the combat while generally competent falls victim to some odd hitboxes. These consequences of the animation style make the game veer from easy to wildly frustrating.
There were some platforming sequences where I fell because the animations had not caught up to the movements I asked for, or I turned in a wrong direction and got hit or missed an attack. These problems were never enough for me to stop playing or snap a controller, but it definitely could benefit from some tightening up.
The progression system is also very odd and not nearly as polished as the audio/visual side of the game. At altars tokens can be traded for attribute increases and items can be offered for Incense which is then traded for items. It is an odd system and not very intuitive to figure out.
On top of this is a combo system that allows additional moves to get unlocked based on attributes and then added to directional attack sequences. I barely touched that system as it was never clear when I had new moves or could change combos. A better tutorial on progression would have been appreciated as well.
That being said, the combat, platforming and gameplay loops are solid enough to pull this great adventure experience along. The Spirit of the Samurai is a game I think everyone should play just to see the gorgeous production in motion and to see the excellently produced story through to the end.
We were given a Steam code for review purposes by the publisher. The Spirit of the Samurai is available December 12, 2024 on PC via Steam.
