Summary
A commendable attempt at a realistic fighting game that, unfortunately ,doesn't quite work out.
The Good
Bushido Blade is a unique game, and one of the best attempts at creating a realistic fighting simulation so far. It completely does away with genre conventions such as health bars, combos or special moves. Instead of gradually decreasing your enemies health, your attacks have all kinds of different effects, depending on where they hit, and one hit can be deadly. Since you can die at practically any moment during a fight, tension is high right from the start of a match and you must choose your attacks wisely since counterattacks can be devastating. Not every successful attack is immediately deadly though. If you hit your enemy's arm, he can only continue fighting one-handed, wounding his legs slows him down and might eventually force him to continue fighting on his knees(!). Even in this position however, it is still possible (if much more difficult) to win a fight, and managing to kill your opponent with a single, well-aimed strike from a nearly hopeless situation can be much more satisfying than ripping him apart with 20-hit-combo. It's not possible to wound both, arms and legs, but this is actually to the game's benefit since it would be impossible to continue fighting like that, and the possibility of wounding arms and legs would upset the game balance without providing any significant improvements in gameplay.
Initially, the number of moves for each fighter seems a bit low, but this is made up for by the fact that every fighter can choose between eight different weapons. Weapons not only look different, they also have a large impact on your character's fighting style. The Katana for example, is the best all-round weapon, fast and effective and the best weapon to choose in the beginning. The war hammer is very slow and difficult to handle but it's also the strongest weapon and very difficult to parry. The Naginata has the highest range and isn't quite as slow or powerful as the war hammer. You can even choose a rapier that makes up for it's low of range and power through incredibly speed, as well as a broad sword, a saber, a short sword and others. Too make things even more interesting, you can always change between low, middle and high stances. In most cases, the middle stance is the most well-balanced stance, the low stance more defensive and high stance offensive. For example, switching to high stance when fighting with a Katana lets your character hold his sword over his head, which enables very fast attacks at the sacrifice of making him much more open to enemy attacks. Furthermore, each stance enables your character to perform different moves, which makes switching stances in battle an important element of your strategy.
The stages in which the action takes part are usually quite large and can be freely explored during a fight. You are even able too climb, and some obstacles such as trees etc. have to be taken into account. The different environments don't have a huge impact on gameplay, but they don't screw it up either and help to increase the sense of realism.
Another nice addition is that, in story mode, you have to stick to the Way of Bushido, i.e. fight honorably. If you stab your opponent in the back, attack him when he's down on the ground or throw sand in his eyes (nice idea!) you might win the fight, but you won't be able to advance the story.
Apart from the story mode there's also a vs. mode and a survival mode in which you have to fight an infinite number of opponents (without being healed in-between fights). By far the most interesting game mode however, is the POV mode that lets you experience the action from a 1st person perspective. It's a great idea that, amazingly, works absolutely flawless. The controls are the same as in 3rd person perspective but it has an entirely different feel than other game modes. You need to have some experience with the game before you can enjoy this mode, but once you know your moves well enough to use them effectively from this unusual viewpoint you'll have a blast. The level of immersion is simply much higher when you're face to face with your opponent.
From a technical point of view, there's nothing to complain about. The fighters aren't incredibly detailed but that's probably because of the fully polygonal stages. There's nothing ugly about them either (except for some of their ridiculous outfits)and the animation smooth and realistic. Overall the graphics, while not exactly top of the line on the PSX, are pretty solid, considering the game came out in 1997. The music is minimalistic and used sparsely, but it perfectly fits the game's atmosphere. Likewise the sound effects sound exactly as they should. Each weapon sounds slightly different. Whether your Katana clashes with a Broadsword or a rapier with a saber, everything sounds right.
The Bad
Unfortunately, the fun doesn't last very long. At first it feels like pure gaming bliss. Everything feels much more realistic and so different from other fighters; the tension during the fights, the satisfaction of killing your opponent with one single strike or from a nearly hopeless position. But once your becoming a little better at the game (which happens much too fast), it all breaks down. The total number of moves, while larger as one might think at the beginning, is still too small. Each stance only gives access to a handful of moves and the fighters only differ in strength and speed, but have basically the same moves for every weapon. More importantly, once you have learned to parry attacks, the game isn't much of a challenge anymore. Granted, the timing is different for each weapon, but once you have mastered one weapon, it doesn't take very long to master the others as well. From then on, fights last only a couple of seconds. Just wait until your opponent attacks, block, strike and he's dead. You won'talways kill him immediately, but if he's wounded he is even less of a challenge and won't survive very long either way.
The Bottom Line
Bushido Blade is an ambitious game and it's a pity that all its great ideas dindn't amount to a better game. It's even more of a pity that Bushido Blade dindn't have the influence it should have had. With a larger number of moves and by building on the already great ideas, a new Bushido Blade tile, or any game that picks up its ideas, could prove to be a real alternative to established series.
