Samurai Shodown: The Fighting Game You’ve Too Been Afraid to Play
Samurai Shodown, the essence of neutral combined with the tense nature of footsies. At first SamSho may seem an underwhelming fighting game, but to those who value a deeply strategic game of which ends in a matter of seconds, SamSho might just be the game for you.
Let’s talk about SamSho’s Twitch statistics. It’s no secret that SamSho doesn’t come highly ranked in the FGC a.k.a. the fighting game community. Ranked at #2,038 on Twitch, SamSho on average caps at about 18 viewers weekly. That is 18 people watching the entirety of SamSho’s streams. It has a consistent basis of 2 channels streaming it in week’s time as well. With those two numbers, it’s about 9 viewers to each channel that streams SamSho. Its total hours watched as of this moment is 1,704 hours watched of SamSho’s stream by the entire community of Twitch.
Onto why SamSho’s numbers look this way. First of all, Samurai Shodown is a fighting game and we all know about how most people feel about those. It’s always a disappointment when people get infuriated that fighting games take an extraordinary amount of time and discipline to play. Not calling out any other kind of game, but that’s a big reason why people are afraid or unmotivated to play fighting games.
Samurai Shodown is a very slow paced or very fast paced at times. It’s inconsistent pace being a constant deterring factor of players. This is a game where two hits can win you the round or the game if the situation permits. With that premise alone, most tend to stray away from SamSho. SamSho is a fighting game focused on the ancient Japanese traditions of honorable 1-on-1 combat. Due its roots, this game has an extremely dramatic aesthetic. From the amazing cinematic attacks to the slow, yet devastating normals, SamSho is a game for those who have both patience and skill to effectively outplay your opponent in a game of ultimate footsies.
How’s the roster? It’s not bad for a legacy game. In the most current generation of SamSho, there is a grand smacking total of 15 base roster characters with 8 implemented dlc characters such as Warden from the For Honor series and Gongsun Li from the Honor For Kings and three more awaiting arrival into the game, with the newest character to be Cham-Cham. I, myself, partake in this game. I am a Galford, Hanzo, and Shizumaru player. Each of these characters provide a certain level of spice to my screen. Neither of these three play similar to any of the cast (same could be said for most other fighting games by the way) making for my experience to be quite satisfying. However, after you’ve beaten the story mode and want to take it online, there is usually no one on.
Which brings me to my final point. This game ultimately suffers from mundane syndrome. See, the netcode is not too bad from what I’ve experienced. The playerbase isn’t toxic, or flat, just dead. This game mainly suffers from lack of appeal. It doesn’t have that flair as its competition does. There’s virtually no combo system. There is also the fact that you cannot block in the air (a famous defensive tactic in fighting games known as “chicken blocking”). I believe this is one of the things that scares players the most. Attacking in this game is a series of jabs, special moves, and precise maneuverings. Although, it sounds simple, and it is, this game employs the strategy of a duel along with the tense nature of a fighting game to bring to life a tradition that has long since been only read about to recounted in literary works. Life or death. Blood and sweat. Blade and bone. The only words that matter in the life of a samurai.
