Blocking attacks or having your own attack blocked dents your sword, subsequently weakening your strikes, so it pays to learn enemy patterns and know when to go on the offensive. Combat is big on precision and calculation, favouring well-placed deliberate strikes over hack-and-slashing your way through.
If in a pinch, unleashing a special attack will damage all opponents you manoeuvre in front of.Ĭrucially, Sakura Samurai's balance feels fun and never cheap messing up tends to encourage doing better next time. Enemies start out obvious but gradually increase in complexity, adding fake-out and multi-strike moves. The order in which they attack varies, although if you get close enough to any given foe you can strike before they approach. Battles take place in enclosed areas where bands of enemies are free to move around you and you around them, adding a bit of strategic positioning into the mix.
Sakura Samurai's combat invites comparisons to Nintendo's Punch-Out!! in the sense that both are based on countering whatever attack that enemies telegraph, but that's really where the similes end: Sakura Samurai takes that seed and grows it into a slightly more elaborate system by incorporating more freedom and on-the-fly tactics than the largely reactionary Punch-Out!!.
