Best samurai games 2012

Capcom needs to give Resident Evil a break and return to this franchise. Set just after Oda Nobunaga's epic war with Imagawa Yoshimoto in , known as the Battle of Okehazama, players take the role of a warrior encountering demons drawn by the blood-soaked battlefield. Locations of brutal conflicts in Japanese folklore often draw malevolent forces tied to the rage and hatred brought about by war.

This proliferates in video games as well, as seen by this and other samurai titles. Another demon-slaying samurai game is Nioh , a new franchise that debuted in the previous generation. While this could be dismissed as a samurai clone of Dark Souls , it is more than that.

With a named character and better balancing next to its sequel that just came out, it is the better of the two. It might even be more challenging than Dark Souls since it demands faster reflexes. The player takes the role of William, an Englishman traveling to and through the early 's Japan, the Sengoku era, seeking spiritual knowledge and strength in a world overrun by demons. Thankfully, he is a skilled swordsman capable of allying himself with guardian spirits who can slay these oni and yokai with either blade, bow, or even magic as well as countless other weapons and tools.

Katana Zero is an indie darling that also launched in It borrows the one-hit-kill gameplay of other indies like Hotline Miami but adds a samurai and a slowdown mechanic. With the techno soundtrack and neo-punk aesthetic, this game is a fun trip albeit a short one. Slaying enemies as a cyber samurai is inherently cool and like Nioh , Katana Zero can be quite challenging.

What definitely can be considered a technicolor bloodbath amidst sharpened steel is also the tale of a cold, lifeless killing machine that becomes something more. Set in a dystopian city full of both grime and crime, the player controls Zero, an experiment who may or may not have been a human. Throughout the game, as players get to hunt down and assassinate targets, they'll also be given the chance to chase Zero's thoughts and feelings as he experiences the world around him.

That is the easiest game, relatively speaking, to get ahold of; however, if one can track down the original on PS2 , that is the way to go. It garnered mixed reviews at launch, however, earning a 72 Metascore. The Way of the Samurai series has an air of diminishing returns past the original, a game that perfectly encapsulates the idea of roaming the countryside as a ronin.

Players cut down foes while playing the part of a self-created swordsman or swordswoman in the fictional Japanese coastal town of Amihama during the early s. They can join one of three factions: the Japanese government, the rebels, or the British navy seeking to end the conflict.

The story of the game spans five days, each full of decision-making opportunities that will change the course of the tale. This series has a stigma to it for seemingly offering just mindless hack and slash mayhem. Truthfully, that is not far off base.

However, what makes Samurai Warriors so adored by fans is the co-op, which genuinely can make even the worst of games great in some capacity, along with player choice. Slaying thousands of enemies might not be realistic, but it is like a samurai power fantasy. This spin-off of a spin-off, Empires , is recommended above others because it integrates a level of strategy to the franchise.

As another samurai game set during the wartorn era of Japan known as the Sengoku period, this game sees quite a few real, albeit romanticized, battles from the late s to the early s.

Kessen — the first one, at least—is a digital battleground where players get to control the outcome of the Battle of Sekigahara and many other conflicts between the Tokugawa Clan and the Toyotomi Clan during the Sengoku period. The fourth entry in the series is the highest-rated among the bunch and continues the Dynasty Warriors-Esque gameplay of lone warriors hacking down enemy hordes like lawnmowers.

Of course, Samurai Warriors also has its own stars in the form of the most popular samurai icons in Japanese history. Like most Japanese games involving samurai, it takes place during the warring states period of Japan. What if Dynasty Warriors crossed over with Samurai Warriors? The answer is Warriors Orochi, a series that also has a habit of persisting into multiple sequels while keeping the same gameplay formula. Warriors Orochi 4 is the latest among them.

Anyone who has played both the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games should be familiar with the game and the characters. This time, however, the variety goes up through the roof with the combined roster of heroes. On the surface, Samurai Shodown looks like another 2. There are counter-attacks and defensive moves like rolls, parrying that can change the tide of battle in an instant.

Yet despite these hardcore mechanics, Shodown is very accessible and easy to pick up for brand new players. By far one of the prettiest games here, For Honor isn't exactly focused on samurai, but, since a third of the game gives them a spotlight, then it may as well count. Being one of the playable factions in this competitive melee action game, For Honor is a breath of fresh air coming from single-player games. It allows players to commander different types of samurai or ninja archetypes to duke it out against other samurai or knights or Vikings.

It doesn't make sense in the slightest, and it's best to just play it for the thematic fun. Released on the PS1 in , Bushido Blade is a purist's dream and a sword fighting game that was the polar opposite to the arcade-style mechanics of the SoulCalibur series. It remains as close to a samurai combat simulator as it can possibly get. Every fight is about targeting body parts to weaken the opponent or going for an instant kill strike.

Players need to learn how to time their parries and deflect attacks with precision-perfect timing while also honoring the Samurai code of Bushido. For a samurai-themed game with a fantasy twist, then players can't go wrong with the Onimusha series. Onimusha 3: Demon Siege is the latest among all three games and is also the highest-rated of the lot. The first being Stealth Assassins, the second being Shadow Assassins. The first game I can remember playing the hell out of because it was one of the better-looking games, which is funny when you look back on it now.

But the second part was an exciting take on the type of formula is established. In that series has some bearing of influence over the formula they used in that game. Little harder to play these, though. Shadow assassins was a PSP game. It is possibly one of the coolest ideas on this list. You have a set of heroes with different skills that you have to apply to different situations. It just applies it to the sort of samurai idea incredibly well. Bushido Blade was a fighting game.

It was a square soft attempt at creating a new fighting game franchise. Now they did make two of them, Bushido Blade and Bushido Blade 2, and they had a unique damage system that did lots of different things based on where you hit somebody. It had a lot of swordplays. There is a fair amount of exploration, which is not something that you usually see in a fighting game.

It is also made it hard for you to succeed because it was a bit different. We are not talking about the old version but the new one. The new version is a hack and slash which took a somewhat like cavalier attempt at the first one and then revamped the combat system in the second, which allowed dismemberment.

This game is significantly less about stealth than almost any other game on this list. The first one was a bit more specific about its protagonist. The second one lets you make your protagonist. The second one functioned as a prequel for the most part, but some of it was posted the first game story. The second was bigger in scope as it tends to be with sequels.

I would say that Onimusha is a bit more of a hack and slash than resident evil. But as a series, it ended up being a worthwhile one. It was one they initially started to work on for PlayStation and eventually moved to PlayStation 2. It is an old PS2 game. It did have a couple of sequels, but I think the most notable is probably the original. The cool thing about it is that you can radically alter precisely how the story goes down.

Probably a lot more so than a lot of other games in this era. Still, it was a very high-quality title for the time. It was an excellent looking game, like looking back on it. Also, it just had really fun combat sometimes that seemed silly, partly because of the music, which is pretty much always great anyways.