Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One
Publisher: Ratalaika Games
Developer: lightUP
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: E10+
As much as I used to really like lightUP as a developer, I have to say that they’ve become awfully predictable. Apart from the odd foray into OutRun-style racing games, for the most part it feels like they’re just churning out metroidvania platformers again and again and again.
Samurai Kento doesn’t break this streak. While it may feel a little bigger than some of lightUP’s previous metroidvanias, it doesn’t feel any better or different.
In fact, in some ways it feels a little worse. Combat – surely one of the key selling points of a game where a samurai with a sword and a bow and arrow are the main character – is kind of shoddy. You can never quite tell if your attack is going to make contact with an enemy, so you have to swing wildly repeatedly and hope you make contact. On top of that, you can’t move and attack at the same time, so as you attack you’re left hoping that you aren’t too close to the bad guys, or else they’ll lop off a bit of your health.
Samurai Kento’s other issue is tied to its size. While it’s hardly an enormous game – you should be able to beat it in 2-3 hours – its map is still big enough that you notice there’s no fast travel system the moment you find yourself on one side of the map and you realize the game intended for you to go somewhere else completely. Seeing as enemies all respawn the moment you re-enter a room, it makes the game feel much grindier than it needs to.
Does all that mean that Samurai Kento isn’t at all worth playing? Definitely not – the upside of lightUP making essentially the same game over and over again is that they generally know what they’re doing, and their games generally work as they’re supposed to. If you just want another metroidvania, you’ll find that here. But you could also find it in most of their other games, which makes it hard to see why you’d pick this one specifically.
Ratalaika Games provided us with a Samurai Kento Nintendo Switch code for review purposes.
