Way of the Samurai - PlayStation 2

The game takes place as the age of the samurai is coming to a close. Wearing your choice of faces and clothing, you meander through several settings, choosing how to interact with certain characters as the plot develops around you. And, of course, you engage in frequent swordplay. As befitting a game about samurai, the game world offers an interesting combination of Zen atmospherics and machismo posturing. The graphics are often pretty but rarely terrific, although some backgrounds are quite peaceful and attractive. The main strength of the game is the fighting system: each of the swords offers different moves and attacks.

Though it's advertised as a multipath adventure, this is not a free-roaming game--once you're locked into a path, you basically follow it to its conclusion (though you can do so in a few different ways). The hitch is that the conclusion is usually only 2.5 hours into the game, meaning that to derive value from Way of the Samurai you'll have to play it a dozen times or more. But the gameplay and unlockable features just aren't interesting enough to warrant playing it a dozen times, a fact that'll be clear after you exchange the same bit of dialogue with the same characters for the umpteenth time.

Aside from the limited length and repetitive gameplay, the big downer of Way of the Samurai is the poorly conceived save system. Not only do you have to find an elusive save point before saving, but once you choose to continue playing the game, it automatically erases your last save, meaning you can't start again from the same point and must start from the beginning if you die. So, what, exactly, is the point of saving again? --Rivers Janssen