Hana Samurai: Art of the Sword (Nintendo 3DS) Review

The story of the game is pretty simple and really only appears in the opening and ending of the game. A young nameless hero, who is dubbed the Hana Samurai by an old kappa that also trained him, is on a quest to rescue a kidnapped princess called Cherry Blossom to restore peace to the world.

Much like the story, the gameplay is also pretty straightforward. There are three worlds, each with its own boss, several stages and a town. The towns are used to forge or sharpen your sword, buy supplies such as healing items or whetstones, rest up and save at an inn or complete challenges to earn stamps for free items and even gems that grant more powerful special attacks. The stages are all just small locations filled with a few enemies. The three boss levels are all a bit longer but they also offer virtually no exploration or items to find. Once coming close to enemies, the player enters a combat stance where slow movements can be made, dodging in all four basic directions, blocking and, of course, attacking with a sword.

The combat is largely based on timing and Precision Points are doled out for each successful dodge at the last second. These can be exchanged for gold at the shop but unfortunately each time a hit is received or an enemy blocks one of the attacks, the points reset to zero. This can be very frustrating and it would have been much more preferable for a slightly less harsh approach than losing all points with just one small mistake. Each encounter is basically dodging either backwards or to the side based on the opponent's attack pattern and then scoring a hit on the enemy; rinse and repeat. Blocking is virtually useless since it decreases the sharpness of the sword and it has no advantage over simply evading an attack entirely. Once the sword has been fully charged by dodging attacks and killing enemies, a special attack can be performed to deal damage to a wide area, depending on what gem is currently in the player's possession.