Slightly more hyped than usual, Samurai Rising is RPG giant Square Enix’s latest attempt to get a slice of the booming social RPG market. As with many of their other efforts in this market, Samurai Rising takes strongly after another popular free-to-play game, in this case White Cat Project. It’s an action-RPG built for single or multiplayer play, with all the trimmings and tricks you’ve probably come to expect from the social RPG genre. I’ve spent a little time with the game since it came out yesterday here in Japan, and I thought I’d give you a few impressions.
First of all, the usual provisos apply. There will be a big data download when you start the app the first time, and here and there after that. You need to be online to play. The gameplay is gentle at first but eventually starts to put the pressure on you to have strong characters, and you’ll need some luck at the random gatcha draws to get them. With that out of the way, let’s go into some specifics. To start with, Samurai Rising is a very pretty game. The game’s visual style takes after Bravely Default very strongly, albeit with an Edo-era Japan twist. Even the monsters go for a cool Final Fantasy-by-way-of-medieval-Japan motif with, for example, Bombs that look like paper lanterns.
The gameplay is fairly simple. You just tap to attack and drag your finger around the screen to move. Stages are relatively short and consist of a few skirmishes with regular enemies followed by a boss battle. Although you bring a party into battle with you, only one character appears on-screen at a time, with a button to swap between them as you like. You can also bring a friend’s character with you, and they will appear on-screen with your chosen hero. The multiplayer mode naturally allows for more than one character on-screen at time, of course.
The characters are all essentially Final Fantasy job classes done in a medieval Japan style. You’ve got fighters, black mages, white mages, and so on. It’s a cool touch of familiarity, though to be honest, we’ve seen so many social RPG takes on Final Fantasy that even this old stand-by is losing its shine. Characters can be strengthened by equipping gear that you find on quests or by bumping up their stats with various colored essences you come across.
I’m still quite early on in Samurai Rising, so it’s hard for me to speak with any sort of authority as to how its difficulty curve will go in the long run. It seems that, as usual for a social RPG, if you can get some friends with powerful characters, you’ll be able to skate through the early part of the game at least. I suppose the only big problem at this point is that the game feels very much like White Cat Project with a Final Fantasy spin and a dash of samurai for seasoning. That doesn’t make it a bad game by any means, but it does make it somewhat redundant, and that doesn’t speak well for its chances of survival in the cut-throat social RPG landscape.
As always, it’s up in the air as to whether or not Square Enix will release this game outside of Japan. Most of their free-to-play games haven’t come over, but they’ve been taking a few more chances of late. The production values on Samurai Rising make me think that they want to take it wider, but the samurai style could point to this being a product meant primarily for the domestic Japanese market. I suppose time will tell. At any rate, if I come across anything particularly interesting down the line, I’ll write up some further impressions. For now, you can file Samurai Rising under “good, but not particularly exciting" with most of Square Enix’s other social RPGs.
Ugh.
I like the image of you entering the frame, putting down the soapbox, getting up on it, delivering your speech, then getting down, picking the soapbox up, and then exiting the frame.
It's a practical way to work, gotta have a personal soapbox.
Enters frame. Puts down soapbox. Bows. Picks up soapbox. Exits frame. :)
👏👏
No kidding. When this released it was my favorite game. I even bought the ridiculously overpriced sandbox for $5 (In a then-premium game). This is pretty depressing. I remember when I'd look forward to the "out now" thread every Tuesday, but now rarely is there anything good it seems. ;(
The ads are not only for the daily bonuses. The ads are everywhere. Want to restart a level? Video ad. It's outrageous.
The game is ruined for me. Literally unplayable, because it sometimes crashes on ad loading on my iPod touch 5th gen.
What is this joke, Rovio? I paid for both iPhone and iPad version and now both are ruined. Shame on you, Rovio.
If you are angry about our product please enjoy one of our other fine paid* (*but not forever) titles like Angry Birds, or the new Angry Birds-IRL where the consumer tries to send an angry bird in the form of raven equipped with a letter of complaint into the side of the Rovio building. Unfortunately the walls are lined with cash making them indestructible and that's a raven, birds don't explode you see, unless they are seagulls that ingest beach trash or pigeons that eat uncooked rice (PSA-please throw something else during your wedding). Thank you for playing, please enjoy our movie.
AFAIK it's possible for an app to know who paid for an app (by date if nothing else) so that ads need not be shown to those people. The other F2P stuff could remain, of course.
If that's not what was done, I'll if I can just not update.
Lol, the update Mondays post for this game sounded like this was a great update and didn't mentioned it going f2p.
Obviously you gotta get yo'self down to Rovio HQ and I recommend you start off the conversation strong by leading with yo' pimp hand, Upgrayedd!
Yeah, sorry. This might be shocking and all, but I don't have time to personally check out and vet all 20+ games that usually appear in Update Mondays. I rely on the patch notes being honest and the forum picking up on anything too shifty. Those articles take about six hours to put together as-is.
Haha, I don't think your integrity is what we're unhappy with here, Shaun. But thank you anyways. "They ought to pay you a hero's wage."
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Dark place… Dark place… DARK PLACE!
Hahaha, best show ever, right? I love the part of the intro where he does the dive roll with the baby right as ambulance explodes! Haha, gets me smilin' every time! Mighty Boosh is great too!
I went into the gents and there was a big pube on the pipe so I had to use the one in E Wing.
For some reason my wife and I lost it when we heard that line.
hahaha, it's a good one! Wonton runs that ship pretty cheaply.
Just more free space on my iPod, and another LOUD message to save my money for 3DS games instead.
Damn straight!
Yep, majora's mask will never be ad-riddled.
Aaaand deleted
Don't forget to leave a 1 star review on the App Store for ruining the game.
Guess i'm more shocked they're still doing a separate HD iPad only version, didn't think anyone still did that.
Why didn't they just released a separate app? Bad piggies 1,5 or something. Now we gamers who purchased the game back in the day's have to suffer the f2p mechanics if we want to play this once great game.
Bad move rovio, bad move!
Just don't update correct? Seems if it's just a update thing don't update
Yes but since they didn't mention F2P in the notes I updated already. :(
Rovio wants you to be an Angry Bird too.
I like that it's possible to pay for a game and then have the developers switch to a F2P model that screws over the users who actually paid for the game.
iOS gaming is the most anti consumer platform out there. Another $$$ wasted( I don't mind sales) but when game balance and adds are effected Fuc& rovio, no more purchase for you.
Funny thing, I just started Amazing Alex last week... That's how behind I'm in my backlog.