Way Of The Samurai 3

Way of the Samurai 3
PS3 – XBOX 360
Gamebridge

The Good – Multiple stories and endings
The Bad – Poor graphics – lack of direction – generally dull

Making rice cakes, Bribing a cat and Finding an old lady's knickers. These aren't the sort of things you expect in a samurai game, but you find yourself performing a lot of bizarrely inconsequential tasks. The previous Way of the Samurai instalments were a pretty dull affair and WOS3 is no different.



WOS3 is an open world romp with multiple stories and directions which you can guide your character in. You can do pretty much whatever you want throughout the game, when you talk to someone, you can almost always choose to fight mid-conversation, regardless of who they are. It seems that you can kill anyone in the game outside of children, and generally speaking, once they're dead, they're dead for the remainder of the game. However, some characters will simply be replaced by another doing exactly the same thing.



WOS3 suffers from a severe lack of direction, most of your time will be spent traipsing the land in the hopes of stumbling into an activity. There is a map to consult in the main menu but all too often waypoints lead only to pointless exchanges or something equally unhelpful. The land of Amana is broken into numerous small areas but many of them consist of twisting paths leading to multiple exits, so it can be absolutely infuriating having to make do without a simple cursor or mini-map to guide you. It’s not uncommon to spend hours with the game and accomplish nothing and even though there are multiple ways to deal with characters, the consequences are far from exciting and usually consist of a simple fight or having a character run in fear. Not only will you be left questioning what exactly has been accomplished, you’ll likely be asking what you’ve done to deserve such a time-consuming penance.

There is definitely a gap in the market for a game like WOS3, but WOS3 is not going to fill that gap. To be fair the battle system works pretty well and is simple to pick up and play, this where the positives stop. Wandering around aimlessly for hours on end is not fun, pointless tasks are not fun, WOS3 is not fun.

4/10