Amazing. Simply, amazing. I was in complete awe when I started to play this game. I knew the minor amounts of hype that it got were worth something.
The graphics are Way of the Samurai-esk, they aren�t spectacular, but they�re good enough.
The characters are fairly good. It�s an original cast, so there�s no one to really compare it to. No real complaints about the characters.
On that note, the voice acting is really nice too. There are the captions at the bottom, but there�s also realistic voice acting to the characters speaking. The main character (who is Japanese) has a broken English accent like one would find coming from the characters of The Last Samurai. The westerners have the western sounding accent and use words that would be found in that era.
The weapons. There are quite a few weapons from what I�ve seen so far. The kicker is, compared to other games where a lot of the weapons are useless, all of the weapons are useful and fun to use. They have their advantages and disadvantages, but all of them can be used and used well. They mainly consist of different katanas, using different styles. Length and blade width vary depending. Nice and realistic.
The actions in the game: deflecting, dodging, parrying bullets as well as just straight hacking down the enemies with your sword. Well done Spike, well done. Not only are doing these things fun, but it�s filled with the anime style blood sprays and the bullets can fly off and hit other people, or the same person who shot it in the case of a deflection.
The power attacks are simply amusing. Wide ranged and fancy, they�re a welcome addition to the arsenal.
Now, here�s the best part about the actions, grabbing things. You can grab a variety of objects, from crates to a downed enemy, and use them as a shield, or throw them. This is hilarious when you�re using another�s body to tank for you, while they�re spraying bullets all over the place from their own gun, which can hurt the enemies.
The difficulty varies. At this point, I�ve only played up to the 7th stage on Normal, and I�ve seen really easy to insanely difficult. There are so many factors to affect how difficult the same stage can be, that it�s hard to accurately judge the difficulty of the game in general.
The one downside. The 2 player, while fun, is not the greatest.
First, the 2nd player�s character starts off with a ridiculously low health. I�ve yet to find a way to increase that so far, but a lot of screenshots for the game show him with much more health than what I�m able to get. At this point, the 2nd player has to stay away from the 1st player, because a lot of health is lost from one slash taken.
The other problem is the auto targeting. Hanzaemon and I were playing this game, with myself being 1st player and Hanzaemon playing the 2nd player. He would be shooting an enemy, put 4 bullets into the enemy, then his character would turn around and shoot me for the last 2. (It�s a six shooter.) Not only does that deal damage, it interrupts my combos while trying to kill another enemy, causing me to take a lot more damage from that enemy when they spray me with bullets. It would be fine if the auto targeting worked well and he just shot me by accident, but this was constantly that it happened. Also, sometimes, he wouldn�t be able to target anyone else but me.
Apart from the 2 player problems, this game is a really good and something to invest into for hours of enjoyment.