Way of the Samurai 3

There is a plethora of games that I’ve been interested in playing, but have remained on the back burner for various reasons. The Way of the Samurai series falls into the category of “what the hell even is this game?” and always kind of came off as a bit intimidating to me for some reason. I bought WotS 3 and 4 on Steam a few years ago because they were both on the list of potential titles to cover on my now long dead podcast, but we never got around to covering either of the games before the pod completely fizzled out. Fast forward to the present day and I suddenly had to urge to look for some of the most niche titles in my Steam library and Way of the Samurai 3 immediately caught my eye. I loaded it up on my Steam Deck, checked to see if there was anything I needed to do to get the game running (shout out to ProtonDB for making the life of every Steam Deck owner easier) and dove head first into the unknown.

[The soundtrack has a traditional Japanese sound mixed with something you'd hear in a Spaghetti Western]

Developed by Acquire and originally released in 2009, I would describe Way of the Samurai 3 as a more jankier and open ended Like A Dragon/Yakuza. Although Way of the Samurai is hardly as straightforward and the combat isn’t nearly as refined, both series have a mixture of silliness and grounded storytelling that makes them feel like long lost cousins. Here you play as a Nameless Samurai and take refuge in a local village after getting caught in the crosshairs of two factions fighting for power. The game starts off with the Nameless wandering off a battlefield in a daze and two bystanders approach asking if he needs any help. If you let the conversation continue you are given three dialogue options to choose from, two lead to them taking you to the local village and the third has them leave you to fend for yourself. This is all pretty standard stuff, but there is a fourth option that you are given at the start of the cutscene that can escalate things even further. As the two bystanders approach you a prompt on the bottom left screen appears that indicates pressing L1 will perform an action, which results in Nameless drawing his sword in a threatening manner. This will just cause the two men to quickly run away before you get the chance to do them any real harm, but in other situations it could greatly affect the way the story progresses.

[Attacking the wrong person could result in a quick demise]

You aren’t given much to go on outside the intro monologue at the start of the game, but talking with the village elder fills you in a bit more on the current situation. From there you’re pretty much on your own and aren’t given any real direction on what to do other than “don’t cause trouble”, that is if you even talk to the village elder and don’t decide to just attack him. How you progress can be kind of confusing at first, making the game feel very aimless and is what had me scratching my head the most. There is an NPC that kind of acts as a tutorial guide, but the information provided is rather sparse and that’s assuming you even talk to her. To quickly summarize, the world map is broken up into different sections and every area is loosely connected to each other. On the map you will occasionally see exclamation marks called “Inklings”, which indicate that there is a story event in an area that can be triggered. There can be different Inklings in different areas depending on the time of day and they don’t have time limits, letting you cycle through the time day at your house to see what events are available without having to worry about any of them expiring.

[Looking at the map for the locations of Inklings is key if you want to progress]

This is where trial and error comes in. Different events can lead to different outcomes depending on the decisions you make. For example, there was one Inkling where I was recruited into one of the two rival factions and went on to make some very poor decisions that caused everyone from men, women and children to attack me on sight which resulted in my untimely demise. That’s another thing about Way of the Samurai 3, you will be dying a lot at first and that’s because the game is designed to be replayed multiple times. All of your items, money, skills and weapons are carried over to your next playthrough, so you can dick around as much as you want and not worry about losing all of your character's progress. A full playthrough doesn’t take very long either once you get a grasp of how the game works, so starting over isn’t really as bad as it sounds. There are a total of 22 unique endings, with some being easier to get than others, so there’s a ton of experimentation that can be done with all the different Inklings that could lead to wildly different outcomes.

[You can level up weapons and learn new skills in combat]

As of writing this I’ve only done a single full playthrough, with my first ending being a pretty bleak one where I completely failed at being a true Samurai. No doubt there are many story events I missed as well as game mechanics that I’ve yet to figure out (such as dual wielding weapons, weapon customization and companions), but I just felt like doing a quick write up about a dope little game I’ve rarely heard anyone talk about. I’ve had a genuinely good time with Way of the Samurai 3 so far and I’m looking forward to seeing what other endings I can unlock, as well as playing through the other entries in the series. So I don’t know man, check the game out if you’re looking for a unique experience that probably flew under most people's radar and let me know what you think.