Posted on: June 12, 2020
wilkan
Verified ownerGames: 509 Reviews: 157
Fun to Watch, Nightmarish to Play
NOT RECOMMENDED for anyone new to the series. You have better options nowadays. Games down to being able to pick them up and have fun with without preparation. "Samsho" 5 Special fails at all aspects of that. 1. You need to find it and people to play with it (the CPU is an input-reading omni-blocker even on the lowest difficulty). 2. The game is very difficult to handle for many reasons. Basic moves do almost zero damage even when not blocked and some moves require diagonal direction inputs, of which the arcade cabinet maybe could input, though is excruciatingly difficult to intentionally produce with a keyboard w/ the complete absence of diagonal direction keymapping. If your chosen character has a lot of key moves with diagonal inputs, you are screwed. 3. There are a lot of quirks in the game mechanics and also with every character. Even the damage calculations are weird, in that sometimes you can hit a dude all day and sometimes you lose 80 % health after Haohmaru hit you two times. There is a counter damage bonus, though it does not explain everything. Also some characters simply do astronomical damage. E.g. most characters with swords. The special mention goes to the gigantic Kusaregedo, who's jump kick sprite and hitbox fill almost half the screen. That dude and traditional sword characters seem to populate the top of the tier lists. Some characters are clearly worse than others. Most people have no patience for learning fighting games. I like this genre, though even to me it is confusing, overly complex and stiff. It's Street Fighter in the way that if the move you are doing is not exactly what is most useful in the given situation, you are going to lose a lot of life because of it. It is a very punishing and hard game, even on difficulty 1. For comparison, Soul Calibur is easy, rewarding and fun, mostly because of simpler control and move schemes. Complexity and niche-overspecialization killed the fighting games at the time. SS5 demos why and how.
Is this helpful to you?
