Digital Mind Games’ The Spirit of the Samurai feels like it started as a cool idea unique from everything else. A side-scrolling action title from the perspective of a samurai, but in 2D stop-motion? It sounds cool, and to the developer’s credit, this unorthodox art style can make for some beautiful shots and moments. Additional ideas were then seemingly tossed in to stand out from the crowd. Playing as a kitten who has to platform and sneak past horrifying monsters? Check. Playing as a kodama and fighting at a smaller scale with a sword? Also, check, for some reason.

As bizarre as the overall mixture seems, The Spirit of the Samurai fails to execute the fundamentals of its combat and exploration. Even the premise, which starts out promising, quickly devolves into a dull ride.

Touted as inspired by Japanese mythology, the story is about Takeshi, a samurai who’s visited in his dreams by a mysterious Kitsune. The former’s village has been prepping for Shuten-doij and his army, but the latter warns they’re on their way. Before Takeshi sets out to warn the villagers, he’s told that his kitten, Chisai, will also play a part. Blatant foreshadowing aside, things are seemingly quiet all around – to the extent that his leader doesn’t even hear about his dream, insisting on training first.

"Consistency in a combat system like this is important, and The Spirit of the Samurai doesn’t offer that. It can occasionally flow in one-on-one battles, providing glimpses of a better game, but they’re few and far between."

However, lo and behold, the attack occurs, and the village quickly falls. Fallen soldiers are converted into the undead by malicious creatures. It’s now on Takeshi to try and salvage the situation, whether it’s helping other villagers or rescuing his kitten so that it can…inexplicably join him in combat. To say that The Spirit of the Samurai doesn’t sport the most tout narrative would be an understatement, even if the writing isn’t completely horrible. The plot doesn’t just devolve into contrived twists – it fails to build any of its characters or make you empathize with them. Even Chisai, an adorable kitten you should care about by default, is kind of just along for the ride.

The gameplay should ideally pick up the slack, and The Spirit of the Samurai’s combat sounds promising on paper. You can unleash different attacks by pressing the right stick in different directions and customize combos accordingly. Some attacks may be slower but deal more damage, while others are quick yet lacking the same oomph. Attacks also change depending on if you’re guarding or running, with each action consuming some of your stamina bar. Of course, you also have a default attack button, which can be customized. As you level up or explore the environment, you learn new attacks, some specific to certain directions.

Theoretically, finding the right balance of quick and heavy attacks should be the play, but it all falls apart quickly. On top of guarding, you can parry, and dodge roll, the latter ideal for getting behind enemies. You can’t change sides when blocking, but you can unleash strikes in the opposite direction to switch. Movement feels awkward, especially when crouching and standing up, but you slowly begin to piece things together. Then you face odd timings on the dodge roll, parries coming out despite not even pressing the button and trying to fend off foes from multiple directions, and it’s all for nought.

Key among the combat issues is that hitboxes seem made up, and the points don’t matter. Unleash a stylish twirl into a heavy slash on an enemy, and even if it looks like they’re out of range, they’ll suddenly magnetize into it and die. On other occasions, hits from you and the enemy will pass right through with neither taking damage. Consistency in a combat system like this is important, and The Spirit of the Samurai doesn’t offer that. It can occasionally flow in one-on-one battles, providing glimpses of a better game, but they’re few and far between.

"The stop-motion visuals may well be the only highlight of the experience, presenting some vicious-looking horrors throughout. Even the effects and certain sights, like piles of corpses, look impressive."

If that weren’t enough, the movement feels especially horrendous when platforming as Takeshi. One section features multiple traps that can insta-kill, including pits with spikes. Even if it looks like you made the jump, you’ll still seemingly fall into the trap and die. The stiff clambering and climbing up and down ladders also feel terrible.

Item collection is another annoyance. You also have the shrines and offerings, where providing the latter earns essence for purchasing healing items and other supplies like arrows, lockpicks, and whatnot. However, you can build a tidy collection due to the amount of stuff that drops. Just watch the animation each time and repeat until tedium sets in, which is pretty much immediate.

The fact that some items are invisible and require madly tapping the interact button to pick them up doesn’t help. Also, as a side note: Interacting with shrines, where you also spend points to level up stats, doesn’t save your game, but checkpoints do. If you spend time levelling up and offering things for essence to purchase items, then die, prepare to do it all over again because you didn’t think to hit that shrine.

The sections with Chisai and Kodama offer some variety, though they’re nowhere near as extensive as Takeshi’s. You’re not switching between all three so much as playing Takeshi for most of the story and taking breaks to control the others. It makes some sense with all the work that went into the combo system, yet feels somewhat misleading. And while Chisai is short in stature, his movement still feels as unwieldy as Takeshi.

The stop-motion visuals may well be the only highlight of the experience, presenting some vicious-looking horrors throughout. Even the effects and certain sights, like piles of corpses, look impressive. The sad part is that it seemingly suffers from some film grain effect that ruins the overall image quality. In some parts, the lighting also comes across as super-exposed and looks awful. However, the worst part is the cutscene quality, seemingly rendered at a lower resolution than everything else. Since cutscenes are interspersed throughout, sometimes unnecessarily, it’s super jarring.

"Between unresponsive controls, visual issues, tedious item collecting, random combat, awkward movement, and an underwhelming narrative, there are very few redeeming qualities."

Alongside the odd combat interactions and iffy platforming, I also ran into a baffling glitch which broke Takeshi’s movement. Sprinting wouldn’t move him forward, but if I jumped suddenly, he would slide while standing still at impressive speeds. It was bizarre to witness but things cleared up after the next cutscene. I didn’t run into performance issues, thankfully, but others haven’t been so lucky.

I wanted to give The Spirit of the Samurai a fair shake, mostly due to its visuals but because three unlikely allies teaming up to fight a nigh-unstoppable army seemed appealing. Between unresponsive controls, visual issues, tedious item collecting, random combat, awkward movement, and an underwhelming narrative, there are very few redeeming qualities. If you’re set on picking it up, even on a discount, you might want to wait for patches and quality-of-life improvements first. Even then, given the short runtime, it’s almost impossible to recommend.

This game was reviewed on PC.