Samurai Shodown Director On Blood, Simplifying Controls, And More

In a recent event in Taiwan, Samurai Shodown director Nobuyuki Kuroki talked about blood effects, how the game is based on Samurai Shodown II, and more. [Thanks, Bahamut!]

Here are the highlights:

In the current demo version, we can see a lot of blood spurting out, but the blood eventually fades from the characters. Will there be a way to make it so that the blood stays?

Nobuyuki Kuroki, director: “Although we’ve made it so that a lot of blood will spill out from attacks, the game’s main focus isn’t on this, but rather the struggle of life and death between warriors, so we didn’t feel the need to add in much gore. For those who don’t like gore, you can turn off the blood completely.”

Although the gameplay is based on Samurai Shodown II, but this time the super move commands have all been standardized. What was the reasoning behind this change?

Kuroki: “Although for this Samurai Shodown we did have “eSports” in mind, since over 90% of the players will be playing at home and not in competitions, in order to have a more fun time playing, we decided to make some changes.”

How is the damage of the Fatal Flash and super moves calculated?

Kuroki: “The damage for these attacks vary depending on the user’s health. The less health you have, the more damage it does, becoming a comeback mechanic. As for how it’s calculated, we can’t reveal it right now.”

Why weren’t the CD Combos from the later Samurai Shodown titles added in?

Kuroki: “It’s not that we don’t like the system, but we wanted to change up the gameplay, so that the game plays more like the earlier ones where each hit does more damage.”

Why is the story set between V and 1?

Kuroki: “As you can see from the series history, each game takes place one year apart from each other. From 1786 to 1790, only 1787 was left, so we had to put it here. (laughs) Also, it’s because the story in this era is easier to arrange, plus we can connect it to the Amakusa incident in the original Samurai Shodown.”

Check out a video of director Kuroki against famed fighting game player ET below:

Samurai Shodown releases for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in Japan on June 27, 2019. It’ll release for arcades in Summer 2019, Switch and PC in Winter 2019. Check out a trailer for Nakoruru in our previous report here.