Way Of The Samurai 4 Looks Serious, But Can Get Pretty Wacky

If you only saw that Way of the Samurai 4 trailer you might think this a historic action game. The plot follows a lone samurai living in a port city after ships carrying foreigners arrived in Japan. You have to decide whether to side with the Shogunate, Isolationist villagers or the Europeans in Way of the Samurai 4.

Since Way of the Samurai 4 is a sandbox style game you can tangent from the main story and flirt with women to earn money or tiptoe through a rival samurai’s house for a midnight make out session. Whatever you do, steer clear from the torture room. The Way of the Samurai titles are also known for having tongue-in-cheek options during dialogue trees and I’m looking forward to seeing how Xseed localized Acquire’s game.

Way of the Samurai 4 also has two neat gameplay systems – Proof of Life acts like New Game+ by carrying your actions from one run through the game into the next and there’s a Demon’s Souls style system where you can upload your samurai (preferably dressed in cardboard armor) as an AI-controlled assassin in another player’s game.

Way of the Samurai 4 will be released as a PlayStation 3 digital download in North America this summer.