Review: Samurai Bloodshow (iOS)

Samurai Bloodshow is the latest Sega published iOS game and one of the first, that isn’t connected to any major Sega franchise from the past. In the midst of the many ports Sega did for the platform, it certainly sticks out, but is it worth your time and money? Hit the jump to find out!

Samurai Bloodshows main gameplay concept is quite easy to explain: It takes the basic format of Plants versus Zombies and adds a distinct Trading Card game flavor to it. Every Mission has 10 waves of attacking Samurais and your job is to use your units in such a way, that they can’t reach your general. You can only hold five cards at a time and you need to spend gold to draw new ones. You get one piece of gold every few seconds, so your resources are limited and you have to play strategically. Every Card symbolizes a unit, but it is your choice if you use the card to deploy a new unit or level up and thus heal an existing one. A level 1 Samurais is able to kill an enemy Samurai of the same level, but will die in the process. A level 2 samurai has way less problems with that.

There are many different units and after six hours of playing the game, I still haven’t seen all of them. The missions have five different difficulty settings and on each setting, you unlock different cards or features, like being able to create a larger deck. Since the difficulty is climbing fast, it’s a good thing that you get to pick a new card to add to your deck even if you failed at a mission, since this gives you new possibilities to modify your deck. The game lets you create new decks, so you can change tactics quickly in between missions.

The graphics are nothing too spectacular, but they are stylish and give you a great overview over the battlefield. As soon as you want to place a card, you can see the grid and how far the reach of your unit is. It’s even possible to speed the game up, which is great if your defense is ready for anything and you don’t want to wait for too long. The music however can get quite annoying after some time and my guess is you’re going to turn it off quite quickly, as the same two or three songs get old very quickly.

There is definitey enough variation here: There are plenty of missions in the campaign, an online mode and various terrains that change up the gameplay to a certain extend. It’s definitely enough to justify the price point of the game and there is the possibility to buy cards with real money, if you really want to. I’m 25% into the main campaign and I haven’t seen a reason yet to buy cards, so it seems to be an entirely optional feature.

Overall, the game is really fun to play, addictive and has a certain sense of style. Controls work great, which is crucial for an iOS title and the concept is easy to understand, but hard to master, which is perfect. While the music doesn’t quite hold up and there are some difficulty bumps, it’s one of the best titles on the marketplace and a great addition to Sega’s iOS library.

Final Score: B+