Game review: Katana Zero

Katana Zero seems like it was hyped up fairly heavily prior to its release, although that might just be because I kept seeing their ads while I was watching the last Games Done Quick marathon. That advertising certainly did its job, but it also means I had somewhat higher expectations from the start.

This game certainly lived up to the high expectations I had for it, though. I do enjoy it quite a bit when I buy a game based on its strength in one area and then discover that there's a lot more to it than that - and Katana Zero turned out to be not just an excellent mix of an action game and a puzzle but also had an wonderfully convoluted story that forced me to think about what I was saying and why.

About the most I can say without worrying about spoilers is that this game rewards the player for thinking carefully about what they're saying and who they're saying it to. Just about everyone has their own secrets and their own plots, and it takes some carefully chosen words to ferret out as much detail as possible. I will also note that the way the game handled conversations was quite innovative - while this one isn't the first game I've seen that gives the player a limited amount of time to choose a conversation option, I don't recall having run across one that gives me a chance to actually interrupt the person I'm talking to! It's not there just to allow the speedrunners to skip conversations, either; there are moments where not letting the other person get a word out is better than the alternative.

The "to be continued" tag didn't annoy me quite as much as it usually does, either. It did still annoy me, of course, since there is a lot that went unresolved, but the complexity of the story made it feel a bit more like this one was its own complete section of a larger narrative, rather than the typical half-a-story followed by a sequel hook. I might be being a bit too generous there (possibly because I feel like there's more of the story I still need to dig through), but still.

Interestingly, given that the action was one of the things that drew me to this game, my enjoyment of that part started to wane fairly quickly. You can't take a hit and survive, so combat in the late game becomes very short and lethal (whether in your favor or not) very quickly as more gun-wielding enemies show up. While I'm sure there are plenty of action game fans that would enjoy the challenge, I mostly just found it tiresome to repeat the same section half a dozen times trying to get exactly the right combo off. Still doable, of course, and some of the replays of those fights were quite awesome, but I started to focus more on puzzling out the right sequence of actions rather than blindly hacking and slashing.

So while I can, as usual, see some reasons why people might not like this game (convoluted plot, difficult action/puzzle sequences), I enjoyed it quite a bit, and highly recommend it.