Someone at ACQUIRE says they want a new entry in Way of the Samurai with every good unique mechanic from each entry. The monkey paw curls.

I think Way of the Samurai 4 takes some of the best things from various games in the series (dialogue interjections from 1, the various shops and the town atmosphere from 2, and the action interjections and customization of 3) and manages to expand on all of them, but then just kind of shits all over the rest of the game. To be frank, I don't like many of the changes to gameplay systems going from 3 to 4, they do nothing but sour the experience.

There was zero need to change the basics of how WotS combat worked. The durability changes are awful and it wasn't necessary to change a mechanic that had been enjoyed for the past three games. Vitality is an awful mechanic and just causes certain fights to last fucking forever, was anyone out there asking for the stamina system from 2 to come back and somehow be even more annoying? It's mind-boggling and makes me feel like a crazy person, does no one else out there have a problem with it? Like yeah WotS 3 was a bit easy when you figured out what you were doing but I also don't want to play an entry where enemy's counter out the ass for whopping amounts of damage and can regen like I'm playing fucking Yakuza Kiwami and don't have the correct Ultra Fuck You Heat Action. I understand the issue of enemy regen can be solved by reversing your weapon but why take a mechanic like that and give it such a use? So I can trade one time-consuming part of a fight for another time-consuming part of a fight?

I don't like the addition of weapon stances being wholly separate from weapons themselves because now, where is the identity with weapons? You might as well just find a few beat-sticks and then slap on whatever stance you prefer. It loses that feeling of finding a cool new weapon with a stance and movelist you like. The way you use items in this game makes WotS 1 with it's "kick floor food to open mouth" look elegant by comparision. Player health and healing definitely needed a nerf coming out of WotS 3, but I seriously don't think this was it. If quick-healing/menu-healing was kept but the amount of items you could carry was limited to 3 items per food, I think that would have been fine, there was no need for all this extra nonsense to nerf the player, it's tedious more than anything else.

WotS was always a series that made a lot of jokes with itself, but I think 4 just goes way too far. The cutscenes are often choreographed pretty poorly - probably on purpose - and character names are so blatantly "please laugh player" that I can't take the game seriously even when it wants me to. Like seriously, Jet Jenkins? Melinda Megamelons? Way of the Samurai was never this blatant, even with the Donadonas or various fart jokes.

A lot of this could be seen as me wanting the game to just be 3, and yeah I kind of do. If 4 just built on top of what 3 already established while expanding upon all of the elements it took from previous games and changed whatever the fuck they were doing with the writing, I'd probably like it just as much or better than 3. As it stands Way of the Samurai 4 accomplishes being the only game in the series I genuinely questioned if I'd power through and finish, and I am not someone that liked 2.