The best way I can introduce Samurai Gunn 2 is through numbers. I have introduced Samurai Gunn 2, self-described as a “high-flying, one-hit-kill platform fighter for two to four players.”, to six people that I know.
I introduced the game to all of them across three different instances; a party, a holiday get-together, and a random hang-out, none of which were specifically intended to play the game.
Of those 6 people, 100% of them, who had not even intended to play the game the night(s) they were first shown it, played for 3 hours or more and then immediately purchased the game following that session.
That is how unbelievably good this video game is.
Samurai Gunn 2, if I were to describe it, is “Lightning in a Bottle: the Video Game”. I mean that in two ways. In the first way, I mean that in the traditional sense; this is an incredibly miraculous video game to exist, and the creation of something so creatively and mechanically brilliant is akin to catching lightning in a bottle.
In the second way, I mean this in the sense that if you were to watch a bolt of lightning, crackling with electrifying energy, as it bounces, ricochets, and redirects the chaotic and majestic whirlwind of itself around a glass bottle would be a comparable experience to playing a game of Samurai Gunn 2.
He killed his opponent twice... with the same bullet 🤯
by u/Scrambler_Adam in samuraigunn
Samurai Gunn 2 arms you with a sword, a gun with three bullets, a dodge roll, a passive ability, and a basic suite of platforming mechanics, and asks you only to be the last man standing. Yet there is no other platform fighter that is as simple to learn, and impossibly satisfying to master.
This deceptive level of simplicity oozes out of every corner of this game. It’s 16-Bit character models, which occupy approximately one inch on your monitor in a handful of pixels, are each abound with life and energy.
Clear and simple.
Its soundscape isn’t muddled with a frenzy of voice lines, sound effects, and game announcements, but is rather a harmonious blend of slices, dices, dashes, and gunshots, punctuated with a beat-heavy soundtrack of taiko drums and shamisens that align with the beating of your heart.
Mechanically, the game’s three-button-and-a-joystick control scheme doesn’t seem as though it offers much room for creativity or mastery, but a curated selection of subtly nuanced class design and the way all of it interacts reveals a far deeper fighting experience than you realize.
Otomo’s fire-creating bullets become an exercise in deadly restraint and discipline. Hayao’s wolf speed demands your absolute focus and attention. Isao’s dodge is replaced with the ability to swap places with a log and reframes your brain from considering when to execute a FromSoftware dodge to thinking with Portals.
The Perfect Log Swap
by u/Scrambler_Adam in samuraigunn
All of this alongside a speed that elevates the entire experience from great to masterful. All of this simplicity was carefully designed to complement and allow for a speed of play that would be fundamentally impossible for other games to match.
Colliding swords can send players flying to other side of the stage in a blur of smoke and color before they loop back into the fray, firing off bullets in the air before dashing to the ground and unleashing a second attack, all in a matter of a few seconds.
And somehow, it is almost never too overwhelming. It’s never uncontrollable, it never feels too difficult to follow or too fast to keep up with. Its speed and design are dialed into such a perfect level that it pushes up against the limits of how fast the mind can keep up with something before melting
Incredible Double-Deflected Double-Kill!!
by u/Scrambler_Adam in samuraigunn
To best conclude a discussion of Samurai Gunn 2 is to also conclude with numbers.
This unmatched banger of a video game offers, for $15, 12 characters, 19 stages, 2 versus modes, a Co-op/Single-Player Campaign with over 30 levels across 2 worlds, for two to four players, and the promise to almost double this amount of content by the time it hits 1.0, has almost no attention on it.
One of the upcoming Minibosses for its campaign
One of the most widely used rules of thumb to estimate the sales of a game is through is by multiplying the number of reviews it has on Steam by about 30. Samurai Gunn 2 has a reported 548 reviews (95% of which are Positive, by the way). This comes out to estimated sales of 16440 units.
That is, for how amazing this video game is, an astonishingly low number. One cemented by an all-time highest concurrent player count of 91.
But none of that will matter if you get into this game now, which I believe has the potential to explode to the point of completely dwarfing those stats beyond memory. At that point, all that will matter is that you will be counted amongst the first 1% of players to experience an all-time platform fighter classic.
You can, and absolutely should, purchase Samurai Gunn 2 here.
