I read about this series and thought they sounded interesting, so I picked up the two PS2 games and gave the first a spin.
The basic idea is almost like a "choose your own adventure" book or the branching stories in a visual novel, except you kill people with swords. For example the game starts with you coming up to a bridge where a woman is being kidnapped. You can help her, help the kidnappers, or simply do nothing and avoid it entirely. Depending on what you choose will determine how people react to you and what scenes happen later on in the game. There are 6 different endings and each playthrough only takes an hour or two.
Theres a strange progression where each time you play you get to save your swords. As you fight and kill guys you can pick up their swords to use, up to 3 carried. At the end of the game those swords are kept in your sword locker and are available to choose for you to have at the start of your next play through. Theres something like 64 swords in the game and you'd have to really be into it to collect them all, but its interesting all the same. Only thing is, if you die or the sword breaks during the game you lose it.
The actual fighting gameplay is pretty good, despite some camera issues. Theres some timing aspects and a push/pull that throws your opponent off his footing to get hits in so you aren't just hitting a dude that constantly guards. Of course the enemy can use these moves against you as well, so watch out for that. It just feels good for sword fights. Swords have a defensive bar that fills when its blocker or when you are blocking, and it goes back down if you aren't. If this meter fills all the way one level of defense is removed from the sword (swords can max out at 5). If all the defense bars are gone then it breaks and you can't use that sword anymore. Theres a blacksmith that can fix it up...for money. If you've earned some. Or you can not pay him and fight him to the death. Wee!
Its an interesting game. Hard to recommend to just anyone but I'm glad I picked them up. There appears to be a spin off sort of game for PS2 called Samurai Western where you play a samurai in the old west. Then there is Way of the Samurai 3 that was released for PS3 or 360 that I'll probably grab at some point. There is even a WotS4 but I doubt its going to get a US release.
So...yeah. Its neat. Check out a video on youtube if you're interested. If you happen to see it cheap it might be worth grabbing. I cant really comment on how much the sequel improves on the first game since I haven't played it yet. Still working on the different endings for the first.
