The Spirit of the Samurai is a samurai action game developed by Digital Mind Games which nails its particularly eye-catching animation style while not being all that fun as a game. Designed to emulate jerky practical stop-motion animation used in many classic films such as Jason and the Argonauts, Robocop and The Nightmare Before Christmas, it achieves it quite spectacularly, while also demonstrating how such a style becomes something of a hindrance when you are trying to actually control a character animated in that style as opposed to simply watching them.

The Spirit of the Samurai’s plot is relatively simple; taking place hundreds of years in the past, you play as samurai warrior Takeshi, who finds himself the sole survivor of an attack by the undead hordes of the demon warlord Shuten-dōji. Accompanied by his pet kitten Chisai and a mysterious Kitsune spirit, Takeshi must summon all of his courage and skill to defeat Shuten-dōji and save the world of the living from the army of demons.

The narrative isn’t much to write home about, but it does the trick in terms of motivating the action. What salvages it is the presentation and atmosphere; enemies look suitably grotesque, whether they are the animated corpses of samurai warriors or monstrous Oni. The stiff stop-motion animation works in the game’s favour and evokes the terrifying practical effects of pre-CGI horror movies. The end result gives the action a chillingly tangible sensation, even if in reality the whole thing is still digitally animated. One towering late-game boss was a particular highlight in terms of spectacle.

I do wish some of the pre-rendered cutscenes that play when you die in some sections were skippable; they certainly grew tiresome after a few attempts, and the ones that play during the brief stealth sections featuring the small kitten Chisai were rather disturbing in how visceral they were. I know the game is intended for a mature audience, but nobody wants to watch a kitten be mauled by a giant monster over and over. Maybe the developers are dog people.

Unfortunately, as impressive as the game’s visuals and animation are, The Spirit of the Samurai is a video game and it is the gameplay where things start to fall apart somewhat. The Spirit of the Samurai is essentially a very linear hack-and-slash experience with occasional platforming and stealth sections. With a controller, you move with the left analogue stick and attack with the right analogue stick, and you can execute different attack combos depending on what direction you attack. As you progress through the game you unlock new attack types and can customise your attack chains in the pause menu, which was at least hypothetically an interesting concept, if the attacks felt substantially different or had unique properties.

The stiff controls and difficult-to-read environments also impact many of the stealth and platforming sections, which are filled with annoying insta-kill traps that you would need clairvoyance to predict. Gamers like to make fun of the yellow paint slathered across titles like the recent Resident Evil remakes to highlight interactable objects. As mocked as that convention is, however, at least it doesn’t leave the player jumping into the void and hoping that that dark patch is a handhold they can grab and not just an inconveniently placed shadow.

As Takeshi takes down foes, he gains experience and can acquire healing items and consumable ranged weapons, like arrows and kunai. When he levels up the player can spend tokens on increasing his stats, although it was a bit unclear what those stats did. While I could piece together what “Resistance” and “Bow” referred to, it was less obvious what impact “Strength” and “Dexterity” had and whether increasing those stats actually did anything for my attack power or not. The fact that checkpoints were often placed shortly before level up shrines was a bit annoying, making the player re-spend their tokens every time they respawn and wasting a lot of time. Why the game couldn’t have set checkpoints at the shrines themselves is a mystery.

Kodama plays almost identically to Takeshi in terms of combat, however he can acquire spirit energy from foes to recover health instead of using health potions. In lieu of arrows and kunai, Kodama can fire spirit blasts at foes as his ranged weapon of choice. It just felt a bit strange for 40% of the game to feature entirely different healing and ranged weapon mechanics to the rest of the runtime if it otherwise wasn’t going to mix up anything else regarding the gameplay.