Retro inspired games are pretty common these days, 8-bit visuals are as frequent as realistic, but while most games stick to a gameplay style that is heavily inspired by the past, there are few that attempt something completely out there and that is what Katana Zero has done, but has it paid off?

The story of Katana Zero has you taking on the roll of an unnamed assassin, who later in the game is given a wide assortment of names, but none are ever confirmed. What starts out as a mission to rescue a prisoner, quickly steers into an entirely different direction, with the mission ending quite badly. Rather than be taken down a peg by a superior, the mysterious bathrobe wearing assassin goes to therapy, where he can explain things and ask questions. Right off the bat, the therapist begins to ask about dreams that have occurred, something that put me on edge right away, as even though I admitted to the dreams, as you can choose your response, I never mentioned content, but the therapist somehow knew. However, before any progress could be made, I demanded my medicine and then after getting it, was given my next assignment.

That there is the basic formula for the game, mission then debrief, before looping back through and it works really well and honestly is quite unique, as I can’t think of any other game that requires you to go to therapy after a mission. Between sessions and therapy, you return to your apartment, which has a pair of drug using, loud music listening folks on one side and a little girl and her mysterious father on the other, the little girl visits quite often, with sometimes hilarious results. While you can talk with her, the conversations always tend to steer towards the next step to move forward and while there are very few conversations whilst in missions, they do happen. Sadly I got frustrated with the system more often than not, there are times when the game lets you skip over things, like when you demand your medicine, but other times it gives you the illusion of allowing it, only for nothing to progress until you select the right option.

The core gameplay acts much the same way, there being an ideal way of progressing through each of the stages, but there are of course other ways to progress. Thankfully, the games way of having you play the stages is quite clever, each stage is done in two steps, the first is the planning, in which you move around, slice, dash and more and once you clear the stage, you get to watch it again on the security camera. The reason why this works is because when you get hit, shot, pushed into lasers and die in various other manners, the game rewinds, giving you another chance to complete the stage. What I liked about that, is if you are right at the start and die, it takes a moment to get you ready to go again, however if you are right near the end of a stage, you can press another button to skip the rewind, getting you back into the action sooner.

Speaking of the action, you only have a few skills, two of them are very, very helpful though, so it makes you seem a little overpowered at times, thankfully the game compensates by giving you 1 hp, a single hit or punch and you are done. You can dash around easily enough, you have the option to swing your sword and pick things up, but it is combining all that, with the time mechanics that make this even better.  As you run towards any enemy with a gun, when they shoot, if by some miracle you have the reflexes of spider-man, you can swing your sword and deflect the bullet back to them, for those like me, you can pull the left trigger and slow down time, giving you a much larger window in which to hit the bullet back. It is important to note that the game slows everything down, including you, you are not immune to the slowdown effect, your reflexes just end up being faster, which can also work against you. There are some enemies that have shotguns, which still allow you to hit the bullets back, you can only hit a single thing, before you sword must be returned to your side, meaning that if there is a second bullet coming right behind the first, you will get shot and have to restart. Some enemies have shields or can parry your attack, which means the same, your sword will return to your side, leaving you open to a counter attack, to get around these annoying moments, you can instead dodge attacks, rolling around. Combining all these moves, helps make you feel like a real samurai and when you die, the cause is usually self-created, that being said, there are times when the game gets odd.

When you restart a stage, most of the enemies will respawn into their same locations, occasionally though, they will be in different spots, or even move in a new direction. This can really mess up plans you have been perfecting, I know it did mine, so when you get a run-down pat, only for an enemy with a shotgun to be in a different spot, it can really feel frustrating. The other annoying problem, stems from the way that the game progresses overall, yes there are times when you feel like you are making progress, only for an interlude to happen, Comedy and Tragedy are some of those times, which removes all flow you have built it, it is not so much of applying breaks, but more of throwing an anchor overboard. Not that it was an issue for me, but the game also gives you a timer on each stage, which just forces you to get through the stage before it runs out, I did let it go on one stage and you just have to restart, but keeping moving is something you should do regardless.

If there is one aspect of the game that is easy to enjoy, it is the visuals, for the most part, when they work, they are on point, from the games neon inspired scenes from sci-fi 80’s movies, to the pixel covered locations such as slaughterhouses and nightclubs, they all come together to create something wicked. The character animations have a lot more pixels than a standard 16-bit style, but they still manage to maintain that look, which helps keep the blood and gore toned down a fair bit, even in later stages. Each main character has a signature look, that is easy to understand in shadow, so knowing who is who, is easy to grasp, however all that is destroyed by the time skipping effect the game uses a lot. As you are talking with someone, running through stages and generally just attempting to move, the game will throw up some skipping frames effects, which look nice, but as they happen so often and are quite exuberant in how they are shown, the effect made me look away while they were happening. On a nicer note, the games audio is a mix of dance style beats and orchestral and somehow it works, combined with the character specific beeps and blurps, the game ends up with a distinctive audio style, one that complements the visuals.

Katana Zero is a game that is easy to recommend to anyone who wants to experience not only a game that feels built for speed running, but also because the challenge it offers builds up slowly. There are some issues, mostly with the lack of choice but that stems from the fact that the game teases you with that illusion, and while there is no real pay off to the story, just some teases of what might come, it is still a fun ride and one with taking.

Review code provided by Devolver Digital