Bushido Blade (PlayStation) review "How do you get the secret ending? WELL..."

Mid '90s. I knew two things: fighting games were getting samey, and katanas were cool. I had my fill of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Tekken, and I craved something new and bold. Publisher Square seemed to be wired into my brain, what with all my devout purchases. “Let's make a weapon-based fighting game without health meters. No fireballs, no insane uppercuts... Just 'hit the jugular and celebrate.'” And thus, Bushido Blade slid out of its sheath...

I was ecstatic. A fighting game where you can win a battle in a single blow? What witchery is this? The game boasted several fighters, each with their own levels of speed and maneuverability. For instance, the relatively petite Mikado moved swiftly, though her light weight left her more susceptible to power moves. On the flip side, Kannuki was a beefier dude with a slower gait, but he packed a punch. Best of all, the game showcased an array of weapons, with seemingly endless combinations on offer. Would Mikado with a rapier fare better than Utsusemi with a sledgehammer? Or maybe Tatsumi with a katana would kick ass. Such as setup begged for continuous play.

Here's the thing, though: playing didn't take long. Once you got its mechanics down, you breezed your way through battles, even on higher difficulties. Instead, you stepped into action with deadly weapons, bash and slash at the opposition, throw in some handy dodging and parrying, and attempt to score a killing blow. Sometimes, you hit your foe's arm or leg and debilitated them. With only one hand, blocking and parrying becomes nearly impossible; and injured lower quarters reduce the opposition to crouching and crawling, just waiting to take noggin-splitting hack to the dome.

Of course, this was assuming you lasted that long. As you honed your skills, fights ended more quickly, sometimes in mere seconds. Of course, the same still occurred to you if you were reckless or unlucky. In single-player mode, matches like these lacked the excitement that came with the genre. There were fewer desperate struggles or sweat-inducing exchanges of strikes. Instead, it was either, “Cool I pressed a button and the other dude wasn't blocking, and he's dead,” or, “Well, that's a crock of shit! I totally blocked that!”

There's a silver lining to this system, though...

My first experiences with this title happened over a weekend. I had a couple of friend stay the night, and we hooked my PlayStation up in the living room, then took turns hacking each other up, and we had a blast. We laughed, groaned, talked trash, made jokes, and experienced precisely the kind of thing we should have with a multiplayer mode on a fighting game. Best of all, since matches didn't long, the time between battles was absolutely bearable. I didn't have to wait for my two other friends to quit clowning around and trying to figure out moves. We all knew the move sets and rules, and things moved along smoothly.

And I would be lying if I didn't also occasionally have fun in single-player mode. One mode allows you to chop up assassins in an nearly endless cycle, with a brand new unlockable character with a freakin' gun as the prize for murdering 100 killers. Plus, I somewhat enjoyed the campaign at first, at least until it unexpectedly ended for no apparent reason...

Bushido is all about honor, and dishonorable tactics lock you out of a proper ending in campaign mode. In other words, if you hit an opponent before they're done prattling, throw dirt in someone's eyes, toss a sub-weapon, or hit a foe while they aren't properly engaged (e.g. if they're turned around, on the ground, climbing a ladder, etc.), you automatically lose and cannot continue the gauntlet past a certain point. Your only recourse is to learn to fight fairly. You'd think that would be all you'd need to do to advance, but something else springs up...

If you act honorably and defeat everyone, you eventually receive a cheesy non-ending. It's only after scouring the internet and reading the manual that you realized you must engage in a specific series of events. Firstly, you must follow the code of Bushido as laid out above. Secondly, while taking on your first campaign challenge, you must avoid killing them and jump down a nearby well. Yeah, you read that correctly. You've got to perform a random task that no one would guess to do in a fighting title. From there, you fight as you normally would without sustaining any damage at all, not counting dirt or snow to your eyes. Bear in mind that one of your next opponents uses a gun...

So basically, you eliminate half of what makes the concept enjoyable, but also walk a razor-thin line just to get a closing CG movie that you'll likely forget by the end of the month.

Oh, and entering the well isn't a simple task. Learning to run takes a moment, but feels clumsy. Jumping requires you to run forward, then press R1 and R2, and the leap distance takes some getting used to. In the time it takes you to reach the well and master jogging and hopping, your opponent could be bearing down on you. Of course, you could always clip their leg and slow them down, but then you risk potentially taking damage and screwing the whole thing up.

Ultimately, the whole ordeal proved more exhausting than it was worth. Granted, I appreciated Bushido Blade's unique core concept and mechanics, but its contemporaries didn't pack the same level of nonsense. It's not like controlling Hanzo in Samurai Showdown required me to display proper etiquette, run away from my first challenger, avoid all damage, pat my head and rub my belly, do the Hokey-Pokey, and engage in a bunch of other poorly-discussed junk just to catch a forgettable cutscene. Bushido was onto something, but it didn't quite figure it out.

Community review by JoeTheDestroyer (February 11, 2026) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.