

You can help or hinder the people you meet, side with the goodies, join the local gang, or just cause mischief until your time is up - either after ten days, when you'll see one of the game's endings, or sooner, should you happen to die beforehand for whatever reason. The idea is that you - a wandering ronin with no particular place to go or task to perform - have stumbled into the feudal Japanese town of Amahara, where you will spend ten days in whatever manner you see fit. That's The WayĮxcept, in the case of Acquire's latest - distributed by Capcom over here - the trade-off for the tedium of having to start over each time is meant to be the element of choice. Assuming you'll accept "about playing something else" as a substitute for "half an hour ahead". Remember the days when, every time you fired up your favourite game, you had to start right from the beginning? Remember that same, tired, first handful of levels that you'd seen hundreds of times before? Remember the peaks and troughs along the way to the new stuff? Remember the inevitability of dying at least once or twice performing a really simple task, because your mind was already thinking half an hour ahead? That's roughly what it's like to play Way of the Samurai 2 beyond your first go.
