Daisho: Survival of a Samurai Review

Fighting to Survive

Discover the dangerous and unpredictable life of a samurai. Daisho: Survival of a Samurai is an action RPG developed by Colossi Games (Gladiators: Survival in Rome). With a heavy focus on survival elements as well as crafting and base-building, you’ll play as the daughter of a samurai. Upon returning home after a long day’s journey, you find your family’s estate ablaze and under attack by brigands. With your father nowhere to be found and the only way forward guarded, you have no choice but to fight.

“Action” RPG

Daisho provides very little depth to its combat. You simply hold the attack button until either you or your enemies are dead. Occasionally, a strong enemy may telegraph an attack with a visible range for you to avoid, but outside of that, there’s nothing to spice things up. No blocking, no skills; simply, whoever attacks with the bigger power wins.

Weapon variety is equally scarce. Daisho currently has four weapon types: katanas, spears, slings, and staves. Among these weapons, there’s only a basic wooden version for each type plus a unique katana. That makes five total weapons in the entire game. Even though more options are expected in future updates, the current lack of weapon options only adds to the lackluster combat experience.

As you fight your way through the burning village, you’ll gain a few levels and, thus, some talent points. These can be spent on three different trees: either improving your gathering efficiency, stats such as health, speed and regeneration, or increasing your damage with different weapons. Many skills are unimplemented at the time of this review, although Colossi plans to add them in future updates.

The opening concludes after you see your father wounded by bandits, and you vow to take revenge against them. A new day begins as you sit in the ruins of your once glorious estate.

A Hard Day’s Work

You’re introduced to the gathering system during the intro, where you’ll need to mine stones, chop logs and fetch water. You may also notice that these actions require stamina. As it turns out, nearly every non-combat action uses stamina, from gathering to refining, even disassembling and repairing gear. The only way to regain stamina is to use a few daily refills or to simply wait. Unlike Colossi’s previous game, Gladiators: Survival in Rome, there are no stamina-restoring items.

After surveying the damage to your estate, you’re given a quick introduction to different buildings, such as your storage tent, repair table and dojo, where you can fight waves of enemies for dojo coins. After that, you’ll travel to different areas, gathering resources and rebuilding what you can. The more you progress through Daisho’s story, the more areas you’ll unlock. As you gain resources, you’ll be able to level up your estate. This unlocks different workbenches for refining as well as a merchant who will buy items for gold coins.

The Wrong Genre

Keeping the stamina system in mind, something became fairly clear after spending a fair bit of time gathering and fighting. Combat isn’t meant to be a spectacle or a display of skill in this game. It’s simply another form of harvesting resources, only using your HP as a limit instead of stamina. This is when the realization hit: Daisho isn’t an action RPG—it’s a base builder wearing the skin of an action RPG.

You’re not given any quests outside of the main story, just ways to track resources for crafting. The skill trees don’t unlock any new abilities. Instead, they only increase your numbers. Most of the time you spend out in the field gathering resources is just a more involved way of tapping buildings. As an action RPG, Daisho: Survival of a Samurai struggles to provide any real depth, but as a base builder, it presents many issues that only add tedium.

An example can be found not even an hour into the game. One of the early story quests asks you to increase the prosperity of your estate, a separate stat from your estate’s level, which is done by rebuilding the walls and houses within.

The problem is the resources that this requires. While things like logs and coins can be gathered easily, you’ll also need tools such as hammers and saws. The only way to get these tools is through shop tents within your estate. By spending gold coins, special dojo coins and some time, you’ll be given a random tool out of six options.

Selling the Solution

Unlike most base builders, your game progression is directly tied to random chance. You can stockpile as many resources as you want, but if you don’t get the right tools from the tents, you won’t be able to rebuild anything. Despite being used for repairing nearly everything, hammers and wood planes seem to be the rarest tools to get. The game will be all too happy to offer paid packs containing these tools, though.

Another struggle you’ll run into is storage. Your resource storage, weapon storage and personal backpack are all pitifully small, so you’ll be forced out into the field often. What makes it worse is that the only way to expand your storage is with paid currency.

Despite many features seemingly missing from Daisho, such as weapons, talents and quests, the game places monetization everywhere. The game will regularly offer packs with stacks of resources or tools that would take days to get. It has a VIP pack that improves your gear’s durability and efficiency, but it has to be bought every 10 days. There are also keys for a gacha gear crate, despite the game having extremely little gear variety. Daisho: Survival of a Samurai fully embraces being pay-to-win, and it’s disheartening to see.

This leaves Daisho in an awkward position. The foundation is there for a decent gameplay loop but there is little content to take advantage of it. Only time will tell if the game improves.