Samurai Academy: Paws of Fury

Samurai Academy: Paws of Fury continues the story from the animated film Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (2022). Once again, you take on the role of Hank, a scruffy daydreamer of a dog who finds himself in a world full of cats. Just when Hank and his friend, the sensei cat Jimbo, thought the battle (from the film) was over, the Shogun returns and wants to take over the two friends' village, and several other villages too.

Samurai Academy: Paws of Fury is divided into three quite different gameplay parts. First, there is a 3D semi-open-world platform adventure part, where you explore a small handful of villages and the surrounding area while participating in various mini-games, solving small tasks for the residents, collecting coins, buying silly hats and glasses for your characters, etc. This is where you will spend most of your time, for better or worse - I will return to that in a moment.

Then there are the Samurai Trials, which are 2.5D platform sequences where you race Jimbo on an obstacle course. The course is filled with traps, obstacles, ledges, and platforms that disappear if your opponent jumps on them first, and here, the goal is to survive and cross the finish line first. Finally, there are Village Raids, which are 15 tower defence courses where you have to defend the villages' temples against hordes of enemy ninjas and samurai. Here, you run around throwing classic western saloon pianos and explosive barrels at the heads of your enemies to prevent them from reaching the village temple.

On paper, it sounds like a pretty fun mix, but in reality, it isn't, as at least two of the three game types have problems. The biggest problem, which was about to turn me off completely, was some of the tasks you were given in the semi-open village areas. Many times, you are told to talk to a certain character, and then you can see on the map where that character is located, which is nice and easy for the younger players that this game is also aimed at. Other times, however, I was told to find three fox tails and these were not shown on the map, so I spent about two hours combing through the village to find the damn fox tails. Either it was a bug or it's just really poor gameplay design. Other times, the game doesn't tell you what to do to move on, so you are left completely on your own at times.

Samurai Trials is frustrating in another way. As mentioned, you race against the sensei cat Jimbo, and the frustrating thing is that if you make the slightest mistake and fall down once or twice, you have to start over, because Jimbo doesn't make mistakes. Of course, it's a little better if you play in co-op, where each player controls their own character, but if you play alone, this part can be quite exhausting.

Finally, there are Village Raids, the tower defence part, which is actually the part that works best, and these parts are actually quite fun to play, even though the difficulty level here can be quite high.

The graphics in Samurai Academy: Paws of Fury are simple, as you would expect from a game of this type. You can play with a friend in co-op mode, where you help each other through the game, which is probably a good thing, especially if you are playing with one of the younger members of the family, as it can all seem a bit unbalanced, since the difficulty level can vary quite a lot.

Fortunately, Samurai Academy: Paws of Fury is not a lazy game adaptation of a three-year-old animated film, but unfortunately, the result is a little too messy, and some unfortunate choices have been made regarding the gameplay. There is good variety, thanks to the three distinct gameplay mechanics, but it can only be recommended to fans of the Paws of Fury film, and even then, only because the game is sold at a very reasonable price.