Designed by Per Sundin. Published by Frozen Maze Games. Player Count 2-8.
Before I received the game I was so excited to play Bushido Duels. I love Japanese themes in games having lived in Japan for roughly 3 and a half years myself. I also have a lot of love for Samurai Animes (ask me about Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai Champloo if you want to know more) and so the theming really stood out to me and got me excited. I was ready to chop some peeps up with my Hatori Hanzo blade and couldn't wait to get my old Kimono out of the wardrobe (think of Narnia here as I don't own a Kimono really but, if I had a magic wardrobe I would definitely have one in there. Most probably next to my magic leather pants).
As can be seen, the art by Emily Ryan is phenomenal. Each character looks spectacular and their image is repeated on each of their cards. There are 8 characters in the box which is a lot of replayability for such a small card game. They are further improved by the fact that each of the characters has their own special abilities, and who doesn't love asymmetrical games???
The basics of the game are that each player plays a card down on the table face down and then they reveal at the same time. You use the battle chart to decide who is the attacker and who is the defender. The white number on your card is your speed, the lower the number is the better, and the black number is your strength, the higher this is the better. Fast moves do less damage but are harder to defend against and inversely slow moves do more damage but are easier to defend against.
Like an Iaido master who tries to block a sideways slash from a razor-sharp katana but ends up catching a heavy chop from above, not all is as it seems with Bushido Duels. The problems come when you try to think strategically; the symbols which are known as "mons". To make the strategy easy to follow you would assume that from your lowest to your highest cards when referring to the battle chart, they would run sequentially in clockwise-order. However, they are somewhat randomly assigned. This is the same for both players making the confusion fairly shared at least. Unless you are going to spend a few hours studying the chart and the cards to figure out how best to play strategically, each player is just playing cards at random and the winner of the battle is decided purely on how many lucky breaks you can make along the way whilst trying to avoid a heavy hit from your opponent.
I also think the defending system is inherently flawed sometimes. If you play a quick move and are the defender and then you end up defending against a slow but heavy hitting card, you still get hit but the calculation for how much damage is made is calculated by taking away the defense strength from the attack strength. For example, you can take "10 - 3 = 7 damage", even though you have played a far faster card that could be around 7 faster than the attacker. It just seems unfair and it led to my other half stating "this game is ridiculous" and I sadly had to agree with her assessment a little. I think with some minor changes then this could be something truly great but as it is, I am left feeling like Tom Cruise at the end of The Last Samurai where all his Samuria friends have been mowed down by the Americans. Bitterly disappointed but, hoping for a second edition to come out at some point as most things about this game are great and I can see where it could potentially become amazing.
Final Score - 5.5/10
Overview - "Great idea, sounds like it will be great fun to play but in reality it fails to meet expectations. This makes me sad because I am a huge fan of fighting games on console, especially Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. The card play seems really random and there is no real strategy as the layout of the symbols is in no logical order. If someone wanted to play I would not decline but I doubt I would be Karate chopping my way to get this one to the table."