Usually when you play a bad game, you can spot where the developer has gone wrong. Usually it’s laziness, or a lack of imagination, or sometimes over-ambition. It’s not often a game is so bad in so many ways that you can’t even begin to fathom what the developer’s intentions were or at what point they appear to have gone astray. Way Of The Samurai 3 is that bad.

The way of the samurai is that way.

Acquire has made a game, the selling point of which is that you’re supposed to play it from the beginning over and over. At least that would be the selling point if anyone of sound mind could possibly want to play this horrendous, embarrassing mess once, never mind several times. It’s just not enjoyable in any conceivable way whatsoever.

It looks shhhhh… rubbish, the combat is terrible, the cause-and-effect logic the narrative is supposed to hinge on doesn’t make sense and most of the time you don’t know what you’re doing and don’t seem to be making any noticeable progress.
It’s actually difficult to find the words to sum up Way Of The Samurai 3. At frequent intervals during our time with it, there was little more to say than “What?”, “Eh?” and “Huh?”. It doesn’t even begin to be good at any point at all. The only entertaining thing about it is that it’s occasionally so bad it’s hilarious.