All exploring and no Aku Aku makes Jack a dull samurai.
I confess, as much as I
adored Gendy Tartakovsky's work, Samurai Jack was his one work that never jibed with me. However, I won't let that deter me from trying out a Metroidvania,
arguably the greatest genre every created. You can quote me on that.
The story is not well told at all, but it starts with Jack awakening in a strange land and told about the Amulet of Time, which he carries, and should do his best to gather the four gems it's made up for in order to confront Aku. And that's as much story as you get. The game, as any proper Metroidvania, is made up of various interconnected areas, areas that you can't
fully explore until you get every possible
upgrade to Jack's abilities. The developers tried their best to make areas feel like different lands, so each different section of the game's world has at least one 'town' section with its own 'sidequest', which usually ends with Jack defeating a boss and getting one of the four gems. It's not a bad set-up at all, albeit it feels like unnecessary fluff, however, it's
not unwelcome.
The game's biggest issue are its
controls. Jack isn't a nimble warrior, he is a clunky brute! While his attack animations have a certain
flair to them, his attacks feel slow and it feels like there's a certain delay before your attack comes out and another delay for Jack to finish his flourish, if you stopped pressing the A button, before you can move again. Ironically enough, as long as you mash the A button, Jack will continuously attack, and you can even change directions(Up, down or behind) before each attack, which makes it feel fluid. That's right, combat is fluid and clunky at the
same time. You can run by double tapping either direction on the D-Pad, but you have to keep in mind that your first tap, for example if you're walking, counts, so sometimes your run won't come out if you just stopped running and then tried to run again.
It's kinda hard to explain. Jumps are clunky too since Jack is as heavy as a sack of potatoes, and performing the walljump can be a big pain in the butt, since you need to hold the opposite direction against the while for a short while
EVEN after Jack initiated the wall-jump animation, which can throw you off a bit. Lastly, there's the four elemental stones that grant Jack elemental powers which can be used to cut down enemies or obstacles. They are
useless in combat, you must hold the A button for increasingly longer amounts of time(Your first charge is always earth, then you have to wait for the Fire stone to charge, and then comes Water, which means triple charge time, and then wind which requires you to go through the other three) making them useless in combat. You'll get much
better results by not dropping your blade and just mashing A.
The level design can be a bit tedious. While you can unlock means of fast traveling between zones, exploring levels can be
tiresome when you're just searching for whatever previously unbreakable wall there is. They are just too large and too involved to warrant multiple second visits. Some areas can be particularly nasty since you don't know
where you are jumping to, because the camera just won't show you enough of the screen. Finding brittle floor, breakable with the Stone power, can be a bit hard too, since you can't move the camera around.
On the flip side, there're a few RPG elements thrown in for the mix. Defeating enemies has a random chance of them dropping equipment or healing potions. Equipment can be used to increase(Or sometimes decrease) your elemental damage and defense. It's
not well explained, but basically, every element(Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Darkness, Mech, Light) has its own defense and offense rating, and you don't know what those numbers mean(Fire means you deal more damage to fire enemies? Or means you do more damage to enemies weak against fire??) but higher numbers
probably means something good. There's a single Health Upgrade waiting to be found in one of the early areas, hidden below a brittle floor tile, but after you get the Water stone you can simply go back to the starting area and exchange potions for Health and Special(To use the four elemental attacks) upgrades. The game starts off a bit on the tough side, since Jack can't tank much punishment, but by the end of the game you'll have health and defense to
spare.
Samurai Jack: The Amulet of Time is far from the better Metroidvanias you can find on the Gameboy Advance, but the game is worth a look if you are a fan of the show, for they managed to
capture the show's look pretty well. It can also be a decent time waster after you've finished all three Castlevania Advance games.
5.5 out of 10
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