Crunchyroll: Shogun Showdown review – “Compelling roguelike combat that has taken over my entire life”

Table of contents:

Visuals

The lovely pixel art complements the Japanese theme here, with the visuals offering plenty of atmosphere for the epic quest you’re on. In the aptly titled Shogun Showdown, you’ll embark on a journey to defeat the shogun using different unlockable heroes, each one with its own special move. 

You can knockback enemies should you so wish, switch places with them, or even phase through them because you’re cool like that, and with a bunch of cool new skills you can add to your arsenal as you go along, too.

Of course, with this being a roguelike, you’re bound to fail over and over again, but you always come back stronger, wiser, and less likely to waste your last remaining HP on a noob move where you’re stuck between two enemies with no way out (it’s happened more times than I’d like to admit, unfortunately). 

Herein lies the beauty of this compelling adventure – every time I make a mistake, I always, always feel like I can do better, which propels me to start over and come back with a vengeance.

Finally clearing through a certain stage offers that sweet satisfaction of a victory well-deserved, at least until the next enemy comes along and beats me to a pulp. Rinse and repeat.

Crunchyroll: Shogun Showdown Gameplay

What makes each run even more interesting is, as you can expect from the genre, the variety of randomly generated upgrades you’ll encounter along the way. 

You can choose to boost your damage output using your hard-earned coins or reduce a move’s cooldown so you can use it more frequently. You can also unlock an entirely new move completely, or even just buy a bunch of health potions so you can keep getting hit without a care in the world.

It all really boils down to personal strategy and a whole lot of luck as to whether or not you’ll survive the journey. The enemies that pop up in each wave are a randomised affair too, which means you’ll really have to think two steps ahead to make sure you move through each tile as efficiently as possible.

Right – the tiles. Each action you take consumes a move, so whether you’re picking out the next attack, adding it to your queue, or simply turning around to face your foe, you’ll consume a move just as your opponent does. 

This means that while you’re prepping for a big combo, the enemy will be doing the exact same thing, so anticipation is the name of the game here, which, to me, adds an interesting twist to your standard card-battling affair. 

And while I used to think an Undo button would come in really, really handy, I’ve come to realise that the button would simply allow you to steer clear of reckless mistakes whenever you fail to think something through – and where’s the fun in that?

What’s the appeal?

Admittedly, I’m incredibly partial to roguelike card-battlers, so perhaps I went into this fully prepared to enjoy the heck out of it. But I suppose that also means that my expectations are incredibly high, and I’m happy to report that Shogun Showdown absolutely didn’t disappoint.