Samurai Shodown takes place between the events of the 1993 game and Samurai Shodown V and has been cited as a reboot of the series. The game takes place in 1787, during the Tenmei Era of Japanese history. The entire country is beset by a terrible and looming evil. Fire, ruin and famine ran rampant throughout Japan. Meanwhile, as these events unfold, a sinister cloud envelops the air with a foreboding sense of dread. Shizuka Gozen, the deceased spirit of a young woman who is possessed and trapped in Yomi, threatens to destroy Japan. Warriors from all across Japan and beyond the ocean, driven by their own needs and desires, converge to investigate these evil forces and vanquish them.
Samurai Shodown was unveiled at the SNK Investor Relations 2018 IPO conference, being developed by SNK Corporation. The twelfth main game in the Samurai Shodown series, it is the first mainline entry since 2008's '. The development team consists of members who worked on The King of Fighters XIV and '. Nobuyuki Kuroki is the director and one of the artists, while Yasuyuki Oda serves as producer. Kuroki has been previously involved with the series through the Samurai Shodown 64 titles. The internal staff at SNK who worked on the game consisted of 50 to 60 employees, as well as outsourcing some art assets, to form a total of an estimated 200 employees who worked on the game. Some of the reasons for making a new title were the recent focus on the esports community and the many fan requests. The team considered using a realistic art style for the graphics but decided against it because too many fighting games were using it already. Oda has expressed interest in adding guest characters from other franchises. Due to outdated graphics involving the releases of The King of Fighters XIV and SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, SNK chairman Zhihui GE had stated that the future SNK fighting games will use Unreal Engine 4 in order to give a better graphical presentation. Samurai Shodown became the first SNK game to use Unreal Engine 4.
Reception
Samurai Shodown has received generally favorable reviews, the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch versions earning a Metacritic score of 81, 78, and 75 respectively. Den of Geek gave the game 3.5 out of 5 stars, and commented that Samurai Shodown "is a fighting game that’s incredibly solid in its core gameplay and looks swell enough, but it sadly feels like it’s lacking because there’s little else to do." The Mercury News called the game a solid revamp for the series, and noted that SNK upgraded the visuals and was as challenging as ever. In their review of the game, GameSpot called the game a great reboot that captured what made the original fun and unique, while also drawing attention to the fact that the single-player experience was somewhat lacking. IGN praised the game's fighting mechanics, and noted that there was an extraordinarily tense style of fighting that is unlike just about anything else in the genre in the current fighting game climate. The PlayStation 4 version was the fourth bestselling game in Japan during its first week of release, selling 16,662 copies. On July 4, SNK reported that first-week shipments plus digital sales totaled 40,606 units. The game was nominated for "Best Fighting Game" at The Game Awards 2019, and for "Fighting Game of the Year" at the 23rd Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, and won the award for "Game, Franchise Fighting" at the NAVGTR Awards.
