Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Playthrough with Rera. The Samurai Shodown series went quiet on Neo Geo after SSIV, with new games being released for the Hyper Neo Geo 64 instead. But in 2003, the series returned to the original Neo Geo. The game is set before the events of the first game in the series.
And it isn’t too good. Firstly, the graphics. Despite the seven-year gap between this and SSIV, the game reuses sprites from SSIV instead of redrawing everyone. I know KoF had been doing this for years at this point, but given how much time has passed you’d think a new set of sprites would have been in order. There are some new backgrounds, but many of them are taken from previous games, and most of them have had animation removed, making them look worse than before. My understanding is this game didn’t have much of a budget.
Next, the controls. They’ve been made worse, and now you have to press the A and B buttons together to do a heavy slash attack. I disliked these two button inputs in the first two games and I hate it here, too. Worse, you’ve still got the mostly useless kick button mapped to its own button, I would have preferred it if you had to press A and B together to get the kick, and have heavy slash mapped to the C button. The D button now lets you do stuff like rolls and dodges, but I rarely ever use it.
A major change with this sequel is the addition of another gauge under the life gauge. When you attack, this gauge decreases, and your attacks will do less damage. If you wait around without attacking, the gauge will automatically start to fill back up. This means you can’t just mash out attacks nonstop, you have to plan your next move carefully, at least if you want it to do much damage.
One obvious disappointment is that the fatality finishes have been removed entirely from this game. The red blood is still there, but that’s as violent as it gets. I want the CPU to die a horrible death, but now they can’t.
Speaking of the CPU: it’s easier than any of the previous games, but it’s still difficult. It still input reads and blocks a lot, but it also has some pretty massive exploits you can abuse. Rera in particular is a good character to 1CC the game with due to the CPU having difficulties with her wolf buddy. The ram attack the wolf has can work wonders against the CPU, just do it, jump back, and repeat. You’ll see me do this a few times in this run. Her weapon break attack is also really good, the CPU will almost always get hit by it.
The main exploit to use is when you get the opponent to drop their weapon. If this happens, the opponent will often just simply shut down and remain completely still for no reason. If you have a life lead, you can get an easy time over victory. But you can also move close to the opponent and start hitting them, they may try to counter with a punch, but it shouldn’t work. You can see an example of this at 14:00.
The CPU is also completely useless as mashing during the weapon clashes (4:24). They often won’t press any buttons at all! I only had to press a button once to win the one weapon clash I had during this run.
There are three bosses in total. Sankuro is the first one, who appears at stage 5. He’s not that difficult other than him having backup from three different assist characters. He can also regain his health and has an unblockable attack where he fires a gun at you, but if you can trap him in the corner you should be ok. Yumeji is always the ninth opponent. Their main gimmick is that they can briefly transform into other characters and use one of their moves.
Gaoh is the final boss. Voiced by Kenji Utsumi, which may explain why his name sounds so similar to a certain Fist of the North Star character. Gaoh has a big spear, and he can reflect projectiles back at you. Once he’s lost a round, he has a gimmick where he will power up and change forms whenever his rage gauge fills up. He’s invincible when he powers up, so you need to either block or jump over his charge attack. Try not to stay near him, as he has a grab super.
The English version of this game leaves the intro untranslated. But far worse is that the entirety of story mode was removed. In the Japanese version, there are cutscenes and endings for each character, including pre-fight dialogue for every opponent you face. This is completely gone for the English version, which I feel was very lazy on SNK Playmore’s part. The missing story content would at least be restored for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox ports of the game.
The final boss works differently in the Japanese version as well, and is more difficult. After you beat him once, in the next round he will start off in his powered up form, so you’ll most likely have to deal with his powered up version twice in the round. In the English version this doesn’t happen, he only changes form after his rage gauge fills up. I’ve done a playthrough of the Japanese version here:
youtube.com/watch?v=T31QdKjr9zw
Playthrough with Rera. The Samurai Shodown series went quiet on Neo Geo after SSIV, with new games being released for the Hyper Neo Geo 64 instead. But in 2003, the series returned to the original Neo Geo. The game is set before the events of the first game in the series.
And it isn’t too good. Firstly, the graphics. Despite the seven-year gap between this and SSIV, the game reuses sprites from SSIV instead of redrawing everyone. I know KoF had been doing this for years at this point, but given how much time has passed you’d think a new set of sprites would have been in order. There are some new backgrounds, but many of them are taken from previous games, and most of them have had animation removed, making them look worse than before. My understanding is this game didn’t have much of a budget.
Next, the controls. They’ve been made worse, and now you have to press the A and B buttons together to do a heavy slash attack. I disliked these two button inputs in the first two games and I hate it here, too. Worse, you’ve still got the mostly useless kick button mapped to its own button, I would have preferred it if you had to press A and B together to get the kick, and have heavy slash mapped to the C button. The D button now lets you do stuff like rolls and dodges, but I rarely ever use it.
A major change with this sequel is the addition of another gauge under the life gauge. When you attack, this gauge decreases, and your attacks will do less damage. If you wait around without attacking, the gauge will automatically start to fill back up. This means you can’t just mash out attacks nonstop, you have to plan your next move carefully, at least if you want it to do much damage.
One obvious disappointment is that the fatality finishes have been removed entirely from this game. The red blood is still there, but that’s as violent as it gets. I want the CPU to die a horrible death, but now they can’t.
Speaking of the CPU: it’s easier than any of the previous games, but it’s still difficult. It still input reads and blocks a lot, but it also has some pretty massive exploits you can abuse. Rera in particular is a good character to 1CC the game with due to the CPU having difficulties with her wolf buddy. The ram attack the wolf has can work wonders against the CPU, just do it, jump back, and repeat. You’ll see me do this a few times in this run. Her weapon break attack is also really good, the CPU will almost always get hit by it.
The main exploit to use is when you get the opponent to drop their weapon. If this happens, the opponent will often just simply shut down and remain completely still for no reason. If you have a life lead, you can get an easy time over victory. But you can also move close to the opponent and start hitting them, they may try to counter with a punch, but it shouldn’t work. You can see an example of this at 14:00.
The CPU is also completely useless as mashing during the weapon clashes (4:24). They often won’t press any buttons at all! I only had to press a button once to win the one weapon clash I had during this run.
There are three bosses in total. Sankuro is the first one, who appears at stage 5. He’s not that difficult other than him having backup from three different assist characters. He can also regain his health and has an unblockable attack where he fires a gun at you, but if you can trap him in the corner you should be ok. Yumeji is always the ninth opponent. Their main gimmick is that they can briefly transform into other characters and use one of their moves.
Gaoh is the final boss. Voiced by Kenji Utsumi, which may explain why his name sounds so similar to a certain Fist of the North Star character. Gaoh has a big spear, and he can reflect projectiles back at you. Once he’s lost a round, he has a gimmick where he will power up and change forms whenever his rage gauge fills up. He’s invincible when he powers up, so you need to either block or jump over his charge attack. Try not to stay near him, as he has a grab super.
The English version of this game leaves the intro untranslated. But far worse is that the entirety of story mode was removed. In the Japanese version, there are cutscenes and endings for each character, including pre-fight dialogue for every opponent you face. This is completely gone for the English version, which I feel was very lazy on SNK Playmore’s part. The missing story content would at least be restored for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox ports of the game.
The final boss works differently in the Japanese version as well, and is more difficult. After you beat him once, in the next round he will start off in his powered up form, so you’ll most likely have to deal with his powered up version twice in the round. In the English version this doesn’t happen, he only changes form after his rage gauge fills up. I’ve done a playthrough of the Japanese version here:
youtube.com/watch?v=T31QdKjr9zw
