Simple challenging combat, grindy gameplay | Full Review - Thunder Samurai Defend Village

Thunder Samurai Defend Village is a simplistic hack and slash game where you control a samurai in charge of defending his village.

🟩Pros

+fun and simple hack and slash controls

+challenging combat

🟥Cons

-intrusive ads that occasionally appear between runs

-grindy progression system

This game’s title is as straightforward as it gets, you are literally a Thunder Samurai, Defending a Village in guess what game? — Thunder Samurai Defend Village. There is no story, only a premise that is unsurprisingly also in the game's title. The game jumps straight into the gameplay which is contained in 2D retro style visuals.

The gameplay of Thunder Samurai Defend Village is simple. Enemies come from both sides, you can either tap on the left to attack left, or tap on the right to attack right. You can activate a special lightning attack when fully charged. No need to move, jump, block, or do some platforming maneuvers. Each enemy dies in a single hit and the game seemingly plays infinitely in a singular level, with high scores being the one and only end goal. In some respects, this reminded me of Google’s dinosaur jumping game, with a simple objective and never ending quest for the higher score.

Despite the aforementioned simplicity, Thunder Samurai Defend Village is still a challenging game to play and harder to master. You cannot just spam attacks as there is a small window after it that makes you vulnerable, making precision and timing very important. Hitting it too early can lead to being hit by the enemy. At start, you can only afford to get hit once, the next time is a death sentence.

To help you reach new high scores and withstand more attacks, Thunder Samurai Defend Village features a shop for upgrades where you need to spend gold coins to increase your health, attack range, and your special lightning attack’s duration. This gold is randomly dropped by enemies in runs, or you can spend some real money or watch some ads to speed up this process.

The game only offers three upgrades, but the progression system is already too grindy in its current state, with scarce gold drops and a high asking price for the upgrades. You’ll be better off forgetting it even exists and I’d just recommend playing the game as it is, just occasionally checking the shop if anything is already affordable.

As you kill more invaders, the frequency and speed of their onslaught increases, reducing the margin of error even more, and almost playing like a rhythm game of sorts. Further into the waves, enemies will even overlap with each other, adding to the confusion. Every few kills or so, it gives you a short break by dividing the enemies into waves, giving players a much needed reprieve from the anxiety-inducing combat.

Conclusion:

Thunder Samurai Defend Village is a simple yet challenging game that is tainted by ads and grindy progression. Despite the high difficulty, It’s not an optimal game to be played by hardcore players due to its grindy progression, and it’s not the best game newbies should play either due to its difficulty. An average mobile game at best that costs nothing to try.