Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 15-30 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)
This review is based partially on my review of the board game of Samurai, and will probably be most intelligible if you're already familiar with the board game; if you're not, I suggest you skip down to read about The Game Play before proceeding onward. This review is based on the PC version of this computer game, though I've glanced at the Mac version too, and it looks much the same.
The Components
Samurai is available for download online. (You get some trial games, and then you have to pay for it.) There's some additional help online, but I've only ever used the help & info built into the game, which is all entirely adequate.
Graphics & UI
Graphics: Samurai displays a simple top-down view of the lands of Japan and the tiles placed upon it. Each tile is depicted with a specific graphic (samura, buddha, grass, boat, helmet) which are all easy to make out. A clear hex map is overlaid on everything. The depictions are all clear and simple, but not particularly spectacular.
The graphics can be resized to small, mediu, and large, allowing you to see more or less of the board, though I find anything smaller than "large" to be a bit hard to make out on my screen. Unfortunately the Samurai window cannot be resized, so you can't take advantage of all of your screen real estate. As a result, I find that I can never see as much of the overall map as I'd like.
Audio: The game features a simple, Oriental-sounding audio, with some special audio cues for when cities or villages are taken, or when the game ends. It's nicely & professionally done, but as with much game music, it gets repetitive.
User Interface: The basic interface for playing Samurai is simple: you click a tile, then you click again wherever you want to play it. After you've placed a tile, sometimes you can play one or more additional "fast play" tiles; these are helpfully highlighted as potential plays after you've done any regular plays. You can click "Undo" if you messed something up, or you can eventually "End Turn".
The User Interface isn't as good with regard to opponent turns. The screen does not follow your opponent's turns as they occur, which I think is a mistake. Sometimes you can see them, if you happen to be on the right screen when they occur, but otherwise you need to either scroll back through a list of textual turn descriptions, at bottom left, or else scroll around the map to see which tiles are highlighted as new. As often as not, I figure if I can't see an opponent's move, it probably doesn't hurt me, but that's really not the way to play the game.
Player Helpers: Samurai is a game of set, known quantities. In the board game you can always see which victory tokens an opponent takes, and likewise you can always see what tiles they've played, and thus figure out what they have left. However, the board game treats these elements as a "memory game", meaning that you have to memorize all these actions, or you're out of luck.
Instead the computer game gives you nice listings, if you want them. At the start of every turn you can see a list of who's taken what victory tokens, how many have tied, and how many are left. In addition there's a special overview screen which quickly summarizes important information on tiles that have been used. I consider these big wins, and exactly the types of things you want to include in computer games. (The bit with seeing people's scores is actually an option, but one I always keep on.)
Overall, the graphics in Samurai are nice, though not extraordinary. Likewise the UI works well, minus the issues of not following opponents' moves and that of screen size, and the helpers offered to players are exactly what the players need. On sum it ekes in a "4" out of "5" on Style: above average.
For the most part the computer game retains all the game elements of the board game of Samurai, which is described here, but also adds alternate rules & maps which are all described at the bottom of this section.
The object of Samurai is to exert enough control over the cities and villages of Japan, and the capital city, Edo, to gain favor from the three castes and thus rulership of the island.
Setup: The game is setup with each player choosing a color, then selecting a starting array of tiles from that color (5 from the total of 20). Finally the board is laid out and the figures are placed on the board. Afterward, play begins.
The Tiles. Most of the hexagonal tiles are used to exert control over one or more of the three castes of Japan (warrior, religious, and worker). The standard tiles are thus:
- 2, 3, and 4 of warriors; which each exert that much influence
- 2, 3, and 4 of religious
- 2, 3, and 4 of workers
- 1, 1, 2, 2, and 3 of samurai; which are wild cards that influence all three castes
- a special "move" tile which allows you to relocate a tile already placed
In addition there are 5 "fast play" tiles which may be played on a turn in addition to one of the normal tiles (thus allowing a quick change of influence for a city).
- 1 of ronin; which is a wild card like the samurai
- 1, 1, and 2 of boats; which can be placed in the ocean next to a city, and are wild cards
- a special "figure exchange" tile, which allows you to swap two different victory figures on the board (more on that in a second).
To start out a player chooses 5 of his 20 tiles for his initial hand, then shuffles up the rest.
The Map. The map of Japan depicts the capital city of Edo, a few large cities, and a number of villages.
The Figures. There are three types of figures: warrior high helmets, religious buddhas, and worker rice paddies. One of each of these figures is placed in Edo. Then, the players fill out the cities, placing two different figures in each. Then, they fill out the villages by placing one figure in each.
This is all done in turn. One player puts one figure on a city, then the next player puts another figure in the same city, or another that isn't filled, etc., until the cities are full, then they place the figures on the villages, one at a time. Theoretically this is done to further the strategy that a player considered when he drew his tiles--usually by placing some figures in such a way that they can influenced by a single tile that the player already has in hand.
Order of Play: The players go in turn, each taking the following actions:
- Place 1 normal tile
- Place 0 or more fast play tiles
- Capture Figures
- Draw Tiles
Place Normal Tiles: Each round a player gets to place one normal tile. This is a warrior tile, a religious tile, a worker tile, a samurai tile, or the move tile tile. Tiles are placed in empty land hexes on the map of Japan, each of which is adjacent to one or more cities or villages, which in turn hold figures.
Players are trying to influence those cities and villages in order to win the figures, and this is done by placing either the matching tiles adjacent to the figure, or else the wild card samurais. Each city or village has between 2 and 6 empty land spaces next it; these are the spaces that must be filled in order to capture the figures.
The move tile tile is a special case. It's placed in a space that already holds a tile, and the original tile is moved (usually allowing you to reuse one of your "4" tiles or else your "3" samurai).
Place Fast Play Tiles: In addition, a player may play any number of fast play tiles before or after the play of his normal tile. This allows a player to better capture cities or villages without other players' interference or otherwise throw things up in the air.
The ronin tile is just the same as a 1 samurai, except it's fast play.
The 3 ships go out in the oceans which lie adjacent to many cities and villages. They're the only tiles that can be played out there. They're also wild cards, like the samurai and ronin.
Finally, there's a special figure exchange which just lets you swap two uncaptured figures on the board (except that you don't allow a city to end up with more than one of the same type of figure). It's used when a player has put a specific tile near a figure (e.g., a "religious 4" next to a buddha) and you want to try and snatch the figure away from him.
Capture Figures: Cities and villages are closed when all of the land spaces adjacent to them are filled. At this point you look at the figures in the city or village and count up the influence for each, based on the specific tiles for that figure type and/or the the various wild cards.
For example, if one player had a "religious 4" near a city, and another player had a "1 samurai", a "religious 2" and a "2 ship", and the city indeed held a buddha, the first player would have an influence of 4 and the second an influence of 5; if, instead, that second player had a "warrior 2" instead of that "religious 2", the warrior tile would be useless to influence the buddha figure, and thus the first player would win 4 to 3.
The player with the higher influence takes the figure and keeps it for later scoring. In cities and in Edo, different players might get each figure, or they could all go to the same player.
In cases when influence is tied for a figure, the figure is set aside.
Draw Tiles: To end his turn, a player draws one or more tiles, depending on how many he spent, to get back up to a hand of 5. If he runs out of tiles at the end of the game, he just keeps playing with what he has.
Winning the Game: The game ends when either (1) the last figure of one of the three types is captured; or (2) when the fourth figure is placed beside the board due to the tie. At this point, all captured figures are revealed and scoring is conducted.
Hang on, things get a little confusing here.
If one player has captured a majority of figures in 2 or 3 types, he wins. (According to the computer game, a player also wins if he captures the majority in 1 type, and no one else captures a majority; that's not what the paper rules for the game say, but it makes sense.)
Otherwise, all players who have captured at least one majority count their figures outside of that majority, and the player with the most is the winner.
If there's still a tie, the player among those tied who has the most total figures wins.
If there's still a tie, there's a tie.
In other words, winning is based on the favor of the majority of the castes, but if consensus fails, the player with the broadest support wins.
In the nearby example you can see that I lost because I overrelied on a single caste (buddhas). If I'd taken a warrior or a worker instead of that 5th buddha, I would have at least forced a tie with blue.
(Fortunately the computer takes care of all this scoring for you, and you pretty quickly figure out that you're trying for a plurality of pieces in one or two castes, and good numbers in the others.)
Simplified Setup. Here the figures are all randomly placed on the map and your initial hand of 5 tiles is randomly selected. I tend to use this because it's simpler, faster, and allows for different challenges.
Domination Rules. Here the game instead ends when every single figure is captured. I sort of like this because it's simple, but the regular end-game rules are a bit more strategic, so I tend to go with them.
See Opponent's Scores. As mentioned above, being able to see opponent's scores is technically an option. Given that you could do the same thing with pen & paper, however, I don't consider it a big deal.
Alternate Maps: I think the coolest thing about the online game of Samurai is that they've introduced three additional maps, so that you no longer have to play solely on the island of Japan. The maps each have slightly different layouts, and thus allow for different tactics. In particular, one makes heavier use of ships, while another has more landlocked cities.
I think the introduction of these new maps easily doubled the replayability of the game, and I now wish I had them for my board game too.
Ways to Play Reiner Knizia's Samurai
Samurai has three methods for playing: AI, hosted, and online.
AI: The game has three levels of AI, from basic to advanced. My general experience is that in two-player games I can always beat the AIs at the bottom couple of levels and can usually do so at the top level. Still, at the top level there's real contention, so I don't mind that I beat it more often than not. In multiplayer games, the chaos level increases, and it's a bit harder to plan out long-term strategies. As such, the AIs offer a better challenge.
Generally, I'm happy enough with the AIs, and if you are going to buy this game, it should probably be to play single player against them.
Hosted: You can set up a hosted game which other players can join. I don't really see the point, as if I wanted to "host" friends in a game, I'd pull out my board game copy.
Online: Finally, there's an online server that you can connect to in order to find other players. I've seen one player on it in all the times I've logged on and sat around, so I'd have to say that this is mostly unused; the server has no critical mass.
Relationships to Other Games
The computer game is, of course, based on Samurai: The Boardgame. It's one of a number of related tile laying games that Reiner Knizia has produced.
The Game Design
The computer version of Samurai plays pretty much like the tabletop version of Samurai.
Here's the good things I said about the tabletop game's play: Great Tactical Play (meaning that every turn is a mini-puzzle); Some Strategy (you can do some long-term planning, though it's also somewhat limited); and Nice Variability (every game is different because the locations of the figures change).
Here's what I didn't like: Scoring Obtuse (it's hard to explain and figure out during play); Best at Two Players (because the game gets more chaotic the more players you have).
Looking at that all, I think the computer game definitely moves the tabletop game in a good direction (minus the innate loss of human interaction). The variability, and thus the replayability, is even higher, thanks to the new maps. Meanwhile, the problems with the scoring are lessened because you can see how everyone is doing every round (if you have that option on) and things are calculated for you at the end.
I gave the tabletop Samurai an average "4" out of "5" for Substance, while I'd give the computer game a "4.5", though that's just a high "4" when I enter it into the database here.
Conclusion
Klear Game's computer version of Samurai is a very good adaptation of Reiner Knizia's classic abstract/tactical game. Though I'd love some minor improvements to the UI, overall the game is pretty, the AI is acceptable, and the UI makes the game easier to play than its tabletop brethren--all exactly what you want a computer game to do.
