Description
Playthrough with Genjuro. This game is also known as Samurai Shodown IV. It’s set after the first and third games, but still takes place before the second. It also ended the franchise for a while, at least on the Neo Geo. The next games would be released on the Neo Geo 64.
It suffers from the usual single player problems that has plagued this series since the beginning: the CPU is too difficult to defeat and you have to find exploits to beat them, resulting in boring fights where you’re just doing the same thing over and over. The first couple of stages have easy opponents, but from stage 3 onwards it gets harder, and once you reach the ridiculous bosses you can tell how badly SNK wanted your quarters.
To make things worse this game features a time limit. You have to get to Amakusa’s castle within your character’s time limit (Genjuro has 8 minutes) to fight the bosses, Failing to do this has you just fight your rival and then you get a bad ending. And if you really want to see everything, not only do you need to get to the castle, you also need to beat all the bosses within the time limit. I did manage to do this but it’s a pain in the ass. I think the time limit was a stupid idea mainly because of the CPU. The CPU blocks way too much and just wastes time, the bosses in particular and awful because of their antics.
And then to further make my blood boil, this game is glitched. I think. There have been issues with this game where the credits don’t play. It just goes straight from the ending to the name entry screen. Like here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkEGboLc81o
I have no idea why this happens. It seems to be an AES exclusive problem. I couldn’t find any info about this anywhere. I got the credits in this playthrough, but not in the one linked above. And in that playthrough I got through the game within the time limit. It’s really strange. And annoying.
Anyway, you can get through most of this game with Genjuro just using his QCF+C move and doing honorable deaths. Honorable deaths let you lose a round immediately, but you’ll start the next one with a full POW gauge, meaning you’ll do more damage. The QCF+C move can be done up to three times and you can delay the inputs to make the move come out slower. So for the first couple of opponents just mash the C button a lot, you should be able to take them down really quickly.
After that is where the QCF+C move comes into play. Either use that or just use Genjuro’s C button strike a lot, you don’t really need anything else. If you do attempt a one credit clear of this, my advice is to always have Rimururu as your first opponent, it makes things easier. Sogetsu can be defeated by using the QCF+C move, as when he blocks it, he will always use his water column move, so you can hit him with a C slash. With Gaira, if you do the first QCF+C and delay the second one by around half a second or so, he’ll try and do a counter but will get hit by the rest of Genjuro’s attack.
The bosses are really boring to fight. They just block everything, playing this really demonstrated how out of touch SNK were with their AI in 1996. Amakusa was the biggest problem I had in this, but he does have an exploit I managed to get working a few times. If you can get him in the corner, try jumping towards him and pressing the A button whilst still in the air. He should block, so upon landing use Genjuro’s command grab (F, D, DF+D) to throw him and then repeat this. The only problem is you have to get the timing right as it’s easy for him to teleport out of the corner. Amakusa spams his teleport way too much, making him far too hard to hit. It’s like SNK learned nothing from his annoying teleport spam in the first game.
Zankuro can be defeated in a similar way to Gaira. Do a QCF+C, then slightly delay the next QCF+C. If you’ve got it right, Zankuro will try and counter but miss, then get hit by the rest of Genjuro’s attack. Just keep doing this as trying to take him on in any other way is useless, from what I’d tried.
Haohmaru can be beaten in a similar way to Amakusa. Try and get him in the corner, jump towards him with an A slash then do the command grab as soon as you land.