Surprisingly, the ease of Samurai Squad's story mode actually masks a lot of nuance in the fighting system. You can lock on to enemies, switch characters, and execute special moves. There's even a practice mode where you can hone your techniques. It's too bad you have to unlock the difficulties in which said techniques amount to anything more than mashing different buttons than you would otherwise.

Some other modes add replay value, but they don't improve the game's quality; since the title isn't worth playing the first time, any replay value is wasted. You can fend off random hordes of zombies, try to accomplish specific feats, or play co-op locally. It's frustrating to know that so much effort went into creating content for such an awful game.

This title's overall presentation isn't quite dreadful, but it suffers from a definite lack of polish. The graphics are OK in and of themselves; they depict the half-naked heroines in some detail (of course), and the 3-D environments, while they're all similar to each other, don't look half bad. Some of the cutscenes are downright impressive. The problem is that the game doesn't run well, both when you’re in control and during some of the cutscenes, and as a result, you'll sit through load times (during which you can play a 2-D hack-and-slash mini-game) and notice visual glitches galore. The sound is a good deal worse: cheesy, synthetic pop and rock tracks. Also, the text that explains the aforementioned story is awkwardly translated, and the voice acting isn't translated at all.

The most that can be said in support of Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad is that it's mildly amusing, at first, to slice through countless zombies in quick succession, while watching the blood fly. From there it's all downhill: the sex and blood represent a dedication to offense, not art; there's no technique required in the hardest immediately available difficulty; the game was poorly executed on a technical level. If you're reading this review, that means you have Internet access, and therefore you're not a 15-year-old boy without it. Skip this game.

By Robert VerBruggen
CCC Freelance Writer