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𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕞𝕖𝕤𝕤 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕙𝕠𝕥𝕘𝕦𝕟, 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕘𝕖𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕎𝔸𝔸𝔸𝔸𝔸ℕ𝔾!

Do you like fancy swordplay? Hack and Slash? Demons by the thousand to get into, slashing bits and pieces off with your sword? Would you also like some gunplay with that? Look no further; we've got the perfect game to suit those needs.
Shadow Warrior, being the first and the best (in my opinion) game out of the bunch, puts you in the shoes of Lo Wang, a deal for Zilla Corporation... You start off by going to a deal with an old guy to buy off his special sword, the Nobitsura Kage, only to discover that the dude is delusional. One thing led to another until you found yourself in possession of the legendary sword, and also an immaterial being that goes with it: Hoji, a banished demon with quite the agenda (and the sense of humor lol). As you gather the other particles of the legendary sword, fearing your boss Zilla on one side, and your entanglement in the demons' affairs, you have to persevere to see this adventure through.
Why perservere though? Because the "Insane" Difficulty is quite INSANE. It literally took me 2 hours of a sweating arena fight to dismantle the first boss! It was actually quite awesome!
Gameplay wise, Wang has got quite the arsenal at his disposal: The Katana will be your primary weapon as it not only slices, it also dices... by that I mean it can charge up Ki to perform destructive attacks. There are also a bunch of weapons Wang finds along the way; a pistol, a shotgun, a machine gun, a bazooka, a crossbow! The thing is you can upgrade these weapons with Money that you find laying around in each corner of the level. Each weapon has an alternate firing mode that makes it much, MUCH more useful!
You can also upgrade Wang's KI powers, as well as Skills. The former uses KI crystals (collectibles) and the second one uses Karma points. Now this is where things get interesting; everytime you're invaded by demons from the shadow realm, you can kill them in a variety of ways which earns you "style points", these amount to your next Karma point altogether... Think of style points as a bar of Experience to your next level, at which you get one Karma point. So, how do you become stylish in your murder of the hordes of the underworld? Headshots with your guns, massacring smaller demons (slicing them so hard they eject each part of the body, with Ki Katana attacks), beheading them with a sword slice, cutting off their limbs, shooting at their legs with a shotgun, killing them while they are 'enraged' etc.... This system is actually quite reminiscent of a game I played way back called Bulletstorm, where the more diverse your kills are the more points you get.
Shadow Warrior gets a whooping 9.5/10; this is exactly the formula the second game should've followed (that I've also reviewed by the way): Linear swordplay with a consistent funny monologue! Buy it, love it, play it and enjoy it; read the dialogue from the game below and it will definitely incite you to do just that lol
Chapter 5:
Wang: Aright, mannequin ghost robot thing, time to dance!
Hoji: Did you want that to sound tough? It didn't!
Wang: Did you want that to sound annoying? Nailed it!
Hoji: Why, thank you!
*Me: laughing at how these two are supposed to be in it together*