Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time Review – Right Jack, Wrong Time

I want to make very clear right off the bat of this Samurai Jack Battle Through Time Review that I am a HUGE fan of Samurai Jack. I watched it when it first aired on Cartoon Network, I reviewed all of Season 5 here when it aired on Adult Swim, and I was one of many who were very hyped about this game. My results with this title though were sadly…mixed. Because while it’s clear that love and passion put into it…sometimes…that’s just not enough.

Game Name: Samurai Jack Battle Through Time
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One, PC
Publisher(s): Adult Swim Games
Developer(s): Soliel 
Release Date: 8/21/20
Price: $39.99

Let’s start off with the basics, ok? Samurai Jack Battle Through Time takes place between the literal last minutes of the fifth season. Jack and Ashi (daughter of Aku turned Jack’s girlfriend) have beaten back Aku, and with Ashi having his powers, realizes she can transport them through time back to the past to end the madness once and for all. In the series, that happens, but here, Aku gets to Jack just before reaching the other side, and traps him in a “place between time”.

Now, Jack has to basically relieve “Aku’s Greatest Hits” as one voice actor called it in order to reconnect with Ashi and get back to the past. As the voice actor for Aku (Greg Baldwin) noted in an interview about the game, this is “Aku’s last roll of the dice.”

True to form, the beginning of the game not just shows the cutscene from the show, but takes us back to Jack’s first adventure with the character Rothchild, and then proceeds to show fans many legendary locations and brings back many classic characters along the way like Rothchild, The Scotsman and his Daughters, the Imakhandi, Demongo, and more.

It is here that Samurai Jack Battle Through Time really shines. Because the teams at Adult Swim games and Soleil really worked hard with the original Samurai Jack team, including creator Genndy Tartakovsky, to recreate everything about Samurai Jack. From his look to his enemies to the worlds and famous areas themselves, it’s a lot. And you’re going to be surprised by just how faithful they are to the series. Granted, it can’t be a perfect recreation because it’s a 3D action game and not a 2D thing like say Cuphead, but it’s still a faithful transition from one medium to the other.

Plus, as a fan like me, you look for all the little details and such that harkens back to the series. Such as certain items you’ll collect that are callbacks, as well as famous locations and classic boss fights.

And, as luck would have it, they have pretty much every single voice actor from the franchise back to voice the characters once again. With a few exceptions of course like Mako who died before Season 5.

While the story is essentially pretty basic, Phil LaMarr and Greg Baldwin and Tara Strong REALLY deliver on their parts in the story, and it truly helps make this feel like a true adventure in the universe and not just a side story. You feel the characters struggle, especially Jack as he tries to get back home, but feels hope slipping away at times. It’s very well done, and in my opinion, really strengthens the relationship that Jack and Ashi have.

Now, as for the action, that’s where things get a little interesting in the creative side of things. Because Samurai Jack Battle Through Time has you giving Jack the ability to wield weapons he either never wielded in the show, or were one-offs. You’ll have his classic magic sword of course, but you’ll also be able to wield spears, hammers, go bare fist and beat the crap out of foes, as well as have a plethora of long-range weaponry from bows and arrows (multiple kinds of arrows for the record), guns, Shuriken, throwing knives, reapers, and more.

It’s honestly surprising just how much weaponry there is available for Jack to use. Plus, you can use them at your leisure, or just use Jack’s sword the whole time, it’s up to you. Though some situations really do require you to use your long-range weaponry else you’ll struggle to get through.

Along your journeys and battles, you’ll collect a variety of items. Including gold to buy things from Da Samurai, as well as two different main items that’ll allow you to upgrade Jack as a whole. From increasing his damage to learning new techniques to giving you multiple “invincible” attack surges, and more. You’ll want to carefully look at all your options before buying though so you can make sure that you get the right Samurai Jack for this game….which is more important than you might think.

Because you see, Samurai Jack Battle Through Time isn’t the best when it comes to keeping things balanced in combat and beyond. For example, there are multiple difficulty modes. I chose the second one in “Samurai” (which was suggested for those who love action games, and I’ve played plenty) and I quickly found myself being overwhelmed at times by scores of enemies. At times it was fine because they were one-hit KO types, but other times it was wave after wave with seemingly no end and you had to have your attention divided in all sorts of directions in order to survive.

Another thing that bugged me was that certain enemies had rapid-fire rocket launchers that would always show up in situations where it would be near impossible to dodge them and other enemies and thus I’d always get hit.

And towards the end of the game, right before you fight Aku, you have to go through multiple waves of enemies…which basically depletes your supplies…and then you have to face Aku AND other enemies…which got really frustrating, really quick.

There’s a difference between a challenge and an onslaught, and I wasn’t even at the highest difficulty! Plus, the items you get to heal you can only be obtained in certain numbers, they always cost a lot of gold, and even though I had an item that was supposed to “greatly decrease damage from foes” I was still taking massive hits on my health bar with or without it.

Then, there are the weapons. While some weapons I could totally see Jack using in a pinch, or even as a part of his arsenal…seeing him wield a bow with explosive arrows…or a pistol…or certain other things just felt odd. Now yes, in Season 5 he had a machine gun he used, and that was cool, and getting his Thunder Spear was easily my favorite weapon in the game besides his sword, but the others? Eh.

Also, the main weapons pull a Breath of the Wild and are breakable. Outside your magic sword of course. So you’re almost encouraged NOT to use these weapons unless necessary because they can break very easily and you won’t know when the next chance to get one is. I had that problem with bows and guns for example.

Another major problem was the skill trees and the skills themselves. You need two different main items to unlock most skills. One of them you’ll get in good supply, but the other, Bushido Spirit is VERY hard to get at times, and by the end of the game, you need hundreds if not THOUSANDS to unlock everything, PLUS auxiliary items that only come via chests and other characters…and thus it’s basically impossible to unlock everything unless you do VERY specific things…which kind of hurts the gameplay. Not to mention you have to keep track of like 5-6 different items that you need, on top of your weapons cache, and cash, and more.

As if that wasn’t enough, there are so many skills you can learn and combos to do with your weapons that it’s tough to remember them all, especially in the middle of a fight.

It can be exhausting, and thus it honestly might have been better to go for a more streamlined approach than what they had here.

But easily my biggest complaint is not one you might think of…the voice acting. Yes, as noted, they got pretty much the entire voice cast from the original show back, including some that you won’t see coming. HOWEVER, they’re barely used outside of Jack, Ashi and Aku. This is very odd to me because they did a trailer showcasing the voice talent and everyone being “so happy” to be back…and yet they don’t get used that much. What’s worse, characters like The Scotsman and his daughters and Rothchild and Demongo have lines that they repeat every time you meet them and then have one or two cutscenes at best with significant dialogue. They had the talent there, why not just let them voice every line of text you had them say? It would’ve added SO MUCH to the game. Now yeah, as I said, Phil LaMarr and certain others crush it, but I wish the other characters had been given the time of day. Speaking of which…

While I LOVED the accuracy in terms of the characters you fight being from the series…some of them are honestly wasted. Demongo, for example, is brought forth multiple times as a mini-boss and it’s kind of lame because it doesn’t really get any tougher…it just changes the stock enemies you fight. Whereas if you recall, Demongo had LEGIONS of warriors to fight Jack in his episode, not just a few.

Also, a classic rival to Jack in the robot Ninja is brought back…and is given the same treatment. By the end, you see it a LOT and they’re tough enemies, so when you have to deal with them AND others? It gets really annoying really fast.

Let me put it to you this way, they use Scaramouche in a MUCH better way than them…and he’s not even the best villain in the series!

Finally, there are only 9 levels in the game, and it’s clear that they were cherry-picking certain Samurai Jack moments to recreate…but you have to wonder if they could’ve added more. Including some that really should’ve been on the “Aku’s Greatest Hits” list. Or ones that would’ve been awesome to witness in 3D like Jack and the Spartans, or the original Ninja fight, and more. This is part of the reason the game is VERY short. I did it in 3 2-hour bursts on the second difficulty level and I wasn’t rushing either.

As I reach the end of my Samurai Jack Battle Through Time review, I’m sure some of you are going to think I’m going to give this a bad review. But I’m not. There’s a lot of things to like about the game. The detail to the series, the familiar faces and voices you’ll see and hear, and the action at times is very fun.

BUT, you can also see a LOT of places where they could’ve improved things greatly. Like the balance in difficulty, the kinds of boss fights and how they’re portrayed, the number of levels, and of course, more voice acting. Still, if you’re a Samurai Jack fan? You’ll like it, even if it’s not everything you hoped it would be.