Rather than use true one to one sword movement the game instead recognizes the direction of your swing, as well as the intensity and then represents your swing with a canned animation. It doesn't sound impressive but in practice it works extremely well. Horizontal and vertical slashes, as well as stabs, are all represented with minimal hiccups. When armored foes arrive, heavy strikes are needed to knock their armor off before you can do direct damage. Holding down the A button allows you to parry basic sword strikes and bullets. When the enemies break out their super moves, indicated with a red glow around their weapon, you need to hold your sword correctly to block the strike.

The sword fighting works well at first but it isn't until you start unlocking the various special moves where the system really opens up into one of the most thrilling and visceral combat experiences on any console. With a tap of the A button followed up by different moves you'll be dashing around the battlefield and stabbing enemies through the back, stunning them with a bullet to the chest and then following up with a smash to the jaw with your sword hilt and a final impalement through the sternum. When armored foes arrive, the Guillotine, a vicious, leaping, overhand strike makes quick work of their armor before you can finish them off. Best of all is the Storm, a 360 degree move used to attack enemies around you, but when used just as the enemies are attacking, indicated by an on-screen prompt, your hero will pull off the classic backwards stab move. Not only does this finisher disregard any armor and acts as a one shot kill, it looks flippin' amazing. In fact all of the finishing moves look great and it's only the lack of blood that allows the game to get away with a T rating. These are some seriously brutal finishers and give you the impression of being one serious badass.

Along with your special sword moves you'll gain Kusagari powers as you progress through the story. You can launch foes into the air, slam your sword into the ground for an earthquake move, paint multiple targets for a volley of shots as well as stun attacking enemies to name a few. In practice the special sword moves work better than the Kusagari powers as many of the powers require you to charge up your Katana and then swing the Wiimote in a certain direction and for some reason the combination of both things ends up confusing the Wiimote more than anything else. Still though, when used correctly the Kusagari powers are a welcome addition.

The game is entirely mission based balanced between story missions used to move the plot along and side missions that involve finding a certain number of a certain thing. The backtracking used to complete the fetch quests can be annoying however the game rewards you twice, in a way, for completing these missions. The first is the quest reward which is always cold hard cash. The second way is also cash related, although indirectly. Every time you revisit a level all of the crates, barrels and breakable objects are respawned allowing you to break them again and reap the monetary rewards. It may be a bit tedious to keep breaking the same boxes every time you enter an area but given everything you can buy in the game, from special sword moves to sword and gun upgrades, armor, extra lives and a larger health bar, any extra money you can scrounge is welcome.

Story missions usually involve you going to a particular place and killing anything that moves before flipping a switch or otherwise removing some impediment to your progress. Even the fights serve as a means of earning money with combinations of special moves and finishers netting you big bucks. Sure you could just wade in and mow everything down with your "Johnnie" gun but where's the fun, or the cash, in that. Once you've completed every story mission in a particular part of town you'll move on to the next one. When you leave though, there's no coming back, something you're warned about, so be sure to take out all of those wanted posters if you want to be rewarded for the mission before moving on.

It's clear that the developers wanted to remove as many obstacles to the player's progress as possible. There's no need to hunt for health as your health automatically regenerates at the end of each battle and while in a battle you're shown how many enemies you'll be facing allowing you to prioritize targets and choose moves based on how large a fight you have on your hands. It all works extremely well with the exception of the autosave points which are too infrequent for my tastes. For the most part you'll get a save point every ten to fifteen minutes but there's also the potential to lose more time should you need to put your sword down and leave Caldera for a bit.

What's most amazing about the game though is how well Ubisoft Paris was able to take the system it given and play to its strengths. The game has a fantastic design aesthetic with its neo-Tokyo meets Deadwood set pieces and the cel shaded graphics allows for rampant creativity without having to try and compete for graphical awards. The sword play provides a steel swinging experience that makes you feel like the baddest of the bad without requiring more than a cool head and a hefty swing and in that sense it accomplishes precisely what it set out to do.

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