Sushi Striker: The Way Of Sushido

At E3 about a year ago, I saw a small trailer/demo of a game called Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido on Nintendo 3DS.  It's a colourful fast-paced puzzle game, I am not normally into puzzle games but there was just something about it, I knew I had to play it.


Sushi! Sushi comes in many different varieties, including what I consider to be the classic one, some raw fish and pearl rice wrapped in seaweed.  I tried it once before and in honesty I had no recollection if I liked it or not.  Playing Sushi Striker I found myself desiring to try some, unfortunately, I didn't really like it, a lot of my issue was with the texture and after trying seven pieces of different sushi I knew it wasn't for me.  Playing Sushi Striker I found myself asking did I feel the same way I did about actual sushi or was it a much more enjoyable experience?

Story


I'll be honest, I was shocked by how much I enjoyed the story of Sushi Striker: The Way Of Sushido. The game has you take on the role of Musashi, an orphan who loves sushi, unfortunately, sushi is hard to come by as it is controlled by The Empire.  Luckily Musashi meets Franklin a Sushi Striker who along with his sushi sprite can create almost endless amounts of sushi.  Quickly Musashi realises he needs to take a stand against The Empire so everyone can be free to enjoy sushi and quickly joins The SLF, The Sushi Liberation Front.


Overall it's a feel-good story with some nice moral lessons and a lot of fun characters, I like the fact Indieszero didn't just phone it when it came to the story, which a lot of developers can do when it comes to a puzzle game.

Visuals


The game has great visuals and uses an anime art style which I really liked, especially when it came to the cut sequences.  Each character looks cute or fun, with Kodiak Squad for example they are all muscled but it is done in a comical way.  In the case of the Sushi Sprite's, there are so many great designs, my favorite being Penzo the blue penguin with a monocle, Jinari that looks part man, part lion and Kumaten, a black bear with a horn on his head and carries a big axe.


Overall a visually fun game that kept my interest throughout my time playing.


Music


The music has a classic Nintendo upbeat sound, combined with rock, jazz, and some somber tones that are reserved for the final few areas.  The soundtrack was created by Shunsuke Tsuchiya, Yuki Yonai, Rie Takahashi, and George Aburai.  This group of composers, artists and voice actors have contributed to games, anime, and singer-songwriters, including:

Konosuba
Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san
Akibia Trip The Animation
JoJo's Bizare Adventure: Stardust Crusaders
A Good Librarian, Like A Good Shepard
Luminous Arc 1 and 2
Sands of Destruction
Kyoukia no Rinne
Nui Nui Hinobori San Kyoudai
Aiko Kayo
Tomiko Van


There were some great tracks in the game, my favorite being; 'Sushi No. 1', 'Title Screen', 'Franklin'
'Battle VS Soldier', 'Won A Match', 'Lost A Match', 'Battle Pinch', 'Battle VS Purrsilla' and 'Battle VS Palace Guard'.


Overall a pretty strong soundtrack that is fun to listen to when battling your many opponents.

Gameplay


The gameplay in Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido starts out relatively straightforward, link as many plates of the same colour together over several seconds and throw them at your opponent.  Outside of this, you can carry up to three sushi sprites each offering abilities that you can use after linking X amount of plates together multiple times.  The game increases the difficulty level of your opponents as you progress and they too have sushi sprites, for the most part, things are kept fairly balanced, but there were certain points where the challenge just seemed crazy.  A few examples of these challenges would be, the tank surround by a moving a wall that had a small gap in it that you had to wait to throw plates at, or having to link at least twenty plates together to attack an opponent.  One of the most frustrating ones for me was the combo wall which meant you could only throw one colour of plates at the enemy, if you changed the colour the first attack would not do damage.   I understand that to make a puzzle game fresh you have to mix it up, but sometimes the challenges were a bit much.  Playing Sushi Striker I found that practice and the correct ensemble of sushi sprites would get you the win but other times it felt like luck.


The sushi sprites in the game were really good, and I liked the fact they could evolve into other more powerful forms depending on how much you used them.  In the end, my line up during the final area was Jinrai, Tigazo, and Penzo which were some of the first sushi sprites I obtained.


Overall I found the gameplay to be intense, yet fun and while I did have some complaints they still didn't stop me from having fun.




Final Thoughts


After playing just over twenty-five hours how did I feel?  Pretty good.  The story, visuals, and music were a lot of fun, the gameplay was intense and while there were a few frustrating challenges all in all it was an enjoyable experience.  Overall this one gets 4 out of 5