Katana Zero's blade isn't sharp enough to cut through its self-indulgent idiosyncrasy. Inventive action sequences that neatly divide improvisation and orchestration and a novel time-rewinding mechanic both suffer under an overwrought style miserably impressed with its own posture. Katana Zero works best when it’s not auditioning to change its title to Edge Lords.
Katana Zero is determined to justify its vanity. Its fluid pixel art and neon noir aesthetic achieve an expensive ambience atypical of 2D action games. Its signature mechanic, an exciting spin on time manipulation, is available in both its action and its narrative and forges a powerful sense of identity. Every time Katana Zero opens its mouth—when someone literally speaks or when it tries to weave all of its frenzied introspection together—it’s inarticulate at best and mortifying at worst. Katana Zero’s lack of restraint is frequently at odds with its otherwise dramatic performance and presentation.
It opens with its protagonist, known as The Dragon, living the dream job of every media-addled child of the 80’s; a professional ninja. The Dragon is provided with a dossier of a target and a location and dispatched by a shadowy organization to take care of business. Action is performed by eliminating every henchman populating segments of each level before ultimately dealing with the final target. Katana Zero, at a primal level, operates with the austere machinery of a 16-bit action game; you go somewhere, you kill everything in sight, and then you go rest at home before doing it all over again.
Thankfully, Katana Zero has more on its mind that praising Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi. Your sword is ridiculously powerful. It’s capable of slicing at 45-degree angles from a comfortable distance and paints the wall with blood spatter in contextually appropriate directions. There’s also a dodge-roll that grants frames of invincibility, a limited use of a time-slowdown mechanic, and unlisted actions like a great jump-landing roll. Nearby objects can be grabbed and thrown. In the case of molotovs and other exotic items, these pick-ups can also be used in conjunction with pieces of the environment.
Opposition comes from a mixture of direct aggression and environmental awareness. Greaser-looking henchmen come equipped with knives and seem to always block your opening swipe. Other guys have machine guns that fire in bursts which, as it happens, last just as long as your dodge roll. SWAT dudes with big shields, shotgunners, and a handful of pattern-based boss fights round out the rest. All are populated and combined in closed-off two-or-three level structures with multiple points of horizontal and vertical access. There’s flow and strategy to ideal Katana Zero, but following it (or even figuring it out) is largely optional. Sometimes luck and chaos are as viable as proper planning.
An endearing videotape aesthetic wraps around Katana Zero’s gameplay and presentation. Each piece of a level constitutes a real form of practice. Dying in a failed attempt is actual death in Katana Zero’s world, but, due to a significant plot device, time is literally rewound and The Dragon can try again. When a sequence is finally completed you’re treated to a black-and-white replay showcasing your well-prepared murder ballet. It’s self-indulgent, but it works in the wider context of Katana Zero’s presentation (and the effects can also be switched off if they’re either uncomfortable or unappealing).
Katana Zero shines as it transitions from a wild series of experiments into a gradual rehearsal and, finally, a climactic performance. It not only provides quick-hit freedom to try different angles of approach, but also the opportunity try out more dangerous assaults without a long-term penalty. There are a few sequences that demand a succinct order of operations—in one I was audibly talking to myself, kick door, roll twice, down-attack through glass, grab smoke bomb, drop smoke bomb, kill everyone in the smoke—and almost feel as if you’re inputting a sequence of buttons instead of applying skill, but these instances are exceptions rather than rules. Katana Zero scales a learning curve that fits both its conceit and what it wants from its player.
Cut-scenes and conversation compose a significant portion of Katana Zero. Between each mission The Dragon will check in with his hander/psychiatrist. When a dialogue choice is presented you can either react impulsively and say the first, usually belligerent, choice available, or you can wait for a second or two for some more reasonable options. Taking the immediate choice arrives with a neat effect where the letters blow up on the screen and also allow the player to portray The Dragon as desperate and menacing as opposed to controlled or conflicted. It provides a smart sense of agency for the player.
Katana Zero’s profanity laden dialogue is its most embarrassing asset. “God damn,” “fuck,” “fuck you,” and “bitch” are persistently dispensed without either a shred of creativity or self-awareness. It’s like when a twelve-year-old learns what words are offensive around adults and starts deploying sentences overloaded with profane punctuation. It’s so overdone that instead of clutching my pearls I kept rolling my eyes. In the absence of proper expression Katana Zero defaults to the most try-hard demeanor possible in a wild attempt to sharpen its edge. It’s Suicide Squad’s Joker with “damaged” written in cursive on his forehead condensed into a videogame.
It gets worse whenever Katana Zero attempts to reconcile its violence with introspection. Sequences of ponderous flashback reflection in a church, an interaction with a homeless veteran, and The Dragon’s relationship with his child neighbor skip past hard boiled noir and plunge straight into unintentional parody. There’s actually merit to the world building—the nature of reality, the psychological effects of experimental drugs, and the post-traumatic stress of war are all concepts worth exploring—but almost every time Katana Zero might really say something it’s impulsively overruled by an adolescent temper tantrum.
A perfect example of Katana Zero’s instability is available in a mid-game dialogue sequence between The Dragon, and his captors, V and Mr. Kissyface. V keeps shooting The Dragon to death, but time keeps rewinding and allowing The Dragon to Groundhog Day his way through the interrogation with new information. Until that point I had been allowed to keep The Dragon’s dialogue on the softer side, but there’s no way to ultimately escape the sequence without selecting choices that make me sound like an equally loud and obscene dipshit. What could have been Katana Zero’s autograph under the convergence of conversation and gameplay is reduced to sneering edge lord contest.
It stands out when agency is taken away. Vague mission parameters suggest a degree of player choice and consequences to select actions. On my first run I was cordial with a receptionist and she responded in kind, unknowingly, by letting me escape after I murdered the whole building. On my next play-through, when I was an unrepentant misanthrope, she didn’t cover for me and I had to fight an extra cop. It’s difficult to see where else Katana Zero manifests its choices (I tried to avoid killing cops in the nightclub but, despite opportunities for stealth, I couldn’t progress without mowing them down), and my second run went much the same as my first. The Dragon may be bound to his fate, but it undercuts Katana Zero’s dialogue interface. Like its supporting cast, there’s no point in behaving like a human being.
The volume of Katana Zero’s motor-mouthing asininity dominates a long-term impression, but there is some room for subversion and subtlety. It understands players are primarily here to kill people in stylish ways. It gets that its audience is likely feeding on its violence. Dismissing dialogue, demanding your handler get to the point, and submitting to bloodlust doesn’t go unnoticed. If the player experiences remorse, there’s a narrative option to punch out about half way through Katana Zero. Credits roll. What technically amounts to the best parts of the game are still ahead, but Katana Zero creates a viable option out of rejecting its violence and turning it all away. You miss the full story, but you feel like a human being. This is extremely good.
Katana Zero earns its violence but nearly blows its credit with puerile dialogue. Its visual identity—sequences booting up with a CRT ignition noise, pushing play on a Walkman to start one of LudoWic’s synthwave tracks, pixel art that almost looks like it has rim lighting—pairs well with its gruesome brutality. It aches for another either another writing pass or an editor who understands the dial doesn’t always have to be cranked to 10. A climax can’t exist if action never rises or falls.
Katana Zero’s blade isn’t sharp enough to cut through its self-indulgent idiosyncrasy. Inventive action sequences that neatly divide improvisation and orchestration and a novel time-rewinding mechanic both suffer under an overwrought style miserably impressed with its own posture. Katana Zero works best when it’s not auditioning to change its title to Edge Lords.
