Spike Chunsoft has released a new trailer for Katana Kami: A Way of the Samurai, hosted by the helpless blacksmith Gunji Dojima and his daughter Nanami Dojima. Specifically, it is a video looking at the Katana Kami multiplayer.

The duo show off the game’s characteristics, including the ability to change fighting styles depending on the equipped katana and accessories. We get a look at the hack-and-slash combat, as well as Katana Time and Kiwami counters. We also get a neat look at how the Dogeza pose can be used to dodge attacks to your head.

An entire section of the Katana Kami multiplayer trailer is devoted to showing off co-op with others. Dojima explains that this is an improvement from Way of the Samurai 4′s system, where other players’ samurai could appear in your samurai’s world controlled by an AI. Here, as long as you have online settings enabled, you may either bump into other players playing in real time or asynchronous player data controlled by the AI at random. Using the symbol chat in multiplayer, you can tell others if you plan on working together or fighting them, but they can change it at anytime, so you’ll have to decide how much you trust the stranger.

If you are both set to ‘Co-op’, friendly fire is turned off, and if you walk over their corpse if they die, you can revive them. If both of you choose ‘Fight’ and you win against a real time player, you will only take the loser’s money; while winning against asynchronous players will give you their money, katanas, and items. On the other hand, if you lose to either type of player, you’ll only lose your money. If you do a Dogeza to a player to plead for your life, it’ll be counted as your loss, but you won’t lose your money.

If one person is set to ‘Co-op’ and the other to ‘Fight’, it will be treated the same as if both chose ‘Fight’. However, by attacking a ‘Co-op’ player, your samurai will become ‘Wanted’ and players who kill you will get reward money. The more you kill, the higher your Wanted value, and you can see a ranking of Wanted players on the noticeboard.

Finally, here’s a look at weapons returning from past Way of the Samurai games:

Takefuji

Biteikotsu

Batsuichi

Ashura

Katana Kami: A Way of the Samurai Story will be released on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC on February 20, 2020. Check out English screenshots in our previous post here, and you can find the game’s official English website here.