REVIEW – This game should not and be taken seriously. It was meant to be the video game equivalent of imovie mockbusters. What was Gladiformers for Transformers (and many others from Video Brinquedo) became Yasuke Simulator riding in on the back of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It’s not a AAA game, it’s a parody of it. And since the game can be bought for pennies on the dollar, it can’t be called a scam.

Considering that the game industry needs another 1983 (at least beyond indie titles), it’s worth asking why games like this exist.

Yasuke’s struggles

You control the only African (dark-skinned) samurai. Historically, the year is 1579 and he arrived in Japan with the Jesuits. We join Oda Nobunaga with the goal of unifying Japan. So the game is set in feudal Japan, where we have to wield the katana with style and precision. Of course, there will be no shortage of more powerful moves. There’s also equipment scattered around the world to make your hero stronger. The developers also claim that the game is historically accurate (the name says a lot: HistoryAccurateDevelopers). However, the game has one drawback. The game does have one drawback. The developers on Steam say that “some audio and graphics” were created using AI, but there may be more to it than that. The game is absurd, by the way, but fun. That’s why it’s getting such good reviews, and the fact that it’s gotten over 1300 reviews on Steam in just over a week (with 97% of them (!!!) positive!) and is in the overwhelmingly positive category shows two things.

On the one hand, it shows that a lot of people are tired of the cost, microtransactions, and the ignorance towards the preservation of the AAA games (Denuvo), and on the other hand, it suggests that this game is actually fun to play. The game is not that historically accurate, for example, there will be oiyan when you kill tons of enemies with a gun on a train. Then there’s tofu delivery, driving, and some sensitive topics are touched on in YS. It is a parody of the current state of Japan, and it feels a bit like a little bit of a Saints Row game. It consists of nine levels, and here we can mention one of its negatives: it’s short. You can play through it in an hour and a half, and you can see a basic interface and font (Unity Engine) at several points, so not much work has been put into making it sufficiently different from other products that use the same engine, but which are more likely to be called lousy asset flips. The soundtrack, however, was surprisingly pleasant, and this can be one of the weak points of such games. Okay, it’s ridiculously bad in terms of voice acting for the most part, but when you add the fact that the deluxe version of the game costs as much as 1/7 of the base AAA game (!!!), you’ve got a different story.

Fighting a Transformer

It’s no joke, because we’re also going to be fighting one of these, whose controls (whether on foot or in a vehicle) is a bit lousy. There is room for improvement. For example, the reversing speed of cars is a tiny bit slow, but really only a tiny bit slow. Ok, it doesn’t need to be Big Rigs Over the Road Racing level (that thing will pop up on Steam…), but it’s still a bit ridiculous. Speaking of driving, this session was entertaining enough, but perhaps the game could have done with a little more. Blocking can also prove a bit impossible in large crowds, as there is no such button, so if we are surrounded by a horde, we won’t have much chance of survival with our katana. We should also add that if we die, we have to start the course from the beginning. The vehicles, by the way, give you a good sense that you can’t expect much more than the basics of the Unity engine, because everything bounces back and forth if you can’t keep them on the road properly.

Let’s say the last boss was really funny, because the way and what he says is just ridiculous (in a good way), but here it came out how much lead you have to pour in to finally defeat him… they went overboard here. But let’s talk about why this game gets good reviews: because it doesn’t take itself seriously. There’s no Denuvo in it. It has no mandatory account usage. You just download it and it starts. It’s not a game that’s going to get tedious and hang around your neck for too long. Meanwhile, it’s a good parody, and it’s not even close to Assassin’s Creed Shadows in terms of system requirements, which is certainly good in its own right, but Ubisoft is on a downwaed trend for a good reason: because the French publisher simply doesn’t make games that really pique the interest of gamers. Where is Sam Fisher? This is what we mean…

A good parody

Yasuke Simulator doesn’t even cost 10 dollars for its deluxe edition. You can pick up the base game for less than 5 dollars. It’s worth it. And for that it gets a 7/10 because it’s not perfect. Rather play Yasuke simulator than another AAA title.

-V-

Publisher: HistoryAccurateDevelopers

Developer: HistoryAccurateDevelopers

Style: Action

Release date: March 20, 2025