Some ideas make perfect sense. One of those ideas is, weirdly, putting samurai in a space setting. Sol Shogunate is an excellent (and brand new) example of just this, though we’d also have accepted a game revolving around Frank Herbet’s Ginaz Swordmasters.
Still, this one — the creation of a new developer called Chaos Manufacturing — looks to have potential. The aesthetics are something we’ve seen before, a weird hybrid of PlatinumGames’ Vanquish (notably the powered armour) and the frenetic combat (and female protagonist) from Shift Up’s Stellar Blade. It works. If you’re up for a more vertical version of Ghost of Tsushima (or Yotei, we guess), this upcoming title will activate those specific neurons.
Fighting for the Sol Shogunate
Sol Shogunate is the debut effort from Chaos Manufacturing, but that doesn’t mean that the team is entirely untested. The team includes veterans from some of the largest Western game developers, such as Blizzard, CD Projekt Red, Guerrilla, Respawn, Riot, Treyarch, and ZeniMax, as well as a handful of folks who worked on some of the best action films of the last decade or so. The reveal trailer for the game isn’t long on gameplay, showing off the game’s setting and revenge-based story (if there are samurai, it’s always about revenge — it’s compulsory).
The brief sections of real gameplay at the end of the trailer are worth examining more closely. Jammed in among the robot warriors (and horses, it looks like) are snatches of combat that would make Hideki Kamiya ever so slightly envious. Ninja warrior skills in a low-gravity environment kind of works, particularly when there’s a jetpack involved to get players into the thick of the action following a very cinematic knockback.
Where Sol Shogunate might fall down is the game’s writing, or an overemphasis on visuals at the expense of the game’s depth. As it stands, the upcoming title has plenty of time to get things right. It’s set for launch on the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles sometime in 2027. If the nerds at Chaos Manufacturing can’t iron everything out by then, perhaps we don’t deserve samurai in space.
