Hanako: Honor & Blade is multiplayer samurai game set in a fictionalized version of Japan's Sengoku Period. Its world and lore revolve around the conflict between the Hanako and Yamai clans, which represent life and death respectively, as they battle for control over the nation. The title unfortunately still needs a lot of work in order to provide players with the large-scale samurai warrior experience that developer +Mpact Games has clearly aimed to provide with the game.
Matt Canei, a co-founder of +Mpact Games, developed the idea for Hanako: Honor & Blade in 2008 to honor his late mother, whom he lost to cancer. Matt and his team worked on Hanako over 14 years while also working full-time in other development studios such as LucasFilms' immersive entertainment studio, ILMxLAB. Knowing what this release means to those involved and the heavily critical nature of this review, it feels important to acknowledge and honor the sentiment behind it. For more information about this part of Hanako's history, check out their website here.
Hanako: Honor & Blade has four playable classes: Kenshi, Nagi, Ninja, Archer, and each one has their own move sets and special abilities. Unfortunately, the gameplay feels floaty, awkward, inaccurate, and unintentionally limited in almost every way. Three of the four classes rely on melee combat and every hit either misses or doesn't clearly register that damage is being done; however, the Archer has ranged attacks and their specials have an area of effect which makes them incredibly overpowered. Finally, the end of each game has a victory animation that attempts to play out the lore of the game, however these animations always happen abruptly and it's not always clear what's happening.
Thankfully, the environments are well designed and able to facilitate each of its five game-modes: Team Deathmatch, Capture the Scroll, Village Siege, Castle Raid, and Duel. Similar to games such as Chivalry 2, the first four game modes feature a large group of players fighting one another and most of Hanako's current maps have a good balance of open areas, verticality, and routing. These elements are joined by complementary music and sound design which all work together to tell the story of this world and its lore.
Overall, Hanako: Honor & Blade looks and feels far older than it is, which is a huge problem given that it's competing with snappy and polished games like NARAKA: BLADEPOINT. What makes this feel worse is that the marketing for Hanako emphasizes its 14 years of development, but it delivers a final product that feels awkward and borderline incomplete. There are still many bugs that, among other things, interrupts special abilities, causes characters to float, and allows the camera to clip into the environment and blind the player.
In its current state, everything the player experiences in the first 15 minutes is all that Hanako has to offer. That said, there is a supportive community beginning to form around Hanako who will hopefully continue to support the project in its post-launch development. Hanako has had an incredible journey thus far and though it's struggling to keep up with the times, it has the potential to pull a No Man's Sky and turn itself around to become the Hanako: Honor & Blade that +Mpact Games envisioned 14 years ago.
Hanako: Honor & Blade releases on September 15 for PC via Steam. Screen Rant was provided with a Steam Review Key for the purpose of this review.