That Samurai Jack – Battle Through Time is a throwback in terms of game design is not up for debate; of course it is. Play it for five minutes and you’ll be whisked back to the PS2 era of licensed video games. What may be up for debate and where views have differed is whether this is necessarily a bad thing. Is It not a perfect fit for Samurai Jack?

The game begins during the TV series’ finale. As Jack enters the portal to return back in time and strike the final blow, Aku manages to interfere and send him into an alternate timeline. As Jack, you then travel through 9 levels, each in an iconic location from the series before a final confrontation with Aku allowing the original series conclusion to play out.

Real effort has been put into matching the tone and humour to the TV series, aided by using the original voice actors. Visually, the switch to 3D is initially jarring. Think the first time you saw the Simpsons characters in the third dimension. It is odd and inevitably the character models lack certain details in order to keep them faithful to their 2D counterparts. These models ultimately don’t look all that much better than you would have seen on a PS2, but the animation is as smooth as you could ask for with zero noticeable performance issues. Vital for a fast-paced hack and slash.

Combat begins simplistically: light attack, heavy attack, block and dodge. Straightforward stuff. Progressing through though, depth is added with ranged & heavy weapons, counters, throws, extended combos and special ‘kiai’ attacks. It takes a little while, but where it ends is an accessible, but extremely satisfying combat system where nothing really feels superfluous.

Of course, that doesn’t automatically mean balance. Cheesing bosses with ranged weapons is a possibility and the sword kiai attacks are your get-out-of-jail-free cards given they do massive damage and you’re invulnerable for the duration. Having said that, I found the difficulty just right on the normal ‘samurai’ mode throughout my playthrough. The difficulty scales at a good pace together with the drip-feed of items and upgrades to maintain a consistent level of challenge without ever becoming overwhelming.

Enemy variety is good, each level presents new combatants with different tactics to counter and the boss battles are largely foreboding and satisfying. One little feature I enjoyed (probably more than it warranted) was how Jack’s appearance would change as his health drops. In the series, through a lengthy battle, Jacks robes would become tatty and his hair bun would come undone. This is matched in-game. There are enough stages to it that you could almost do away with the health bar entirely, though you can understand why they wouldn’t do that with accessibility for kids in mind.

As well as the 3D hack and slash combat, there are 2(.5?)D platforming sections. These are a nice change of pace and short enough to never detract from the game as a whole. Fans, please note: there are also collectible corrupted Emperor’s Kamon. If you want to unlock the secret ending, which appears to be the true ending to the series, then you’ll need to collect all 50 and then defeat Aku. Alternatively, you know, YouTube.

Have I rated this higher because I’m a fan of the license itself? Probably. This is undoubtedly a good game, but for someone uninterested in Samurai Jack, you’re unlikely to find anything here that you haven’t seen done a hundred times elsewhere. However, as a fan and with budget limitations in mind, Battle Through Time is pretty much exactly what I would hope for: strong gameplay and utterly faithful to the original series.

It may appear an old-school license game on the surface, but it’s a damned good one. That it may be a game out of its time, well, welcome to Jack’s world.