nSamurai Jack is a property that I know absolutely nothing about. This game got some good buzz so I wanted to see what it’s all about. Samurai Jack Battle Through Time is available on all major platforms and on iOS through Apple Arcade. Reviewed on iOS.n

nKnowing absolutely nothing about the property I was not too interested in the actual story itself. Your playing as Jack doing exactly what the title suggests, going through portals to be in different areas and times on your quest to battle and defeat Aku.n

nPersonally, I did not find the story that engaging but again, to be clear, I am not familiar with the show. If I had any affinity for the show I feel I would have enjoyed the story a lot more because it is very well animated and is full voice acted.nnOnce you get into the game it was just a blast to play. It’s an action RPG that can be played like a hack and slash game like Devil May Cry, or you can crank the difficulty up, and start dodging, blocking, and parrying which makes it almost feel like a souls game.n

nSince I reviewed this on iOS I played through the campaign twice. Once using only touch controls and once with a controller. Playing with a controller is definitely the way to go with this game but if you play on an easy difficulty with the exception of the last level you will do ok with touch controls. The last level took me hours to complete with touch controls with the number of failures I had.n

nWhat this game basically is, you go from combat arena to combat arena until you make it to the boss. What this game does, you go to an area and then it’s sealed off, no way out in any direction. Then a bunch of enemies will spawn and the area stays locked until you kill the final enemy. After killing that enemy the camera will show you the path that has now opened. You then continue running until the same thing happens. It was very repetitive but the combat was a lot of fun so I didn’t mind. Even playing through the game twice, I’m ready to start my third run.n

nWhen you kill enemies they will drop multiple different currencies. You are going to get some gold to spend in the shop and other currencies to learn new skills in very large skill trees. I learned early on to really read the upgrades because some are needed. For example, you will see different collectibles just out of the reach of your jump. In the skill tree, there is an unlock for a double jump.nnI mentioned earlier the game is repetitive and that goes for all aspects of it. You will be fighting the same enemies over and over again and most of the boss fights with a couple of exceptions are just normal enemies with more health, they don’t do anything different. Again, that didn’t stop the fun since all the combat was fun to play.n

nPlaying on iOS I did have some performance issues. I have an iPhone Pro Max so at the time of writing this, the latest iPhone (Update: The iPhone 12 acted the same way). This is the first game that I noticed made my phone heat up an extreme amount. I could not play this game for long sessions without a controller because it became uncomfortable to hold. There are some fights that put a lot of enemies on screen at once, during these battles the game really struggled. The frame rate would drop or stutter and movement would become sluggish. It was never enough to be game breaking but it was enough to notice.nnVerdictnnSamurai Jack Battle Through Time is a fun combat focused game. Yes, it’s repetitive but when fighting is as fun as it is here, you don’t mind. Some performance issues also held this one back but overall I do recommend this game. Even if you only have an iPhone and no controller this is an approachable one.nnFinal Score 7/10

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For more on games be sure to check out my Monthly Mobile Game Report. For reviews take a look at my review on Halo Reach and Super Bomberman R.nn