Showa American Story Hands-On: Retro Pop Culture RPG Struggles With Combat Feel

Five years after its initial reveal in 2021, Showa American Story has finally resurfaced with a playable demo that lives up to its delightfully bizarre premise. Creative Director Xiangyu Luo describes the game as "an RPG overflowing with retro pop culture," set in an alternate late-'80s where Japan bought up most of the United States, effectively colonizing it economically and culturally. Players control Choko Chigusa, a girl brought back from the dead, as she embarks on a road trip across this strange version of America. The two-hour hands-on session covered four distinct segments — a linear story-and-combat section, camp exploration at the RV base, open-map exploration, and a massive boss fight — offering the clearest picture yet of what this eccentric action RPG is actually trying to achieve.

The premise alone makes Showa American Story stand out in a crowded action RPG landscape. Where most games in the genre lean into grimdark fantasy or sterile sci-fi, this one doubles down on a specific cultural collision: Showa-era Japanese aesthetics smashed into Reagan-era Americana. The result is a world where you can wield a literal American flag as a polearm. For players exhausted by the same medieval castles and space stations, the sheer specificity of this setting feels like a breath of fresh, weird air. The question has always been whether the gameplay could match the concept's ambition.

The Rage Cycle and Weapon Variety

Combat revolves around a strategic "Rage Cycle" that demands more attention than the typical action RPG resource meter. Dealing or taking damage builds a Rage meter that converts into Rage Points capped at five, but weapon types generate Rage at drastically different rates. Barehanded weapons — including gauntlets, brass knuckles, and the Wolverine-esque "Wolf Fang Vajra Claws" — build Rage fastest while dealing the lowest damage. Katanas like the legendary Mikazuki Munechika offer the deepest moveset with five distinct stances triggered by specific attack combinations: High Stance, Yin-Yang Stance, Matsukaze Stance, Reversed Hasso Stance, and Fudoshin Stance. Polearms grant Super Armor and wide sweeps at the cost of massive stamina consumption, while Drills restrict sprinting but deliver astronomical damage through linear thrusts that pierce enemies.

Rage Points fuel three critical systems that define the combat flow. Ultimates consume three points for barehanded weapons or five for katanas, unleashing massive damage. Chain Attacks — comparable to the Flash Attack in the Nioh series — spend one point to instantly swap weapons mid-combo with zero recovery frames, letting you juggle your arsenal despite notoriously slow standard weapon swaps. Perfect Dodge and Super Recovery each cost one point: the former triggers via R1 + Dodge for a follow-up chain, while the latter activates when a heavy hit triggers a slow-motion window, allowing a counter-attack. The ideal loop involves building Rage quickly with fists, spending it for damage, but always keeping one point reserved to swap back and rebuild. Stamina adds another layer — running out doesn't paralyze you but drops defense significantly, creating a push-pull rhythm that punishes mindless button-mashing.

Where Combat Feel Falls Short

Despite the mechanical depth on paper, the actual moment-to-moment combat feel is currently rough in ways that undermine the Rage Cycle's potential. Hit-stop on melee strikes is overly pronounced, making combat feel sluggish rather than impactful — each connect freezes the action just long enough to disrupt flow without adding weight. Worse, there's very little actual interaction between player and enemies; it often feels like both sides are swinging through each other rather than clashing. Choko has very low poise and gets staggered easily, yet enemy attack timings are incredibly difficult to read. The Perfect Dodge window is especially baffling — sometimes you need to dodge before an attack even connects, other times it feels like you have to get hit first to trigger it.

These clunky interactions derail the resource management the game asks you to perform. Because enemy attacks are unpredictable, players tend to panic-roll when hit, accidentally triggering Super Recoveries that instantly drain hard-earned Rage Points. The visual presentation compounds the problem — blood and combat effects can be overwhelming to the point of distraction, making it harder to read the already-unclear enemy tells. For a system built on precise resource expenditure and timing, these issues aren't minor polish problems; they strike at the core of whether the combat loop feels fair or frustrating. The comparison to Dynasty Warriors-sized hordes only amplifies the concern: when you're surrounded by dozens of enemies with unreadable attacks and low poise, the gap between the game's mechanical ambition and its current execution becomes painfully obvious.

RPG Systems and Camp Life

Outside combat, Showa American Story reveals a surprisingly solid progression framework. XP levels up core stats in real-time — Health, Stamina, Rage, Defense, Melee, and Shooting — while granting Battle Points to open up character skills. Weapons feature six detailed stats (Base Power, Rage Generation, Break Application, Crit Rate, Crit Multiplier, and Stamina Consumption) and can be upgraded to level five using US Dollars and parts, with seven buff slots for customization. Accessories provide further stat boosts, and outfit changes are available — though the preview notes most are highly revealing. The RV base "Guren" serves as a first-person exploration hub where pressing R3 lets you talk to companions, decorate, and manage an Action Point system. AP earned from world activities (looting, talking to NPCs) funds camp activities like drinking soda, working out, or bathing — each requiring specific facilities and consumables like bathtubs and bath salts — which grant XP for Melee and Rage stats plus resistances to eight status effects including burn, shock, and poison.

The camp system's granularity is impressive in a genre that often treats rest mechanics as afterthoughts. Having to physically acquire a bathtub and bath salts just to take a stat-boosting bath adds a layer of world-building consistency that matches the game's obsession with retro consumer culture. Finding companions on the street to soak your feet together for max HP increases feels like the kind of oddball side activity the Yakuza series excels at, and the PPT-style slideshow cutscenes — static poses with voice acting but no lip-sync — deliberately evoke retro B-movie aesthetics rather than technical limitation. The environmental detail in the demo supports this: foliage, water, and rocks at a hot spring inn looked incredibly realistic, while a mountain climbing section up Neo Yokohama dripped with nostalgic atmosphere. Open-map shopping streets are meticulously designed, suggesting the exploration side of the road trip structure may be further along than combat.

Where Combat Misses the Mark

For all the detail revealed in the two-hour demo, significant questions linger about the full game. The preview covered four discrete segments but didn't clarify how they connect across a full playthrough — whether the road trip structure is truly open or gated behind story beats, how the RV and camp progression scale over dozens of hours, or whether the technical issues plaguing combat are fundamental to the engine or fixable with polish. The massive boss fight segment was mentioned but not described in detail, leaving the game's marquee encounters a mystery. Music licensing — noted as a significant investment given the era-specific soundtrack — raises questions about regional availability and long-term preservation. And the story's tone, described as rivaling the wackiest Yakuza substories with dark humor, internet memes, and concepts like a "Zombie Human Rights Association," could either sustain a full narrative or wear thin depending on writing quality across the complete campaign.

Showa American Story arrives at a fascinating inflection point for Chinese AAA single-player development. Its eccentric identity is undeniable — few games would let you wield an American flag as a polearm while managing a Rage Cycle that demands spreadsheet-level optimization mid-combo. But identity alone doesn't make a game playable, and the combat roughness on display suggests the five-year gap since reveal wasn't just marketing silence. If the hit-stop, enemy readability, and visual clutter can be resolved before launch, the systems underneath have genuine depth and a unique rhythm worth mastering. If not, the game risks becoming a curiosity — a wildly imaginative world wrapped around a combat loop that fights the player as much as the enemies do. For now, the road trip continues, but the vehicle needs serious mechanical work before it's ready for the highway.