I can't stress enough how this game was able to take Samurai Champloo style and emulate it so incredibly well. Samurai Champloo is one of my favorite anime series of all time, and for a very good reason. It's a story about three strangers caught in strange circumstances that decided to look after each other as a sort of make shift family. A lot of the show is about how each character interacts with their new environment differently, and how their pasts also help shape their decisions. And while I understand that gushing about the show feels a bit off when we are looking at game to review, it's important to note that the game gets it all right. While most of the time we get the perspective of Mugen, Jin, and Fuu, Fuu is just notably not a fighter, and a game focusing around her just wouldn't be as fun. Enter Warso, someone that has a lot of involvement in the story Sidetracked is trying to tell without actually messing with the dynamic that Jin and Mugen provide.
Sidetracked is a rather barebones hack'n'slasher at heart, and while I understand they have this style mechanic to make fights more interesting it either doesn't work well or doesn't make a lot of sense. Not that this game really has a big problem with it's fighting, just that it insists on both being heavy on combos while also give you a lot of enemies that eat attacks like a health sponge. This problem is further amplified on harder bosses midgame and onward, with a lot of bosses countering basic set-ups you're usually used to. Thankfully a lot of the difficult is also mitigated by the game giving you power ups the more you die, so you're always encourage to keep playing to see if you win next time.
Overall Sidetracked ends up playing more like a longer version of the show, and with the way the anime tells it's story, is probably canon to boot. While I don't think that it will turn any heads with it's game mechanics, the game remains absolutely faithful to the show, and gives some extra content for us Champloo fans