by Escape Hunt Liverpool (website)
Atlantic Pavilion, Albert Dock, Liverpool, L3 4AE
2-6 players
Languages: EN
60 minutes
Step into ancient Japan, where the imperial emperor has ordered you, his most trusted samurai warriors, to defeat the evil warlord Tanaka Masamune.
But be warned, Tanaka is no ordinary enemy; he is protected by a powerful curse that makes him invincible to even the strongest warrior. The only way to beat him is to steal the magic stone from the handle of his sword – but first you must escape from the dungeon his henchmen have thrown you into.
You have one hour to break free and complete your mission; any longer and you pay – with a fate worse than death.
Overall rating
based on ratings from 65 users
combined with 5 pro reviews
Your review
Player reviews
Diabolical. Disaster of game. That's all I can say.
First game at Escape hunt and probably the last. In fairness, the host was great but the room was terrible. It wasn’t an escape room, more so a series of time wasting tasks in which when you completed it, the operator pressed a button for you. Props in the room were very well used, and for a higher priced game, is not really acceptable.
If you like your traditional escape rooms - Avoid Escape hunt. Their rooms are more like treasure hunts and series of tasks...
This was our first Escape hunt experience, and was absolutely dreadful. Things were broken, the room was a bit tatty and the puzzles were just plain. One puzzle couldn't be completed and the host physically had to come to the room to solve the puzzle for us.
It is very obvious that EH caters to the family market and doesn't really care if you're a fan of the traditional experience.
On the positive note; our host was lovely.
Not bad and it looks nice but there's not a huge amount to do if you're an experienced team.
We made the mistake to attempt this room in their first week of opening. Tech was broken, some locks were open, some clues were placed in the wrong locations. We just had an absolute nightmare.
If you're visiting Escape Hunt, I'd highly recommend their other rooms that are excellent.
The best samurai room I've played, mainly because its the only samurai room I've played. Some good set pieces and some good tech elements. One puzzle was still incredibly confusing looking back and I doubt it could have been solved in five hours if we didn't ask for some help.
I liked the theming, but the room was let down by a lot of broken puzzles, and the GM had to come in twice to fix things.
Reviews by escape room review sites
I'd add a warning that this is a room well suited to playing as a pair, which could work less with with a bigger group - an early puzzle could become a frustrating bottleneck, since it's potentially time consuming and can only be tackled by one person at a time, and the rest is fairly linear. Most enthusiast pairs will also find it an entirely approachable level of difficulty.
Playing the same game on a later occasion and in a different location (Oxford), I found the aesthetics quietly appealin...
I have to admit, The Fourth Samurai wasn’t ever going to be my immediate choice of the Escape Hunt games
Escape Hunt- The Fourth Samurai
July 2023
Overview
This was our first visit to Escape Hunt. Escape hunt is well know across Exeter and with a number of rooms to chose from, we decided to give one of their more challenging rooms a try as our first attempt, The Fourth Samurai.
The location is easy to find in the middle of the city. There is some public parking nearby with a short 5 minute walk to the venue. You enter into a multi sport bar with axe throwing and darts downstairs. We approached the main desk and were escorted upstairs to the games area where we were greeted by our host for the game.
The briefing area and waiting area is actually quite small and compact for the number of rooms they have available. It is clear that the focus at Escape Hunt is quick turnaround to maximise profit instead of customer experience. Whilst we were receiving our brief in the corridor, two separate parties had to squeeze through us, interrupting the brief and this caused us to lose a little interest into the experience before we had even started. One of us was nominated as group leader where they were the only one who could see when walking in and we were taken into room where we began our mission.
Room impression
The first thing to mention is larger groups will struggle in this room. We are a team of 4 and the beginning of the game was a real struggle for us. Only one of you can really start the game and it left us quite frustrated. Once we had a good look around the room, the background music and decoration did help us immerse us into the game somewhat but when we started going trough the puzzles and getting a closer look at detail, the room was actually quite tired and you could make out where old games had been adapted because of breakage etc. This did let the room down as it did have real promise and I dare say when it was new, it would have been quite an impressive room.
Puzzles
The first puzzle frustrated us, me in particular a lot. They gave us the option to just skip the puzzle and they would let us move on. This started the room off in a slightly negative tone for us and made us feel like there was no point int he puzzle if we can just move on. The puzzles had a linear approach where it felt as if there was enough for all 4 of us to do. There were a few sticking points that had us scratching our heads. Due to the theme of the room, padlocks were a no show with many combination locks and puzzles taking centre stage. The different areas of the game opened up different aspects of the story which was a nice touch and kept the theme flowing throughout.
Game Master Clues
There was no timer in the room so we were unsure how long we had during our game and a couple of times where we became stuck, there was a quiet voice that came over the room to point us in the right direction with a screen. There seemed to be a slight delay in some of the ‘happenings’ in the room after we had completed a puzzle so this did suggest to us that our game master was overseeing another room as well. We might be wrong but our previous experience in rooms does lead us to this conclusion. This isn’t the end of the world as long as the room flows properly, this felt a little sluggish at points.
Round Up
We have wanted to try out Escape Hunt for a while after other escape room owners have suggested we give this particle room a try. We would say the room was fun for novices and probably enthusiasts but for pro’s it might be a bit too sluggish and not overly challenging. The company is there to obviously make money but the churning over of customers and lack of customer interaction wasn’t really for us and this showed in the hosting. One to try and we would probably come back to try the other rooms as it was a decent room but there are better out there, particularly in Exeter.
See also
- Escape Hunt Birmingham: The Fourth Samurai (Birmingham)
- Escape Hunt Bristol: The Fourth Samurai (Bristol)
- Escape Hunt Leeds: The Fourth Samurai (Leeds)
- Escape Hunt Oxford: The Fourth Samurai (Oxford)
- Escape Hunt Edinburgh: The Fourth Samurai (Edinburgh) (closed)
- Escape Hunt Manchester: The Fourth Samurai (Manchester)
- Escape Hunt Play At Home: The Fourth Samurai (remote livestream) (not available)
- Escape Hunt Watford: The Fourth Samurai (Watford)
- Escape Hunt Kingston: The Fourth Samurai (Kingston upon Thames)
- Escape Hunt Milton Keynes: The Fourth Samurai (Milton Keynes)
- Escape Hunt Exeter: The Fourth Samurai (Exeter)
- Escape Hunt Edinburgh: The Fourth Samurai (Edinburgh)