A newly appointed counsel to the Shogun, Matsudaira Sadanobu, has been chosen to usher in a new age of reform with the Kansei era. It is 1787, the 7th year of the Tenmei era. The game receives regular updates, primarily DLC characters with the Season Pass.
An arcade version (running on Taito Type X3 hardware with the NESICAxLive2 digital distribution platform) was playable in August at EVO 2019 in Las Vegas and was released in October 2019 in Japan. A PC version has been released on June 11, 2020 via the Epic Games Store. The game was first released in June 2019 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and later ported to the Nintendo Switch and Stadia. The illustrations, in-game artwork and background were mostly done by Yumi Saji while covers were done by Eisuke Ogura. This is also the first SNK game that utilizes Unreal Engine graphics (in this case, Unreal Engine 4). Also it's a prequel for the first Samurai Shodown and the second of the official chronology, succeeding Samurai Shodown V. It's the 12th "mainline" installment of the Samurai Shodown series and the first "mainline" game since 2008's Samurai Shodown Sen, marking an 11-year gap between the releases themselves. Samurai Shodown, known as Samurai Spirits (侍魂 ?) in Japan, is a weapon-based fighting game by SNK released in June 2019.