Both types of tamahagane are now exactly where they need to be: the hard steel forms the sword's outer shell and deadly blade, while the tough steel serves as the katana's core. This perfect balance of properties is what made the katana the samurai's most durable and prized weapon.
Coating the katana While the katana's body is now complete, the swordsmith's work is far from over. Just prior to firing the sword a final time, he paints a thick, insulating mixture of clay and charcoal powder onto the blade's upper sides and dull back edge, leaving the sword's sharp front edge only lightly coated. This serves both to protect the blade and to give it its signature wavy design called the hamon , which later polishing will reveal.
Curving the blade Next, the smith pulls the katana from the fire and plunges it into a trough of water in a rapid cool-down process called "quenching. The difference in both the degree and speed of contraction between the two forms of tamahagane causes the sword to bend, creating the distinctive curve.
This is a tricky stage, in which as many as one in three swords is lost. Polishing the blade The katana, fully forged, now goes to a skilled sword polisher, who may spend more than two weeks honing the sword's razor-sharp edge. Sometimes called "water stones," these tools are typically composed of hard silicate particles suspended in clay. As the clay slowly wears away during use, more silicate particles are revealed, guaranteeing excellent polishing quality throughout the life of the stone.
Each consecutive set of polishing stones contains finer and finer silicate particles and removes less and less of the steel. Adding final touches In the final stage, metalworkers add a decorated guard of iron or other metals at the sword's hilt.
The trope is hilariously and frustratingly inverted when grates that can be knocked open with a mere pistol cannot be opened with the most powerful sword in history. All three of the Dark Souls games include a variety of different katanas. They're faster than other swords due to being in the dexterity category of weaponry, and many of them also have a small number of other abilities. Another From Software game, Bloodborne , also has a katana weapon, the Chikage which scales with Bloodtinge, damage increasing the higher you go.
In Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night , Katanas have the highest number of learnable techniques out of any weapon class by far, though their normal attack is a bit slow and has a weird hitbox. By the end of the game this probably won't matter since you'll probably have enough MP and MP regen to spam techniques as much as you want. The Dark Spire has an example similar to Baldur's Gate above, where it deals d10 damage. Thing is, it only has a natural 1 d10 on it, inverting this early on since the 2d6 estoc does more damage on average.
Later on, when you have more innate attacks on your characters, having a mere 1 on the weapon compared to a 2 or 3 doesn't mean as much when you have five rolls in addition to what the weapon provides. Katanas obtained by drops are similar - they give only one additional attack die instead of the two or three other weapons give, but they have such a high die roll that they end up outclassing the other ones.
Lastly, they're the only weapon type that provides an instant kill on crit regardless of the class using it. Dead Island has these as a rare weapon, with one being obtained for killing The Butcher of Banoi. High damage, fast strikes, long range, and effective at slicing apart anyone in the game, only offset by low durability and high repair and upgrade costs. In the hands of Xian it's a Game-Breaker , with even more damage, high stamina, a One-Hit Kill skill and buffs including more experience for slicing off limbs.
In the Devil May Cry series, Dante, the main character, wields as his primary weapons a broadsword and twin pistols. He amasses numerous other weapons, both melee and firearms, in each game.
His brother and Worthy Opponent , Vergil, uses a katana and has eschewed firearms as being beneath him. When Dante does get his hands on a katana, incidentally his brother's old "Yamato", he is less competent with it than with any of the other weapons, demonstrated as a tiny moveset.
Nero's Devil Trigger spirit uses a version of Vergil's with considerable reach and grants moves superior to those Nero can do without it. Heck, Yamato itself is a plot device in the fourth and fifth game. It's just that awesome. Not to mention a whole lot of people are 'handed' the sword throughout the course of the series and get a taste of its awesomeness. In the original Diablo I , greatswords are modeled after the katana.
They're the most powerful swords in the game, on paper, but generally ill-advised to wield nonetheless, because they're two-handed weapons and as such you cannot have a shield with one On the other hand, the unique greatsword called The Grandfather, which can be wielded one-handed , is seen as one of the most powerful weapons in the game.
In DOTA 2 , Juggernaut uses a katana and is very effective with it, able to spin around, do critical damage, and even enter an invulnerable state. He is one of the best " carries " at getting kills in the early game.
However, other sword-wielding carries, such as Phantom Assassin and Chaos Knight, deal higher critical damage and can potentially hit much harder than Juggernaut with the same amount of late game farm. You also have the Yasha, a katana one can build.
It gives a good boost to agility and speed. However, it's only really a transitional item that builds into other items, most of which AREN'T katanas. There are two katanas in Drakengard , Nobuyoshi and Takamasa, and they both do good damage, have decent range, and have useful magic attacks, qualifying them as among the best weapons in the game. They are outclassed by certain other swords though. However, due to this very trope katanas were removed as ordinary item, leaving just a mediocre fixed artefact.
Parodied in Dungeons of Dredmor. The description of the Katana claims "All the best stuff is made in Japan" but there are better swords for raw damage. The Katana is still the best one you can craft and the hardest for enemies to dodge, however, so it's good for some characters. In a very weird case of Anachronism Stew , Zhou Tai of Dynasty Warriors is often shown carrying what is a katana in all but name, in 2nd-century China. His weapon has, among other things, great speed, good reach, a wide area of effect, and respectable power, making him something of a Lightning Bruiser among the other characters in the game.
This carries over to Warriors Orochi , where he manages to outdo the Japanese warriors who would be expected to use katana. It's sister series, Samurai Warriors downplays this. While a few characters do use Katanas, they're only a small fraction of the game's playable cast. The Elder Scrolls : In the series' Backstory , katanas were favored weapons of the Akaviri invaders who attacked Tamriel in the late 1st Era.
Though they were defeated, they influenced Tamriellic culture and the katana stayed as a prominent weapon, especially among the Blades. Malacath, the Daedric Prince of the Spurned and Ostracized and patron deity of the Orcs , is typically depicted as wielding a large two-handed blade, like a dai-katana.
Despite this, the artifact weapons most associated with him are the mace Scourge and the warhammer Volendrung. Morrowind plays this trope straight, as the strongest non-unique swords in the game are Daedric dai-katanas. There is also an enchanted artifact sword Goldbrand, which, along with its hard to find upgraded version , Eltonbrand, is a one-handed katana.
Oblivion also plays this straight. Akaviri katanas are lighter and do more damage than regular steel swords, making them a great lower-tier option. Goldbrand makes another appearance as one of the strongest one-handed weapons in the game. The Ebony Blade, a legendary Daedric artifact weapon, can be powered up and becomes one of the strongest weapons in the game. It is a two-handed katana. Fable : A katana is more powerful than any other melee weapon of the same material.
One-handed weapons anyway. The greatsword does more damage, has greater range, and can hit multiple enemies with one swing, but it moves much slower. The sequel completely reversed this, making the Katana class the weakest melee weapons in the game and the fastest. Although the katana among the legendary weapons does more damage than any other one-handed melee weapon.
Fallout : In the Fallout 3 add-on "Mothership Zeta," you can find a katana that belongs to a samurai that was kidnapped by the aliens. If you give it back to him, he'll slaughter the advanced aliens. If you keep it, it is easily in the top-tier of melee weapons in terms of damage, only falling behind for lack of perks boosting its power. Unsurprisingly, it is more than just a normal sword: it does double damage, meaning it's easier to chew through the later-game super mooks with. The only justifiable reason that the spirit of Lord Himuro from Fatal Frame was able to attack you with a ghost katana.
Subverted trope in Final Fantasy Tactics ; the samurai class and katana become available fairly late compared with basic western equivalents, but are nothing special in gameplay or narrative terms. The top of the heap are the Knight Swords higher attack and powerful passive benefits and the special character Knight classes that use them.
Either that, or a Monk using their bare fists. Final Fantasy Tactics A2 doesn't have Katanas as a stronger weapon type in general although the Hyakushiki-masamune is tied with the Tournesol for the best Attack, not counting the Sequencer , but the skills learned from them, most notably Dual Wield, are much more powerful.
And by extension, the katana-wielding Paravir is easily the most physically powerful close range class. Ninjas less so, but they have the best speed growths of any hume class they are both Glass Cannon classes, though. Although the Samurai and Ninja are very powerful classes, that can overpower the rest when properly utilized, katanas and ninja swords are atrociously weak. In Final Fantasy XIV , katanas are the weapons of choice for the Samurai class, however, they end up being just as useful as all the other DPS weapons, so there's nothing special about them.
For a villainous example, we got Stormblood 's main villain, Zenos yae Galvus, whose main weapons are Doman-made katanas.
And he uses them to whoop the Warrior of Light's ass. Fire Emblem : The series goes back and forth with the Killing Edge; it is a katana in some games, but not in others. There's a recurring weapon known as the Wo Dao which is slightly weaker or equal in Might to a Killing Edge, with slightly higher crit rate. In Path of Radiance it essentially takes the place of the Wo Dao.
In Radiant Dawn it's the strongest sword in terms of raw power, but gives a lower stat bonus and lacks extra bonuses like Ragnell and Alondite's ranged attacks or Amiti's extra attacks.
In Fire Emblem Fates , katanas became their own weapon subtype. Compared to regular swords, they provide a small boost to user's speed at the cost of lowering their defense, making this trope either played straight or averted depending on the individual characters, rather than as a whole. Ryoma's legendary sword Raijinto and the S-ranked sword Hagakure Blade are both katanas, and while the Avatar's Yato doesn't look the part, it is classified in game as one.
Fossil Fighters has Mihu, a vivosaur based on a Japanese ceratopsian. It resembles a small Triceratops with katanas for horns. And it's considered part of a special "Japanese vivosaur" set that can use one of the most powerful and expensive team skills in the game.
However, the chainsaw does much more damage to objects like cars than the katana. Gungnir actually inverts this. Katanas are not only the worst weapon in the game, but they can only be used by two classes, and even then only to counter, assuming you figure out how to even do so.
Even the joke weapons on Nightmare difficulty are better than them. In Hotline Miami , a katana is one of the better melee weapons you can find, having both good reach and speed damage being unimportant since everything dies in one hit.
In La-Mulana the Katana deals good damage, is about as fast as the whip, and has a very effective hit area. Unless you figure out how to completely power up the whip , you'll be using the katana as your main weapon with some Axe thrown in for overhead enemies once you get it.
Left 4 Dead 2 features melee weapons including the katana, which slices zombies up quite well only the machete and police baton can be swung faster, and alongside the golf clubs from The Passing that share its stats it has the widest reach.
It might seem odd at first to find katanas all over the Deep South, but they're probably one of the most common swords around thanks to their popularity as bric-a-brac. On the other hand, the characters don't know what to make of all the cricket bats they find.
Katanas appear a few times in the The Legend of Zelda series, though with varying effectiveness. Link can easily block the blades of the rank-and-file members with his shield, but the Garo Masters can channel fire and ice magic through their swords and will quickly overwhelm unwary players. Appropriately, he is a Lightning Bruiser who can take on both Link and the bow-wielding Zelda at once.
The only character who has a katana is Peater, who has undergone severe Badass Decay and does't use it for anything except cutting bamboo. Link carries the knightly longsword known as the Goddess Sword throughout the game and derives several magical abilities from it.
It becomes the Master Sword later on. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild subverts this in terms of plot and gameplay. It is mentioned that Hylians could not become accustomed to the katanas wielded by the Sheikah, who had to learn new smithing techniques.
The katanas that Link can use in the game, such as the Eightfold Blade, also have limitations. They are advertised in their descriptions as having the sharpest conventional blades and they are a step up from the initial weapons, but they can be outclassed by future ones.
There is also the Windcleaver, a two-handed katana dropped by high-ranking members of the antagonistic Yiga Clan. It is saved from complete uselessness by the game treating all combat as point blank. In Lords of Xulima katanas are hands down the best weapon type in the swords category, with good speed, massive bleed damage and solid hitting power.
In MapleStory , the Red Katana weapon is regarded as one of the fastest weapons in the game. Capcom 3 both Vergil and Dante are in the game. Vergil is a far more powerful character compared with Dante. His katana slashes do far more damage than Dante's guns, and it requires far more combos by Dante to dominate a character compared with Vergil who uses all kinds of Katana based special attacks.
In the hands of a good player, Vergil can be just as powerful as Phoenix, especially using X Factor, hence most pro-gamers using Vergil as part of their main team when competing. In Mass Effect 3 , Cerberus Phantoms and Kai Leng wield katanas, and Phantoms are incredibly agile and hard to hit while Kai Leng has the strongest shields in the game, making them both very formidable enemies. Later inverted with the same character in Mega Man Zero : the katana shape remains the same until halfway through the series, where it becomes a more triangular shape.
Metal Gear Solid : The "ninja" characters all wield a vibrating " High Frequency blade " that looks like a katana. These high-tech blades can deflect bullets and slice through steel like butter. Since these ninjas are all cyborgs or wearing Powered Armor that grants them super strength and reflexes, and their swords are presumably made of Applied Phlebotinum , the trope is somewhat justified.
For most of the game he mainly relies on the Super Strength and Combat Tentacles of his Powered Armor , and even uses a gun sometimes, but he unsheathes his swords to engage in a climactic Sword Fight with the protagonist Raiden, who by this point has taken up a katana. In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance , Raiden's high-frequency blade is styled after a katana, and Samuel, his rival, has a genuine katana modified into a HF blade , and due to it being a centuries-old sword crafted by a master swordsmith , the enhancement makes it one of the most powerful HF blades created.
In Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae , Misa fights demons and monsters with a katana. The katana however runs on a Katana Meter which is not only used for basic blade strikes upgrades reduces its consumption rate , but also special attacks such as Iai Strike and Divine Wind techniques. Suzuka, Misa's friend and former classmate, however, is possessed by an evil artifact known as the Demon Blade, a katana that steals the blood and life-force of its wielder.
Teddy of Mother 1 is the only one able to equip the Katana, the game's most powerful weapon. The katana is the single most powerful melee weapon in Mother Russia Bleeds , capable of killing multiple enemies in a single swing.
The only downsides are that it's found in only one location in the game kept at the government HQ in a glass case and the game ups the ante immediately after you get it by throwing dozens upon dozens of mooks at you at once. Subverted because comparable buyable weapons are statistically better, and can even have positive modifiers, which the secret weapons can't have, due to being unbuyable.
Due to being free, relatively easy to locate, and more powerful than most gear that can be found at low levels, they make fine Disc One Nukes , but fall well short of late-game gear. In NetHack , while the Katana is certainly the strongest vanilla longsword, the Artifact katana Snickersnee is outclassed by more impressive traditional longswords like Fire and Ice Brand, as well as the special longsword Excalibur, as it only offers bonuses to hit and minor damage, as opposed to automatic improved searching and level drain resistance like Excalibur, or the double damage against non-resistant enemies like Fire and Ice Brand.
However, the Samurai quest Artifact, the Tsurugi of Muramasa, is indeed a fearsome weapon that can bisect non-gigantic creatures, it's only drawback being that it is a two-handed weapon specifically, a broadsword-type.
Both Neverwinter Nights games have katanas, but they are just as powerful as other swords in their tier. However, possibly a nod to Baldur's Gate, a certain katana called Divine Fury does electrical damage.
The names of the special katana also tend to be a bit cooler and more exotic than the other special weapons, i. In Ninja Blade , one of the three weapons available to you is a katana. Also the eponymous Ninja Blade is also a katana. A katana with a blade made of the protagonist's own blood. This unassuming though still legendary Katana is the Jack-of-All-Stats , which in the context of the series makes it an incredibly reliable weapon in every situation.
There are plenty of weapons that hit harder or faster, but the Dragon Sword will never be rendered obsolete due to its versatility. It helps that the sword gets a plot driven boost in most of the games. No More Heroes : Travis' best Energy Weapon is a beam katana, stronger than all others, never running out of energy with the right upgrade, and somehow curved despite being a beam of light emitted from a single point.
It also has the ability to split into three blades to hit a wider arc during one of his Finishing Moves. III is the only one that resembles the name. Also, the Mk. II is more powerful than the Mk. The game is close to the ultimate example of this trope given you play a loser who becomes an assassin simply because he won a beam katana on the Internet. The game especially reinforces how great katanas are given the diversity and craziness of your opponents' weapons.
Thunder Ryu is at one point shown using a weapon called the "D. While the player doesn't get to see much awesomeness from it in-game Thunder Ryu blocks one or two of Speed Buster's Wave-Motion Gun -type attacks with it, but then gets hit and killed by another one , it's the weapon you get to make the aforementioned Mk. III out of after Travis retrieves it at the end of the stage it shows up in. Shinobu uses a classical katana in both games. She definitely plays the trope straight in the first where she is frequently considered one of the hardest fights if you don't know how to handle her.
Of course, the game is pretty much satirising this trope, given that even Death Metal's giant straight razor thing is classified as a "katana". Nuclear Throne actually averts this, but later plays it straight. Chicken's beloved katana is actually one of the weakest melee weapons in the game, but if the player leaves it behind and loops the game, it can be upgraded into the Black Sword.
While it's still not the most powerful thing around, it still packs a decent punch and gets much stronger during Chicken's Time-Delayed Death. Amusingly true of things named Katana as well. The Katana HAR of One Must Fall is considered one of the best robots in the game, being fast, powerful, and with good reach as well possessing tons of invincibility frames and an enormous damage radius because of the huge monomolecular blades it has instead of hands.
In the face of robots with rocket launchers, grenades, flamethrowers, Eye Beams , Hard Light clones, intangibility, and the ability freeze time itself , a Katana's blades are demonstrably superior—it has the second highest tier rating in the game.
Not only are they quick and powerful, but they can be used to block and counter foes. However, some Katanas more closely resemble rapiers or longswords and some even have scabbards resembling shields, and those weapons may be better in quality than the weapons that actually look like katanas depending on the player's current gear.
In addition, the available Weapon Camo options allow the player to invoke or avert this trope. Despite being a decidedly ordinary-looking Japanese katana in stark contrast to all of the futuristic sci-fi weaponry in the game, it's rumored to have enough power to destroy a planet, and is kept sealed at all times.
He uses it to one-shot Dark Falz Loser. In Princess Maker 2 katanas are better than Mithril swords! Sorta subverted in the MMO Ragnarok Online where the basic Katana has the lowest base attack and weapon level of it's weapon class unless you use the card system to power it up a certain way then it becomes formable however some other swords of Japanese origin are quite powerful weapons. Played straight in '' Robo Pit ". The slashing class of weapons includes axes, scythes, and swords, but the 'Blade' is the best of them all.
While it has a lower Power rating than the rest, it has insanely high speed, and allows for four heavy slashes before an enemy is knocked away whereas the other slashing weapons only allow two heavy attacks before knocking your opponent back. This makes for -much- faster K.
In case there was any doubt the 'Blade' was modeled off of a katana, the only enemy bot you can obtain it from is the Special Robot named Samurai. In Rogue at least some versions, such as iRogue for Palm , the katana is the most powerful stock weapon available and is essentially a necessity in the deeper dungeons. The easiest way to get one is with a "create object" scroll, as actual katanas on the dungeon floor are very rare.
It involves dashing past the opponent while cutting them and then they fly up into the air. Its stronger versions are The Surge and Surging Headwind, the latter of which incorporates ice into the attack. Sadly, these eat up a lot of Battle Points which are required to use techniques. Rune Factory Frontier has katanas classified as double-handed weapons. They have a slightly better range than other Two-handed swords, and they can stun enemies.
While the Agility-based weapons sort of win out because they increase Agility and thus your chances of hitting faster late-game opponents, the European sword Excalibur "XCalibur" is the only weapon in the game that will never break. In the third game, which follows a more traditional inventory system, the Excalibur is simply the strongest "Mystic Weapon", with the katana Masamune in second place. Zigzagged in SaGa Frontier. The strongest katana is only the fifth-strongest sword in the game, and it is only available as a rare drop against certain enemies except in a couple scenarios, but there are sword techniques only available to those using a katana and many sword techniques are slightly easier to learn with a katana rather than a regular sword.
Katanas are favored by the Ronin in Saints Row 2 , and it's one of the better melee weapons The Boss can wield. Although, the end of the second battle subverts the trope quite nicely: Kazuo Akuji : Did you really think you could match my skill?
The Boss: No Visual Novels. The weapon's great reach, his excellent skills, and a nigh-undodgeable ultimate technique make him a very difficult recurring opponent to the Western swordswoman protagonist, Saber. This technique isn't even really a special, unique skill like the other Servants have — He's just that good.
When he duels Saber and her magic Western longsword, he can only parry her blows, since blocking them would damage his nodachi while leaving Saber's own sword undamaged. When he's forced to block one of her attacks anyways, the resulting bend on his sword leaves a fatal opening in his strongest sword attack, which Saber naturally exploits to defeat him.
It belonged to one of her victims, and she took it up to emulate a hero from one of her child's fairytales. Web Animation. Main character Snowball from Bunnykill has a katana as his trademark weapon. But he uses many more weapons in the series. Still, the match belongs to Hiryu. Subverted in a Vocaloid MikuMikuDance video. Backward Compatible cites this very site and page in a strip about Left 4 Dead 2 , but then suggests that a swung guitar is even better. Boxer Hockey : Daisuke, who is Japanese, defends his honor with a katana when he was promised a win with pay by Skip, and lost the game.
Demon Hunter Kain : Kain's abilities include conjuring a Tanto out of thin air, and upgrading it into a katana. Electric Wonderland has two characters with katanas: NJ who doesn't use his that often and Natasha Wing whose katana doubles as a Laser Blade.
In a flashback scene in Everyday Heroes , Jane's mother a former ninja protests that Jane is old enough to get a katana for Christmas which is the cue for a shout-out to A Christmas Story. In Harkovast , a battle is looking dire for one side until an ally shows up and defeats the enemy with little effort.
Of course, unlike the other combatants that were losing their lives on the battlefield, he wields a katana! In Homestuck , several characters use swords regularly and all use katanas, though it's usually subverted: Dave's katana breaks during a fight with Bro. His stronger swords are based off of European ones. Jack's own sword, despite being a katana when Jade prototyped the crow, is more of a generic sword shape than anything else, and he beats Bro by killing him with his own sword.
Played straight with Bro's sword, which is unbreakable and capable of slicing meteors in half. This also applies to his post-scratch self, who wields the same katana. Spoofed when Dirk Strider claims his katana was forged over the heat of " a roaring manga fire ".
Considering that tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands were produced throughout Japan's history, that's a pretty astounding number. Another reason the traditional Japanese katana is regarded as being the world's best sword is that they were forged using differential heat treatment.
This involves heating and cooling the katana's spine and edge at different rates, thereby creating a stronger edge and a more flexible spine.
Finally, the traditional Japanese katana had the perfect composition of metals. In the early days of Japan's bladesmithing craft, swords and bladed weapons were produced with basic, low-carbon steel. However, swordsmiths discovered that adding carbon to their swords resulted in a stronger blade.
This led to the development of tamahagane steel -- a high-carbon steel that was used to make traditional Japanese swords like the katana. Sold Out. Japanese Katanas.
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