Kenkaku Ibunroku: Yomigaerishi Souku no Yaiba: Samurai Spirits Shinshou, is the seventh game in SNK's Samurai Shodown series of fighting games.This release from the fighting game experts at SNK continues the sword battles of the Samurai Shodown series. Though a straight action fighting game at its core, Warrior's Rage features undeniable elements of role-playing.

The game's story mode has players fighting through a series of related contests on their way toward the final "shodown" with three super-tough bosses.

Even the more arcade-like battle mode allows players to earn points which can be used to build up their characters' offensive or defensive skills. Many battles challenge the player with multiple opponents in a row, requiring consistency and balance to endure through to the final fight.

Kenkaku Ibunroku: Yomigaerishi Souku no Yaiba: Samurai Spirits Shinshou takes place 20 years later, with a dramatically revamped cast, and was released solely for the Sony PlayStation. Though other SS games have followed it, it is chronologically the last game in the series, and is the only game in the series proper to not get an arcade release.

The first and most audacious change is the revamped character roster, which removed every playable character from previous games, with the exception of Haohmaru, who was now a middle-aged man, sporting a beard and missing his trademark mop of black hair. Hanzo Hattori also appeared, though it was not actually the same man, but rather the original Hanzo's son, Shinzo, who had assumed his name. Nicotine Caffeine, Nakoruru and Rimururu also played a role in the story, but were not in a playable form. Every other character was a new design

The game introduced a new lifebar system, which was subdivided into three sections. The first "round" of the fight lasted until one person was drained of all three sections, upon which one section of the bar would disappear, and the remaining two would refill. Once those two were drained, the second section would be dropped, with the last one refilled. This was punctuated by a pause in the action, during which the other player would go through a taunt animation. The match was finally over when one player had been drained of this last section of life.