While the original game used cartoonish sprites and a modest amount of bleeding, Blood Warrior tries to cash in on the success of Mortal Kombat by using digitized sprites and adding even more gore.
This game contains examples of:
- A Winner Is You: Beating the game rewards you with a screen of your character posing that reads "CONGRATULATION."
- Action Girl: Kasumi, the sole female of the cast.
- Ambiguously Human: Ikkyu. He bleeds like the rest of the cast, but it's hard to tell if he's a living statue or just wearing a mask.
- Badass Adorable: Kasumi, who looks surprisingly cute for a kunoichi.
- Bloodier and Gorier: Compared to Shogun Warrior.
- Expy: Most of the cast is based on characters from the previous game.
- Kinshirō, based on Samurai, who was in turn based on Tōyama no Kin-san.
- Arashi, based on Ninja.
- Sanpei, based on Kappa, who also happens to play like an ice-elemental Dhalsim.
- Syūgethu, based on Shogun.
- Shishimaru, based on Kabuki.
- Benkei, based on Musashibō Benkei and the boss character of the same name.
- Goemon, based on Ishikawa Goemon and is also based on the boss character of the same name.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Finishing moves can either split an opponent in half vertically or leave them a pair of legs with a geyser of blood gushing out.
- Laser Blade: Syūgethu has two of them.
- Moveset Clone: Kinshirō and Syūgethu. Interestingly enough, their projectile moves have different inputs.
- Ninja: Arashi and Kasumi.
- Noblewoman's Laugh: Kasumi's victory quote.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Nine characters based on Japanese culture fight to the death. No other explanation necessary.
- Prehensile Hair: Shishimaru can whip his hair at opponents and even grab people with it.
- The Protagonist: According to Kaneko, they marketed Kinshirō as the protagonist.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The game is set in feudal Japanese times, yet most of the background music is rock music.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You have the option to leave your opponent a gory mess. Sure, you could spare them, but what's the point?
- Wolverine Claws: Kasumi wields a pair of them.
- World of Ham: The victory quotes demonstrate this.
- Your Head Asplode: Inverted with one of the finishing moves of each character, which leaves an opponent nothing more than a pile of blood and entrails, with their severed head perfectly intact.
