Samurai Warriors

A shift in aesthetics and time period does not suddenly make for a shift in tone or gameplay, but at least it's SOMETHING different, and the character creation was an inspired take on mercenary work which did unfortunately mean you could waste an hour on training them only to fail at the last minute. Overall, a decent but non-essential take on Warriors.

With mediocre reviews and limited exposure, i would never had tried this game out had i not had the habit of buying things for their cover. And actually im really glad i did it in this case. Samurai Warriors is a musou game, much like in a similar vein to Dynasty Warriors, made my the same dev actually. Its a new ip because the two differ on some very minimalistic gameplay aspects, as well as giving the devs freedom to write new characters and a new story.

The plot of Samurai Warriors is about the unification of Japan. There are multiple factions in play and they all have different objectives. Whats really surprising is that vast amount of characters you can play, and they each have a story arc (with 4 or 5 missions) and often have multiple endings. A lot of the battles are repeated though, just played from different sides or as sub commanders of a faction. The story is silly for the most part, filled with cliche revenge plots and terrible voice acting, that none the less manages to be entertaining.

The reason people play these games however is for the gameplay, and while not great it offers fun moments. Each character has a completly unique weapon style, which can be fun to explore. You can also acquire weapon and stat upgrades by completing missions. These games have often a very repetitive side to them, with people repeating the same combo to defeat hundreds of mostly static enemy troops. Thats only really part of the game though, as the other part of the game is knowing where you are the most needed in the battle. It almost makes the game resemble a RTS at times. Since you have no difficulty in mowing down enemy troops, the difficulty of the game is getting the most out of the limited time you are offered. The game can be quite challenging, but playing it in coop makes things much easier. For once your faction leaders wont die to random enemy troopers once your friend controls them. Some missions can last almost an hour if you dont know what you are doing.

Because of all the characters and campaigns, as well as endless towers and searching for better weapons, this game has a lot of replayble value to it. I think it really needs to be played in coop to shine though. Its a solid game, that faulters to a lot of flaws of the genre. I played it a ton back then, probably my most played PS2 game (yea). I dont know whats the point of playing it nowadays though, as the sequeles have much better visuals and im guessing gameplay and story as well. Since i tend to view musou games as sport titles, the logical step if you want to get into the genre would be to seek out the newest entry.