Lister's reviews: Samurai Warriors

[Lister]

Samurai Warriors
PS2
Publisher: Koei
Regio: PAL
Playtime before review: one weekend

Intro:

Samurai Warriors is Koei,Äôs next instalment in their ,Äú-Warriors,Äù series, having milked their ,ÄúDynasty Warriors,Äù franchise completely dry.  In some way Koei reminds me of Electronic Arts, yearly releasing the same game with just minor adjustments,Ķ  And just as fans of sports-games buy the next instalment from EA every year, fans of mindless Hack ,Äôn Slash will gladly purchase the next ,Äú-Warriors,Äù game.



For those of you not familiar with Dynasty Warriors, I,Äôll give a short description of the sort of game.
You play (from 3rd person perspective) a Warrior on a battlefield.  Two armies are clashing, and you are an officer in one of the armies.  You basically  just wade into the enemy lines doing your lawnmower/meatgrinder impression, mainly aiming to kill the enemy officers.  
The more enemy officers you kill, the lower the enemy,Äôs morale, and the crappier the enemy army will do,Ķ
The more allied officers die, the lower your morale, and the faster you see the size of your army dwindling.
Along the road you get some ,Äúmissions,Äù (intercept enemy reinforcements, destroy ballista,Äôs,,Ķ) to swing the tide of the battle in your favor, but are not really necessary to win the battle...  Killing everything in your path still garanties victory in 95% of the battles.
After each battle your character will get some better stats, and maybe a new item or weapon.

As you might have guessed, the basics of the game are identical to Dynasty Warriors.  But instead of using warriors from the Chinese Dynasties, the setting switches to feudal Japan.
This review will therefore focus on the differences between SW and DW4(XL).



General Gameplay:

The game still plays the same as DW, but the main difference is that there are 2 different kinds of levels,Ķ
You got your basic DW battlefield, but next to that you also got some ,Äúcastle,Äù levels.  In a castle level, the entire map is covered with a fog of war, and you quickly have to find your way to the next floor (fighting enemies and dodging traps along the way) on an assassination mission.  There are 4-5 floors in each castle, so at the final floor when the clock is ticking the last 5 minutes and you meet the target for the final battle, things can get a bit hectic.  Castle levels make a nice change from the usual battles, but can be frustrating at times (especially when you have no clue where you,Äôre supposed to go).  Personally I prefer the regular battles,Ķ  Regular battles give more loot.

The ,Äúnew officer creation,Äù is expanded as well (it goes a bit further than the ,Äúchoose name / choose skin / choose weapon,Äù from DW4).  With every new officer you go through a ,Äútraining period,Äù of a year, in which you can choose 12 tutorial-like missions (melee, musou, horse, archery,,Ķ) to increase the stats of your fighter.  If you don,Äôt use a particular stat, you can skip that mission and spend an extra month on a stat you do like.  Between training sessions random events happen, which can increase or decrease random stats.

Advancing your character is handled differently as well, where each stat increase depends on what you did in the battle.  For example Horse ATT & DEF is dependant on your clearing time, while normal ATT & DEF is dependant on how many kills you made while using your musou attack.
Yo also get skill points to spend on a skill tree, with the skills replacing some items from DW (increase chance of ATTx2 when near dead, automatic flips when down, more musou damage,,Ķ)



But even the ,Äúbattlefield,Äù levels feel different than DW,Ķ  You get more missions on the battlefield (escort ally, destroy specific enemy, ,Ķ), which are clearly marked on the map untill completed (so it,Äôs not a second-long mark on the map, after which you just have to remember where it was exactly during the mid-battle chaos).  This gives you a better focus on where to kill next, and enhances the gameplay considerably.
Even when you fail the missions, it,Äôs not necessarily game over.  In story mode, there are times where the story missions split up depending on what happened in the previous battle (for example: at one battle your daimyo can die.  When he dies he leaves you his will and the story continues from there, when he survives you get another story path.  I didn,Äôt manage to keep him alive yet, so I can,Äôt tell what path, but it does give you incentive to try a second time to get it right.)
The only thing missing are the duels (where the cannon fodder leaves you alone when fighting the enemy officer one-on-one), but the possibility exists that they are in the game, but that no enemy officer bothered to challenge me yet,Ķ

The number of armies are not limited to 2 anymore, often there are 3 armies clashing on the same battlefield now.  This doesn,Äôt really make any difference apart form having to make the decision of which army to slaughter first.


Control

The controls are almost identical to DW4, with one main exception: you don,Äôt have to press a button at the start of every battle anymore to show the enemy healthbars , this is now an option in game settings.  The button that,Äôs freed up because of this is now used to dodge (small somersault forward, enabling you to evade a volley of arrows, traps,,Ķ).
You can also deflect incoming projectiles back to their originators now, making those damned archers an easy kill by giving them some of their own (although it,Äôs easier control-wise to just dodge your way into their faces, and then hack away,Ķ  deflecting arrows still makes you vulnerable to the melee cannon fodder.).
Horse combat is greatly improved as well (horse-riding is finally starting to become fun in this game).  It,Äôs easier to hit people when on a horse now, and they gave the horses a jump/stomp-attack (much like the elephants in DW) by pressing triangle.  They also gave you an easy icon to tell you when you are able to mount the horse (getting onto a horse without this icon can be frustrating, as you have to stand exactly next to the horse).  Horses also get hitpoints from now on...
Every character also has 2 different musou attacks (,Äúsuper,Äù attacks).  In case your regular musou attack involves too much ,Äúaiming,Äù to your tastes, you can switch to square-button after activation to fight with a powered-up basic hit combo.
Using ranged attacks (bow/musket) is unchanged sadly.  You still switch to first-person view with auto-targetting from hell.



Graphics

Graphics are at the same level as DW4 (although a bit darker; no colourful levels in this game as of yet), which also means that your PS2 can,Äôt put every enemy onscreen (just like DW).  This biggest problem of DW has not been solved yet, making you not always see who your fighting against.  They didn,Äôt even give ,Äúnamed,Äù enemies (officers) priority of appearing, so it,Äôs possible that you are fighting 2 named ones, but can only see some footsoldiers in the foreground forcing you to hack blindly hoping to hit something.
Which brings us to the next biggest problem of DW, which is the camera.  No improvement here either.  It still doesn,Äôt automatically move behind your character, annoying you endlessly when you want to turn around and battle the enemies chasing you.
These two problems are not really detrimental to the gameplay, but they will annoy you after a while.
There is also no gore whatsoever, but it,Äôs not really missed,Ķ  The addition of gore would just make more enemies invisible.

Multiplayer

As usual, a split-screen co-op multiplayer mode is available, which makes even more enemies invisible (problem 1 above).
Only one difference with DW in this bit, and that is a shared musou bar,Ķ  Each player is responsible for half of the musou bar, and when it,Äôs filled and used, both players use their musou at the same time (no matter who activates it).  If only one player filled it,Äôs part, then it,Äôs no musou (but elemental attacks are still activated for that player)
This simple thing increases the level of cooperation greatly, which is a good thing.  It also makes it more difficult.
There,Äôs also a Vs mode, but I haven,Äôt tried that one yet.



Ninja Presence

You can play a ninja as one of the starting characters (wielding a kama + chain.  Can,Äôt remeber the name of the weapon).
You can have ninja bodyguards.  
You encounter ninja opponents (very annoying in the castle levels.).

Unlockables/Replayability

Loads to unlock.  You start with 5 characters, and you can unlock about 10 others (DW got a bit too far with it,Äôs 40-ish playable characters IMO).  Also loads of items, relics and weapons to unlock.
The simple Hack ,Äôn Slash aspect combined with the magnitude of stuff to unlock will make me play this game for weeks/months.  If you like kicking ass on a massive scale, then you will not easily get bored playing this game.

Overall

+   
combat on horseback improved
   missions marked more clearly on map
   ,Äúshow enemy health,Äù replaced by a dodge move
   bigger variety in cannon fodder

-   
camera
disappearing enemies in mass combat

-><-screenshots taken from //www.gamespot.com, which you would have noticed by the large logo in the lower right corner...-><-

[~~~~Closed~~~~]

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[Lister]

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