Samurai Warriors (PS2)

...on the PlayStation2 alone, with Samurai Warriors' tentative innovation being that its set in Japan, not China.

For those of you unfortunate enough to have been living in a closet for the past five years (a closet without a PS2, that is), the Dynasty Warriors series sees you taking control of an officer in feudal times, usually as part of a giant army - you are one among hundreds (sometimes thousands) on a battlefield, though depending ...
.../> Style and simplicity. That's Samurai Warriors in a nutshell. Whilst the generally mindless button-bashing gameplay may not hold a great deal of substance in itself, KOEI have once again provided a solid foundation upon which a host of game modes and variants have been added, along with the usual sleek presentation and reassuringly ridiculous storylines.

The basic gameplay is more or less unchanged from its predecessors. From a ... more

Fair play to the people at KOEI - sensing that they were on to something big with the Dynasty Warriors franchise, they've really 'provided' for the die-hard fans (or milked the cash-cow for all it's worth, depending on how you look at it), with around a dozen variants of the feudal fighter having appeared on the PlayStation2 alone, with Samurai Warriors' tentative innovation being that its set in Japan, not China.

For those of you unfortunate enough to have been living in a closet for the past five years (a closet without a PS2, that is), the Dynasty Warriors series sees you taking control of an officer in feudal times, usually as part of a giant army - you are one among hundreds (sometimes thousands) on a battlefield, though depending on the brawler you select, you'll have a variety of character-specific attributes and moves with which to unleash mayhem upon hapless enemy troops. A dash of strategy adds to the fun, as the player must also contemplate their position on the often expansive battlegrounds in relation to the enemy, with battles usually being won when the oppositions lead-officer is slain.

Style and simplicity. That's Samurai Warriors in a nutshell. Whilst the generally mindless button-bashing gameplay may not hold a great deal of substance in itself, KOEI have once again provided a solid foundation upon which a host of game modes and variants have been added, along with the usual sleek presentation and reassuringly ridiculous storylines.

The basic gameplay is more or less unchanged from its predecessors. From a third-person perspective, your task 99 percent of the time is to beat the living daylights out of all who stand in your way - be they ninjas, foot-soldiers, archers or enemy generals; you can thrash 'em all via the continued pummelling of the square button, which triggers a combo with your selected weapon. The 'Musuo' attacks that were so popular in Dynasty Warriors have been retained, meaning a swift tap of the circle button will slow-down the action Matrix-style, shower the screen with bright colours and basically allow the player to slaughter dozens of troops unfortunate enough to be in the near vicinity. Now there's tasty!

The Story mode is where the majority of the games longevity lies and, given that it's developed by KOEI, it is therefore unsurprising that this set-up closely apes the Musuo mode used in sister-series Dynasty Warriors. After selecting an officer, you must then play through a series of battles in situations specific to them, moving their tales forward and building their overall statistics, gaining new weapons and so on. As ever, many of the protagonists must first be unlocked, and though there aren't quite as many selectable characters there could have been, those on offer are pleasingly diverse and you'll find that you won't have to play through the same mission too many times. Perhaps the most impressive new feature on show is the branching of the storylines - depending on how a key mission unfolds, you can change what your next mission will be, therefore allowing you to obtain different endings. Although discovering exactly what you have to do to exact these changes can prove rather difficult, it's an idea that's generally been quite nicely executed.

Elsewhere, the 'New Officer' mode is rather good. Whilst it doesn't technically allow you to create an officer from scratch (you have a choice of a few pre-made models), you can shape the manner in which your character evolves, taking part in various training exercises as a means of upgrading your various stats, and at the end of an allotted period, you must prove your skills in a couple of make-or-break tests, before choosing an army to pledge allegiance to. It's quite a nice concept and shows how comfortably role-playing elements meld with this type of game - it's certainly a promising feature and something that can be built upon in the future. The other modes aren't as original, though the two-player co-operative is still a blast even if the challenges and survival set-ups are rather forgettable.

It's fair to say that if you've played any Dynasty Warriors game recently, you'll know exactly what to expect from this - and therefore whether or not you will ultimately enjoy Samurai Warriors. Much like Marmite, it divides opinions down the middle, though you are never in doubt about the kind of gaming experience you are going to get. It's simple and repetitive, yes, but in an old-fashioned arcade kind-of-way, it's also addictive and fun - fans of RPG's will no doubt appreciate the link between racking up the kills during a mission and being rewarded with upgrades, items and weaponry at the end of it all. To many, it will prove a little too similar to KOEI's previous brawlers for comfort, but for the legion of fans the series has amassed; it at least has a new setting and a host of modes to tackle.

The damage parameters are perhaps not quite as well-defined as in say, Dynasty Warriors 4, and because of this it's harder to take down quite as many enemies in one go, and the Musuo attack seems simply to slow time rather than truly unleash a defined special manoeuvre. Still, the introduction of tasks within missions is rather nice - the game may challenge you to defeat a specific officer in a set period of time, or help capture or protect a stronghold. Relatively small but enjoyable tasks, they give the missions a little more direction and if you succeed, it usually means bonus experience points to be claimed at the end of the mission. As well as improving your character in obvious areas such as health capacity, attack and defence attributes and so on, you also have the option to spend 'skill' points, which give the player a fair bit of freedom to select abilities from an expansive list - these can be new 'element' based attacks, greater reach for weaponry, and a more powerful Musuo attack among many others, which again is a really well-judged concept.

The worst of the new features on show in Samurai Warriors (and something that damages its overall score) is the 'randomly generated castle maps' of which it boasts on the back of the box; you are often thrown into these mazes near the end of a mission as an excuse to chase a foe. I've spend a heck of a lot of time enduring these in-door areas and I can honestly say I haven't gleaned a single moment of enjoyment from them - they're just woeful. The fact that they are 'randomly generated' means there are tonnes of dead ends, not helped by the fact that the areas are unmapped when you begin and for the most part there's a large stream of enemies chasing you as you try to fathom the scatty design, searching for the illusive staircase that will lead to another floor of monotony. As if this wasn't enough, you are unfeasibly challenged to complete the floors within a time limit, meaning these sections are devoid of fun, utterly bland in design and not at all what KOEI's series of fighting games are all about. The best that can be said for them is that the developers can use them as a future example of what not to put in their strategy titles.

Graphically though it's great - I wouldn't be surprised if it uses the same engine as that of Dynasty Warriors 4, with some of the most attractive menu screens featured in any PlayStation2 game. Colours are suitably muted, and the battlegrounds (in-door arenas excluded) are well-conceived, fairly varied in layout and impressive in scale. The officers are particularly well animated and though there isn't a great deal of variety in the basic soldier design, Samurai Warriors handles the often-huge amount of on-screen activity with ease - there is no noticeable slow-down even when things get fraught, and loading times are good as well.

Voice-acting is once again of a low-quality, though I wonder if the American's dubbing of noble Japanese/Chinese warriors will ever sound entirely convincing. Still, it perhaps would have benefited from skipping over such dialogue disasters as "like, duh!" and (upon defeating the character Oichi) "no fair!". The music that accompanies the action is pretty ordinary as seems to be par-for-the-course for a game of this ilk, with some solid rock-orientated efforts that are clearly intended to provide backing for the action and little more. Still, the traditional-Japanese music on the menu screens is a bit more suitable, and make for some rather atmospheric stat-trawls.

How long will you play it for? Well, that really depends on whether the simple style of gameplay is to your liking or not. The character development and progression elements will appeal to fans of role-playing games and have been fitted nicely in around the strategy/action gameplay, though whether you'll play to unlock everything will depend on how long it takes for the brawling to lose its appeal. In its most basic form, Samurai Warriors is a button-basher on a grand-scale, and whilst the gameplay is very easy to get into, it could certainly be argued that there isn't much depth to the experience, and there's absolutely nothing gameplay-wise in here that hasn't been seen before.

The recommended age-rating from pegi is 12+, though there's nothing obscene that could be considered overly offensive to youngsters; obviously, the nature of the action is quite violent but there's no blood, bad language or sniper rifles from which you can blow peoples heads off. So not realistic at all! It's no Grand Theft Auto in the violence department, but then it isn't quite Spongebob Squarepants either.

Ultimately, Samurai Warriors is another decent entry in the Dynasty Warriors saga, with the same positives and negatives that divided gamers previously. Simple, addictive and enjoyable, Samurai Warriors won't be to all tastes due to its repetitive nature, and to many, it won't represent enough of a step-forward to justify a purchase. If you're a big fan of the genre then there's no reason not to look into this, though for anyone who has so far avoided ruining their thumbs on button-bashing fighters, Dynasty Warriors 3 is perhaps a slightly better place to start, as though it's older, it plays more or less the same and contains a great deal more characters - plus it doesn't have those damned 'randomly generated castle maps' either.
 

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