SAMURAI WARRIORS
Original Release: Koei, 2004, PlayStation 2/Xbox
Other Releases: PSP (2005)
The Sengoku spinoff of Dynasty Warriors retains the core engine and style but makes a number of little gameplay tweaks, not always for the better
Samurai Warriors (PS2, Koei, 2004)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: PlayStation 2 Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
At this point there have been about a million Musou spinoffs, but the very first of them was Samurai Warriors. Released in between Dynasty Warriors 4 and 5, Koei takes the formula and moves it to Japan's "warring states" period.
The engine is basically that of Dynasty Warriors 4, but the developers made a bunch of little tweaks to try to give the game something of a unique identity. There are some new little gameplay wrinkles, like being able to roll behind enemies and deflect incoming projectiles. And instead of butt rock you get a soundtrack of traditional Japanese instruments mixed with driving techno beats. But the two really big additions are "sub-missions" added to the maps, and new "infiltration" levels that have your hero go into a castle by themselves and solo it.
Let's start with the sub-missions, since they basically change the way you play the game. These are constantly popping off over the course of almost every battle, and while you don't technically have to do most of them you'll be put at a major troop and morale disadvantage if you skip more than one or two. So that sends you running around the map like a chicken with its head cut off following mission prompts. You soon learn that once a sub-mission is announced, you have to do it LIKE NAO or you'll fail it. Not only does this give you a lot less space to just play maps and strategize through them your own way, you sometimes get two or three conflicting objectives that are in different parts of the map and can't possibly all be done. You kinda just have to try them and see which doesn't lead to your camp getting overrun; generally, if you're not sure what to do the best thing is to run to any general or camp that fails the map if lost and defend them until nothing is hassling them.
Then there are the "infiltration" levels. These are some bullshit. Every character has one to three of these thrown into their path during their story mode. The regular ones basically just have you run through maze-filled, trap-filled castle floors trying not to take too much chip damage as a pack of endlessly respawning enemies chases you around in Benny Hill style. You generally fight at least one boss on each level, you have very limited opportunities to heal, and you basically just have to be leveled enough to survive the gauntlet.
That describes most of them, but the ninja characters have their own special bullshit. Each floor has no enemies, but they have to find certain doors to eavesdrop at. An invisible timer is ticking away between each door, however, and if you don't find your way through the maze to the next one in time you fail the whole damn thing. Who on earth comes to a musou game wanting something like this?
Setting aside the shitty infiltration levels and the occasional irritation of the side mission objectives, the battles resemble those of Dynasty Warriors 4 and are generally pretty good. They're packed with ludicrous bullshit, though. You're forever defeating enemy commanders, then letting them just randomly slouch off the field to come back and be a PITA later (often as part of a chain of bosses in the terrible infiltration levels). A lot of sub-missions involve enemies just spawning in with their armies behind your lines, in totally illogical places. Sealing gates means next to nothing anymore, except in odd situations where the enemy will pump an insane flood of reinforcements through them to harass your main camp when they start losing. Even by musou standards, shit makes no goddamn sense throughout this game.
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| The game also has this random guy who dropped in to give the infidel Nips a taste of his shoe by Allah |
Speaking of making no sense, the story experience is vastly different depending on what character you play as. If you stick to the actual historical flow of events, basically focusing on either fighting against or playing as Nobunaga Oda's forces, it's pretty good. When you get off the script, it turns into just utter no-effort nonsense. One major character gets the unexplained ability to make magical clones of himself in one alternate branch, in another he just randomly joins one of his most bitter enemies just to slide another boss battle into an infiltration level. And of course, this being a musou game you are provided with random cutesy little girls wielding toys to play as (I Can't Believe My Little Sister Is A Japanese Warlord!).
The game engine is a nice midpoint between Dynasty Warriors 4 and 5, with the greatly reduced pop-in and slowdown of the latter but the higher old-school challenge of the former. That's really the story of the musou games though, at least in the early days - they could never seem to get everything right in one title. It was always a step forward but also a step back. In this case, they've got the battlefield design pretty much right and the side mission idea could be good if it was dialed back some. But the castle infiltration levels are just straight crap and a mistake, and the new create-a-character mode that requires you to pass a bunch of stupid tests is pretty much worthless.
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