Samurai Warriors

 I've talked a lot about video game series' that haven't stood the test of time, or even one off titles that never managed to receive sequels. That's relatively common amongst lesser known video games. But for this week's entry, it's most certainly not the case.

Despite being a somewhat a forgotten series among mainstream gamers in the west, Samurai Warriors is huge in Japan. It also has a relatively small but very dedicated fanbase. They're pretty obviously dedicated, because there wouldn't be 5.8 billion spinoffs and sequels if they weren't. Five numbered sequels, Xtreme Legends, Chronicles and Empires spinoffs, sequels to sequels, ports, Japan only titles, you name it, Samurai Warriors has done it. "Bet you they didn't do a Samurai Warriors racing spinoff!" Yeah I guess you're right, how could they have...oh...wait, they did? It's called Samurai Derby, and it's a free to play browser game. Look it up. The series has an estimated 7.7 million sales worldwide, which isn't a small number, but break that up over all of these games and you can see why these titles still kind of fit into the "off the beaten path territory." I should also mention this series is a spinoff of yet another series with a trillion entries, Dynasty Warriors. The games play similarly, but DW is set in China while SW's events take place in Japan during the warring states period. I could probably do an entire entry on the Koei universe these games are a part of, DW, SW, Kessen, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the list goes on. But for now, we're going to stick to the original Samurai Warriors.

Released in 2004 for the PS2 and XBox, Samurai Warriors retained much of the gameplay elements of the Dynasty Warriors series. You control one single warrior, faced with an onslaught of enemies and other officers on an open battlefield. It's up to you to help your side win the conflict in any way you can, which usually means taking out as many enemies as possible. This isn't a game about winning tactical, complex 1 on 1 fights. Your character is overpowered and can mow down mobs and mobs of enemies. Sounds easy, but we are talking huge mobs, many of whom will have positional or other tactical advantages over you. In addition to clearing out enemies, you must also complete mission objectives, some of which are optional while others will result in a game over if failed. You take control of one of 15 warriors, all loosely based on actual historical figures, as you battle through Japan's warring states, or Sengoku, period. Five characters are available at the start, including the spear weilding Samurai Yukimura Sanada and the Ninja Hanzo Hattori. Ten more are unlockable, including self-proclaimed king of thieves Goemon Ishkawa, dancer (and alleged inventor of Kabuki theatre) Okuni and series antagonist/all-around jerk Nobunaga Oda (remember him?). Not going to lie, this game led me down a rabbit hole of Japanese history. Let's just say the events of Samurai Warriors are...not historically accurate. Remember, these characters are based on historical figures, not really representations of them. The way he is presented in video games, you would think Nobunaga was a complete monster, but the actual Oda Nobunaga was considered a great unifier. I'm not an expert on Japanese history by any means, so I will reserve judgement. Besides, this is supposed to be a video game review, not a history lesson. Back on topic.

Controls are pretty simple, you have a button for your regular attack and a button for special attacks, which you can chain together to create combos. You can jump and get on horses, which will also change how you attack. Each character has a super move, called a musou attack, that can be activated when their special meter is filled. This meter increases when you take damage and can also be charged by holding the appropriate button. It will also charge constantly if you are at low health. You can move freely about the battlefields, fighting enemies as you go. You will face a variety of generic enemy mobs (usually referred to as peons by fans of the game), as well as generals and guard captains. The guard captains control gates, which allow new enemies to spawn. Gaining control of these is important for keeping the mobs under control and adding more friendly units to the battle. Generals will drop items and their peons will run away when defeated, plus they give you extra experience. Sometimes they will be other named characters in the game, while others will be more generic officers. Defeating these guys is going to be your focus, as the A.I. soldiers really won't be able to do anything against them. You also have your own bodyguards, but they are pretty terrible and rarely, if ever, actually help you. Throughout each level, you will receive mission objectives at certain points in the mission. Some of these will result in a game over if failed, while others will have no impact. Some will even change the story and many of the characters have different paths they can take depending on how they do on these objectives. At the end of each battle, you will be assigned a grade and earn experience points, which can be spent on new combo moves and buffs. This was new to the series at the time, as was the ability to equip stat boosting items found during combat.

For the most part though, it was more of the same when it came to traditional Dynasty Warriors gameplay. All the maps and pre-game hoopla may make it seem like there's some level of strategy here but, outside the objectives, it's really all about taking out hordes and hordes of enemies. This really isn't a novelty nowadays, but it was still a fairly unique gameplay style at the time. Most third person action games were either glorified beat 'em ups or placed the focus on winning a series of one on one matchups rather than taking on large groups of enemies. The controls are responsive and the characters usually do what you tell them to. The camera is a bit annoying, there are quite a few times where it shifts for seemingly no reason and it's difficult to get it reset, but these moments are few and far between. The characters also have ranged attacks, which shift the game into a first person view. This is very jarring, but I found these attacks to be mostly useless, so it wasn't much of a problem. The graphics are good, dare I say great, for the time and the sound is solid as well. For being a game inspired by history, there really isn't much attention paid to the story. That isn't a big deal here though as the action is what carries the game. The biggest flaws come less from technical problems and more from how the game is laid out.

Simply put, the way Samurai Warriors forces you to play runs counter to what makes the Warriors games fun in the first place. Much of this problem comes from the mission objectives, which often detract from the gameplay rather than add to it. You will often find yourself having to run back and forth to locations on the map with unforgiving timing to complete some of those objectives. When you come up against these objectives, you have to run away from enemies, you just don't have time to fight them. Maybe, maybe you will have to dismount your horse to fight a general, but that's it. The problem is that you are basically playing these games for the combat. Running back and forth throughout the map without fighting enemies is just not fun, it makes you feel like you are playing a completely different franchise. I can't say I would be completely opposed to having objectives like this in the game, but there are entirely too many. It slows down the pacing and completely takes you out of the game. Completing a level of any of the DW games that were out at the time (I think it was 1-4) with only 20 or 30 kils would have been unheard of, but it was a common occurrence in Samurai Warriors. That would be okay if the game was more about slow pace and strategy, but it isn't.

But the biggest offender here are the infiltration missions. I absolutely loathe these levels and they are the single biggest thing keeping SW's score down. Basically, these levels see your character attempting to infiltrate a castle on their own, with the objective of getting to the top floor. Usually, one of the other playable characters will be waiting at the top to do battle one on one, which is cool in theory. But the problem is that these levels have tight time limits. There are enemies to fight, but if you actually stop you are most likely going to run out of time. As we have already established, that runs counter to what makes the warriors games fun in the first place. But at least in the more traditional battles, you are out in a big open area with tons of chaos going on around you. In the castles, you are dealing with a few enemies at a time in bland, boring areas that are impossible to tell apart from one another. Some of them even have other obnoxious extras that no one asked for. There are plenty of traps, like pits and spikes, those are okay. But there are some castles where you take damage over time due to fire. That is just awful. There is even one, I think it's in Hanzo's story, where there are no enemies in the castle at all. Again, this isn't a stealth game or a strategy game or an adventure game. This is supposed to an action game where you are walking headlong into thousands of enemies and racking up the kill count, not skulking around a generic castle.

I should also mention there is a "create an officer" mode, where you can create a warrior to use in the story battles. You have twelve weeks to prepare, using various different training options to boost your stats, leading up to a two part trial at the end. Honestly, I barely touched this mode as it really never felt worth my time. I will say it's a cool idea in theory, but the execution is lacking. This might be more of an issue if there were a dearth of playable characters, but 15 is more than enough for a game like this. I will say that most of the characters are fun to use in some way and while the game itself doesn't promote much variety, the different style characters at least provide the illusion. The game is pretty long, each character has between four and seven battles in their story, which can take as long as 30 minutes. I barely scratched the surface of what the game offers, with split paths and alternate routes and all that. Even though there's a lot to too, it always does feel like more of the same.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Samurai Warriors, it's just a bit uninspiring. Honestly, I would probably end up giving most of the trillions of Warriors games around the same scores, they are great fun but also very limited. I think the original SW is on the weaker side of the series, largely because of its poor pacing and layout. Its flaws were especially egregious because it came out around the same time as Dynasty Warriors 4, which I consider among the best titles in the series. If you are a huge fan of the series, it's definitely worth going back and playing today. However, I'm not sure it's something I would actively seek out.

7.25/10