Samurai Warriors (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Chris McCarver on 10.06.2006
The only warrior spirit this game awakened in me was the urge to take a katana to the disc...
Samurai Warriors 2
Platform: Xbox 360 (also available for Playstation 2)
Publisher: Koei
Developer: Omega-Force
ESRB Rating: T (mild language, mild suggestive themes, use of alcohol, violence)
Release Date: September 19, 2006
Review by CHRIS McCARVER
One of my benchmark memories of my college days was visiting this friend of mine for whom video games were his chosen escape from... well, damned near everything. Normally, this sort of behavior wouldn't have bothered me, but this friend's taste in games ran a bit towards the mindless. Case in point, one of his favorite franchises, the Dynasty Warriors series of period Chinese-warfare games wherein the only apparent point was to pick up a steel beating stick and machete your way through endless hordes of cannon fodder with a mannequin's level of A.I. Koei has cranked out over a dozen of these titles, even spinning it off into the Japan-centric subseries, Samurai Warriors, and, to be honest, the franchise has evolved minimally over the years. We turn our attention now to Samurai Warriors 2, the latest of these games and the first of which I've climbed behind the controls on, mainly to see what allure these titles had for my college buddy and countless others.
Sad to say, I still don't get it.
Graphics
The graphics in this game are capable, but a little on the substandard side and with all the oomph directed more towards the cutscenes than the gameplay visuals. While the player character and boss models are fairly hefty in detail, the endless supply of gumbies that you face in combat move stiffly and look like blandly designed samurai day-players. The backgrounds are even worse, with lo-rez environments that act as barriers to getting where you need to go and little else. The combat effects are fairly pretty and evoke a lot of the Dragonball Z style of over-the-top brawling, but the effects often get lost in the literal soup of enemy characters. This game's visuals look like something out of a PS2 launch title, which, if you realize this game is a 360 title, should tell you how substandard it looks.
Visually, this game is what would have happened if the Xbox rendition of Ninja Gaiden had been phoned in.
Gameplay
Set in wartorn 16th-century Japan, this game is fairly standard fare for the Dynasty/Samurai Warriors franchise. Players take control of a number of overly-stylized renditions of famous Japanese war heroes and send them through a massive platoon of enemy soldiers for the purpose of handing out some single-handed smackdown. And if you think this means doing much beyond mashing that attack button, think again. The variety of gameplay in this title is woefully threadbare, and despite the fact that you can upgrade your characters and weaponry with new attacks, including field-clearing area-effect strikes, players can just as easily jam on the X button and cut a decent swath through the baddies. The game's story mode does give you goals to complete besides just cleaving through endless supplies of opponents, usually to protect your army's commander or some such, but directional cues come in the form of overlapping dialogue soundbites that seem to come out of nowhere and usually require players to run their character clear across the map in order to accomplish their objectives.
You start out with seven characters at game's beginning, and each of them has their own "story mode" to play through, which each basically boils down to hours of hack-and-slash through each level. Later in each character's level, you'll be given the opportunity to branch away their plot in a direction not beholden to their historical namesakes, but all taking a new path nets you is new levels to machete your way through. You can unlock up to nineteen new characters and assorted ancient Japanese beating sticks through completing levels and goals, but when the gameplay is so, what's the word I'm looking for, boring, players will find themselves less than motivated to burn through the levels.
Samurai Warriors 2 shakes things up a bit with a few play modes beyond the storyline play. If you want to make the game really feel like there just isn't a point to it, the game offers a free play mode that allows you to take any character into any level without having to stomach the rather lackluster storyline. The game also has a "survival" mode that challenges players to rescue captives or retrieving stolen loot from thieves, but essentially it's just another series of levels wherein player act as a walking wood-chipper with little variety or actual fun. Of a much more negative note is the "Sugoroku" mode, wherein players are treated to, get this, a strange Samurai Warriors-themed boardgame reminiscent of "Monopoly" in which the object is (I'm not kidding, this is what the game itself says) to "conquer Japan." While this game mode is probably the biggest departure from the third-person action theme of the game, its lack of any tutorial and hard-to-comprehend rules make this mode a must-miss on an already subpar title.
Audio
The audio package on Samurai Warriors completes the mediocrity trifecta. Whereas the previous iteration of Samurai Warriors gave players the option of hearing the dialogue in either the original Japanese with subtitles or the painfully bad voice acting. No such luck with the sequel; you have no choice but to listen to the characters speaking in a level of dialogue quality usually reserved for badly dubbed Hong Kong kung-fu flicks. Not only is the voice acting horrible, the casting of the characters is grossly mismatched, with many of the NPCs brandishing vocals that nowhere near match their physical archetypes. Little of major note can be said for the game's music score; it fits the tone of the game for the most part and doffs the thrice-accursed tendency for Koei's feudal-war titles to employ a wholly inappropriate glam-metal score, but the music is easily forgettable, like, sadly, much of the rest of this game.
Lasting Appeal
On the upside, and admittedly I'm reaching here, the game does contain quite a bit of motivation to play through it. The amount of unlockable characters and weapon upgrades is staggering, and the player characters level up in an RPG style that improves their combat abilities and allows them new attack combos by gaining experience. However, that unfortunately means one must suffer through the endless grind that is this title's gameplay, and, unless you're already one of this series' fans, chances are you'll grow too weary of this title to care how much it has to offer in terms of extras.
The game does take some advantage from Xbox Live, but only one gameplay mode is available for online play: a one-on-one mode where you have to wade through your opponent's computer-controlled lackeys in order to either take the other guy out or have a fuller health meter than your adversary before the clock stops. The online mode is lackluster and feels like little more than an excuse to tack on an extra feature for the 360 version of what otherwise is pretty much a below-average PS2 port.
Fun Factor
Samurai Warriors 2 does contain a fair amount of new gameplay elements to inch up half a rung on the innovation ladder. For the rest of the gaming public, however, this game's repetitive gameplay and barely adequate presentation will likely keep gamers away from giving this series a try. Not even XBL capability will propel this game into the libraries of anyone but the series' hardcore aficionados. Not to disparage the fans of Koei's Asian-warfare franchises, but this game is definitely an acquired taste and mainly only for those already heavily invested in the series, since very little has changed over its various iterations, and in the case of Samurai Warriors 2, little change means little improvement.
The 411
Samurai Warriors 2 will no doubt experience some flying off the shelves, but anyone who has never given this series half a chance is not going to be convinced to do so with this title. Containing visuals ugly to look at, dull and repetitive gameplay, and atrocious voice acting, this title would've had me using the disc to throw at that skunk I found in my driveway the other night it wouldn't get the local Blockbuster after me. Fortunately, the local Blockbuster is where my copy of Samurai Warriors 2 is going and I'm never looking back.
Graphics
5.5
Phoned-in environments, stiff NPC animations, basically PS2 graphics ported onto a 360 game
Gameplay
4.0
Mindless and repetitive hack-and-slash through dull and sometimes confusing levels, boardgame mode is a complete joke
Sound
5.0
Terrible voice casting, badly delivered dialogue
Lasting Appeal
6.5
Lots of unlockables overshadowed by the game's mediocrity, online play doesn't differ hardly at all from the offline missions
Fun Factor
5.0
Mainly for the franchise's fans, furious yet painfully repetitive action, presentation ruins what enjoyment could be had
