Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires Review (Shin Sangoku Musou 7: Empires Review)

INTRODUCTION

In the world of video games, no company's zeal is as strong and evident as Omega Force and their Dynasty Warriors franchise, spawning eight major installments over sixteen years, and never ceasing to additionally release an expansion pack and a spinoff for each new numerical value.

The Empires games are standalone spinoffs of Dynasty Warriors that attempts to mesh together two very different game genres—the turned-based tactical strategic gameplay of KOEI's own Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the fast paced hack and slash gameplay of Dynasty Warriors.

The results are not so much RoTK as it is Dynasty Warriors. At its heart, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires remains mostly true to its title, but the sufficient strategy element helps elevate the gameplay away from the games' criticized repetitive nature and lack of brain power to play. With its marked improvements to the already excellent Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires may just be the very best Empires game yet.
 

GAME MODES

EMPIRE MODE: The meat and bulk of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires lies within Empire Mode, a name that's not alien to players who experienced other installments in the Empires series. It's basically your entry into the game's turned-based tactical strategy segment, spawning many historical and fictional scenarios to choose from, and largely mimicking KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms games, albeit much less in-depth and dramatic.

Scenario selector and map of China showing divided forces

Your primary goal in any scenario is to conquer and unite all of China under your ruling, or under your ruler's ruling. Tackling such a titanic task requires you to defeat all your opposing enemies in battle, stealing their territories, and executing important strategies that ensures your forces are always victorious. Not only that, but you may be burdened the task of maintaining your land, people and kingdom; including ensuring imperative facilities are built, keeping material possessions high, recruiting officers, training your troops and either be an angel to keep your people and fellows happy or be a devil to make them despise your existence. All through one action at a time. Yes, this is game mostly based upon choice, after all...

When you first pick a scenario, you have the selective choice of being a ruler, general, strategist, viceroy, vagrant and others in any territories available from the initial map. These positions can be exchanged for another during your playthrough, such as a vagrant can become a ruler and a general can become a strategist, dependent on the choices you make during play and your status. A ruler has the highest authority of any person and carries all duties of the kingdom, having enough power to demand an opposing kingdom to outright surrender. A strategist is allowed to invoke certain strategy actions, such as recommending generals to the force, carrying out invasion/defense battles and building of facilities. A general can only partially assist their kingdom such as aiding them in battles, partaking in raids and tackling requests. A vagrant wanders China in search for a specific goal, perhaps to build their own kingdom or join another's. Vagrants are not held in any kind of peril as they are safe from any kind of enemy attack; however, that does not mean you should forever be a vagrant!

"Allow me to serve you, my lord."

Romance and friendship plays an important role in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires similarly to the previous installment, although it is quite a bit more amplified here. And before you shudder in fear of the thought, NO, this isn't one of those infamous Japanese date simulators and absolutely nothing like it.

Maintaining high levels of friendship with your forces and people (through discussions, aid and banquets) will keep them smiling and discourage them from revolting. Let's just say that if a revolt were to occur within your own forces, they will hastefully and forcefully attempt to overthrow you (and with your own stolen generals, as well). Certain characters such as Lu Bu, has a mighty tendency to revolt regardless of how friendly you are, so be aware that having the mightiest warrior in China on your side may not be such a brilliant idea.

Heterosexual marriages are offered much the same way as Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires; however, the game now allows you to have your own offspring, but regrettably only one. You and your spouse will have lovely, romantic conversations and events with each other until your child gets unleashed from the womb to the world. And you two become the happiest people in the planet, or do you?

"We're married and we're going to have a beautiful child, right?!!" - Lu Bu
"Um... not with those eyebrows." - Diao Chan

The problem with the game's offspring system is in its character generator—it just frankly generates fugly children no matter the mother and father. Sometimes children don't even look children, as some may have faces of a 70 year old man or woman. Some appear alienish with a head of a little boy or girl and a body of a grown adult. One thing is for certain however—Omega Force literally takes genes all too seriously, seriously... If the father has bushy eyebrows and small eyes, you can be damned guaranteed that child will have bushy eyebrows and small eyes too. If the mother wears red and certain clothes, do not be utterly shocked your child wears the same clothes in red. If the father wore blue and mother wears red, the child may come out with a clown looking wardrobe in terms of color consistency. In the world of China in Omega Force's eyes, I guess there are no such thing as good looking children...

Looks like Lizzie Velasquez may have some competition...

Thankfully, you can save your children from shameful disgrace by completely overhauling their face, body, clothes and voice after playthrough. Of course, you can always throw a mask over their face, that works eminently well too. Now I didn't realize ancient China had plastic surgery, but I can certainly assure you I don't wish to know how it's done, ever...

One of the most highly respectable changes to Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires is the elimination of the dreaded fluctuating fame system that plagued the otherwise excellent Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires. In its place is a more traditional leveling system which allows characters to level up to 99 and importantly maintain that level and its respective stats granted. The fame itself has now been pushed aside to simply display indication of how good or evil a person is, rather.

Characters each now have their own "Way of Life" appellation, which determines their learning stratagem, specific strategy actions, employment costs, virtue level and starting level. Characters you control start out as mere ordinary men/women, but can escalate themselves to have different Way of Lives, achievable by obtaining certain titles during playthrough. An interesting addition, however profoundly confusing from the get-go.

The store in the game no longer has its own area one can traverse in and graphically shop. It has been completely consolidated into strategy actions and this is a definite pro, as it saves the agony of having to constantly sit through loading screens in order to purchase something.

Purchasing items are now a breeze in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires

Store purchasable weapons, items and stratagems are unlocked exclusively through construction of different types of facilities, unlike Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires. Each territory allows two facilities to be constructed, and the more facilities that you build, the higher level they become, equating to more rewards. Facilities can also encourage and automatically develop more resources such as gold and troops, which is a blessing if you're the kind of person who prefers to just sit on your bum and watch the valuables pour in without doing any work.

Weapons are unfortunately preset, and the game provides zero customization including any kind of tempering, which is very disappointing given how the original and Xtreme Legends has always provided such a necessity. Regardless, elements aren't completely disgusting on high ranked weapons, as most provide at least velocity so you aren't torturing yourself too much.

During invasions, in contrast to regular Dynasty Warriors games, Empires differentiates during battles with one primary goal to victory—enemy base capturing followed by eventual defeating of the leading enemy officer. As usual, the general idea is to create a chain of allied bases between your main base and that of the enemy's, allowing you to take down the enemy's leading officer in the end (who appears at some point in-between).

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!

When defending a territory, the objective remains the same with the variation in being that the battle can be won by simply allowing the timer to run out, while keeping your army bases in check. It's good to note that the timer has been reduced to a mere five minutes on defense battles instead of fifteen. Thus, defense battles aren't nearly as bothersome and annoying to deal with as in the past, especially when the enemy decides to be an ass and bombard you with invasions. Defense battles can furthermore be entirely avoided altogether during the strategy phase with the inclusion of being able to fix damaged territories after enemy invasion, albeit costing resources. You are allowed up to three disregarded enemy invasions (without fixes) to a territory before it ultimately crumbles and gets claimed.

A different type of optional battle, called raids, can be carried out by the player in any position. Raids allows you to launch an assault on a nearby enemy territory, with the goal being to damage it before the eventual invasion, granting you a positive handicap and allowing easier take down.

A new type of optional battle, called requests, are available that allows your character to accept and complete various battle requests given by officers within the vicinity of your territory. By completing requests, your character will earn assorted rewards including new weapons and items. Friendship levels with the giver are also raised as a reward. These are small types of battles that only lasts for a few minutes with various objectives such as protecting an ally or defeating a number of enemy officers.
 
Overall, Empire Mode remains at large indifferent from Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires aside from the aforementioned changes. This is rather peculiar as there has always been a very stark difference jumping from one Empires game to another. Nevertheless, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires without a doubt does offer the very best Empire Mode yet in the series.

FREE MODE: Free Mode has been a staple feature for all major Dynasty Warriors games, but it seems to be more often than not passed behind in the Empires series. The last Dynasty Warriors Empires game to include such a mode existed minutely in Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires, which was nearly eight years ago.

As a supporter of freedom and personalization in games (who wouldn't be?), I highly believe in the existence of a free mode for every type of Dynasty Warriors games, be it Empires or not. In Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires, I could sorrowfully complain about not being able to simply jump in a battle from the get-go with all my equipment unlocked, set up my own armies, selecting a stage, all without having to paddle through the tedious strategy phases of a regular game. In Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, the same complaint cannot be held valid.

Free Mode is a mode you wish never left the series in the first place

Although the 8th Empires' Free Mode is pretty robust with all the aforementioned features included, it does have some rather pesky limitations and annoyances which mars it down a bit.

For one, individual characters on both armies cannot be assigned their own levels separately. Both your army and the opponent army must be grouped into a specific level each, and that level will be applied to all characters. Because of this vexing limitation, tailoring very specific handicaps and balances is out of the question. For those who likes a little gamble, there's also a random level you can opt into, but that clearly isn't recommended if you're sane.

Secondly, the game fails to remember any kind of equipment setup from previous playthroughs in Free Mode, unlike Empire Mode. Whenever you start a new battle through Free Mode, don't be surprised to be constantly hassled of reequipping your character his or her weapons, items and stratagems again and again; even if you used that character a thousand times previously.

Third, there's very little incentive to play Free Mode other than earning bonus points, experimentation, practice and some quick fun off of Empire Mode. The game does not keep track nor carry over character levels through playthroughs, so you're not going to be able to utilize the mode to develop characters. Sadly, you cannot gain weapons, items or stratagems either, as even if you did, they wouldn't be available to you at the end of the battle, anyway.

By all means, Free Mode is a wondrous and necessary supplement to the game and I'm dead glad Omega Force blessed us with one this time around. However, it clearly isn't wholly ripe yet and can certainly be improved easily through patch updates.

CHARACTER CREATION: It's blatantly apparent at this point that Omega Force isn't debating to entirely rework their character creation system that's been essentially copy pasted in the past multitude of recent Warriors titles. It's no stranger here that the character creator in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires feels and works virtually identical to the past installment, minus a few new parts such as hairstyles and clothing.

Cute, but I feel like this all too familiar before...

It isn't a new game if everything is exactly the same, nevertheless. Hence, several new features are introduced in the editor, including the ability to custom craft up your own flag, horse and even troops. Sadly, the vastly cool photo uploader is exclusively available for flags and isn't accessible at all for characters, unlike Samurai Warriors 4. So no, you can't draw a pretty face on your PC and slap it on as your character's portrait. Or an ugly face, if your character is ugly.

It's... like something straight off a HORROR film!

SCENARIO EDITOR: The Scenario Editor is a new and very welcomed feature in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires that gives you the choice of almost completely constructing a scenario the way you desire it to be. I say "almost", as besides from freely planting officers wherever you please, assigning them positions and colorizing your kingdoms, there's actually little else possible. You can exclude certain officers from appearing entirely in your scenario, such as excluding playable characters from the main cast or custom characters. You can additionally name your scenario and share it online with other fellow players.

This is not your dream scenario creator, but it's close...

If you dig the "Gathering of Heroes" scenario but don't appreciate its epic randomness, then Scenario Editor will most definitely usher a smile on your face. Still, some more finer customization would be appreciated, such as being able to set the year your scenario starts in (it always starts at year 1).

GAMEPLAY AND CHARACTERS

With any customary Dynasty Warriors game, you have at your playable arsenal characters ranging in the amounts of up to nearly a hundred. In an Empires games, that number (in which you already thought was impossible), jumps up to several hundred, literally. That's because Empires games allows you to additionally play as all generics (those boring spear, great sword and throwing knives officers which all look identical to one another), as well as your own custom created characters. Don't be fooled into attempting to play as a generic officer nevertheless, as their genericness implies, their movesets are a lot more limited in comparison to every other character.

Xun Yu looking BOSS

A brand new Wei officer and strategist Xun Yu is now available as an uniquely playable character, sporting a very traditional looking strategist uniform and wielding a totally new Taigong Wang-esque scepter as his primary weapon of choice.

Several existing characters from the main playable cast are also issued replacement weapons that are derived from previous DLC weapons, revamped with their own specialized EX attacks and musous. These include Wang Yi (Emei Piercers), Guan Suo (Sabaton), Sun Quan (Flame Blade), Yue Ying (Bladebow), Xiaoqiao (Paired Fans), Lianshi (Deer Horn Knives), Meng Huo (Stone Pillar), and let's not forget my personal favorite: Jackie Chan a.k.a Liu Shan (Dragon Stool).

And not a single F was given that day...

The replacement weapons will be a hate-it-or-love-it deal with fans, but I have to honestly admit that several of these weapons do actually fit the characters better. One in most particular being Wang Yi's Emei Piercers, which attacks' embodies a purely badass assassin and suits her cold and cruel nature way more so than the trishulas. On another note, I'm also not having to think of The Little Mermaid anymore every time I'm using her weapons, so that's another plus.

The vast majority of these weapons also incorporates their own entirely unique and interesting gimmicks, such as the harsh timing loaded charges of the Bladebow, heavily separating them from the rest of weapons (most of which are bare-bones).

In actual battles, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires adopts the Xerox gameplay and mechanics of Dynasty Warriors 8. Hence, aside from the addition of a few new weapons to slaughter with, you're not going to charge into battle and experience Dynasty Warriors 9. It wouldn't be called Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires then, would it?

Meanwhile, it isn't at all imperative to have played Dynasty Warriors as a prerequisite for playing Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires. The core gameplay of Dynasty Warriors is so easily accessible that a newcomer can quickly learn how to play through the game's battles in one sitting. The idea is exceptionally simple in a Dynasty Warriors battle—set up your equipment, ride into the battlefield and just slay thousands of enemies. Be careful though, as since this is a war battle simulator, you're going to have to watch out for your allies and ensure that important officers (like your commander) and your main base aren't stricken down by the enemy. Moreover, keep that morale bar up along with your troop counts, as that can often times decide how aggressive the enemy AI decides to pummel your army minions off screen.

New stratagems are plenty abundant in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, featuring new grand scale stratagems that consumes time to execute but emphatically affects the entire battlefield, including those that engulfs the enemies in raining arrows, lightning strikes and mini-typhoons. Catapults and attack/defense towers can also be strategically placed nearly anywhere on the map, giving you a much more refined control of their usage. Certain stratagems can also instantly alter the weather, granting increased effectiveness on the effects of other stratagems when used in conjunction. That's right, you can play mother nature herself now in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires. How freaking cool is that? 

Stratagems lost its visual appeal but gains many more gameplay benefits

Most beneficially, stratagems are no longer fame exclusive (as the fame system has been thankfully abolished). Because of this, obtaining every stratagem in the game for usage in a battle is now possible, although you obviously won't be able to equip them all at once.

About the only downfall of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires' stratagems is the total loss of its visual aesthetics when being executed. Sadly, you won't be receiving anymore of those epic close up shots of your characters prancing in front of a colorized electric field.
 
The game now allows you to upgrade your current bases prior to entering actual battle by utilizing resources you gained during playthrough. You can level up bases to help better protect them from downfall or transform them to other types of bases, such supply or defense bases. These aren't incredibly valuable however, as I have personally never bothered to upgrade or transform my bases and yet in every battle I was constantly on track of being victorious. You would literally have to be at a huge disadvantage and on the verge of losing at the get-go in order to resort to using this feature.

Overall, while the actual combat portion of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires isn't any different from Dynasty Warriors 8, the amount of new weapons and added stratagems helps eliminate the dreaded feeling of playing the exact same game as before.

AI AND DIFFICULTY

Slap me on the head, throw a bucket of ice water on me and wake me up when Omega Force develops a Warriors games that implements a disparate form of AI than ones present in the past decade. Yep, there ain't no lying to anyone when I say the AI and overall difficulty of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires remains very little different from past recent Dynasty Warriors games. To put it bluntly—mediocre AI, punishing damages.

The game is actually structured from Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends, and includes every little change introduced from that game, such as enemy officers switching affinity more often, affinity shield being more difficult to break, and tons and tons of various nerfs to all sorts of weapons.

For the difficulty lineup, the game has its usual affair of difficulties covering the whole spectrum from Novice all the way to Chaos. The Ultimate difficulty has been oddly removed, much to the same fashion as Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires. Fellow brave warriors should fear not though, as Chaos is more than ample enough challenging due to its very punishing enemy damage output. But like I indicated earlier, you shouldn't have to worry too much about the AI attempting to outsmart you on any difficulty.

I shall be the wise and say: never begin an Empire Mode scenario on a harder difficulty fresh out of the water, unless you are really inept and inclined on going on a suicide mission (seriously, those one hit K.O.s from normal difficulties are bad enough). That's why the game offers the ability to transfer all your weapons, items, stratagems and strategy actions that you've obtained during all your playthroughs to the next. These have to be purchased with bonus points you accumulate by playing the game, so unfortunately they aren't freebies. You also have the option of starting out at a specific level for your character and up to 50,000 starting materials, gold and troops. These are all great options that helps makes the game's difficulty and ease of play incredibly controllable.

GRAPHICS

What happens when you attempt to throw a hundred enemies on screen at once in a ginormous battlefield filled with scenery, have a playable character roam around it wherever he or she pleases, and add flashy effects and explosions everywhere? You get the graphics of Dynasty Warriors—which is somewhere in the very middle lines of photo-realism and Minecraft graphics. Truthfully, there are always limitations imposed on game developers considering the limits of gaming hardware. To say the game looks bad is an overstatement; however, to say the game looks good is an understatement. The game actually looks astonishingly pretty considering how much havoc wrecks the screen at any given time. The most jaw dropping graphics comes from the playable characters themselves, in which every little detail such as clothing texture can be discernible when up close.  

You  have to be lying to yourself if you don't think these graphics are pretty

You might expect low frame rates to be a devastating enemy to a game of this incredible nature, but it's hardly ever jerky enough to pass it off. The PS4 version of the game handles exceptionally well, with frame rates rarely ever dipping below 60fps regardless of what occurs on screen. The PS3 version occasionally has a few hiccup moments and isn't as buttery smooth as the PS4, but I dare challenge anyone to experience it and say it isn't completely playable in the end.

AUDIO AND MUSIC

Most would agree traditional Chinese music and rock music doesn't mix, and is the equivalent of meshing up Xbox fans with Playstation fans. But let's get real, what Omega Force has done with Dynasty Warriors music is simply remarkable and the epitome of genius. If every soldier and officer were all fighting to Dynasty Warriors soundtracks back in the Three Kingdoms era, their morale would skyrocket like a speeding rocket ship; China would then always be at a stalemate because nobody would ever best one another. That's how good the music is.

Regrettably, not a whole lot of new music are introduced in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, and those that are new are more crafted to be mellow and soft for the strategy phases and meaningful events in the game.

REPLAYABILITY

As far as games go, I find myself constantly going back to Warriors games again and again. There isn't a mysterious poison that keeps me affixed to them, but rather the sheer fact that Warriors games are designed to always have replayability in them. Not just in minute quantities, but in large, excessive amounts.

Empires is no exception. Although the replayability is a wee tarnished due to the game's inability to maintain developed character levels and stats, it's replayability is still untarnished in other areas, including access to a crazy sized playable cast and multiple scenarios to clear. Moreover, no scenario is ever exactly the same every time you play through them due to the game's random nature. Upon adding the strategy elements that only the Empires games highly encompass, it might not be a stretch to call the replayability of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires "unlimited".

CONCLUSION

The Empires games may not be suitable for everybody. For those who prefer to just carelessly lay back on the couch, shut half of their brain off, shed off pounds of stress and slay thousands of enemy fodder continuously, the original Dynasty Warriors flavor may be the better game for them.

For those who desire a little more thought and personalization in a Dynasty Warriors game however, there is absolutely nothing that offers better than Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires. 

Even if one so wishes to just play Dynasty Warriors for what it really is, you still can't go wrong with the game's non-strategic Free Mode, or downloading the equivalent free to play version. 

OVERALL RATING: 7.5/10  

 

Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires comes out February 24th for North America and 27th for Europe

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Samurai Warriors 4 (Sengoku Musou 4) In-Depth Review

Note: This review is based upon the Japanese version of the game (Sengoku Musou 4) and uses translated names. English names of certain things may be different in the English release.

INTRODUCTION

KOEI TECMO's Samurai Warriors series has occasionally been undermined as the unexplored sister series to the more widely popular Dynasty Warriors series. That to which is a shame, as Samurai Warriors at certain times in its history are eminently less rehashed and more developed in comparison to its Dynasty Warriors counterparts.

2014 marks the 10th anniversary of Samurai Warriors, with the initial Samurai Warriors dating back to 2004 on the Playstation 2. In its celebration, KOEI TECMO has decided to unleash the long awaited next installment to Samurai Warriors—Samurai Warriors 4, which has been in secret production for at least a year or more. Samurai Warriors carries on the same iconic game formula of Dynasty Warriors: a simplified hack and slasher that couples mindless army killing with unparalleled character roster. The only difference being that one takes place in Japan and the other in China. Can you guess which one is which?

When Samurai Warriors 3 debuted on Wii, players were confused and indignant to the abrupt dominant Sony platform switch to Nintendo. There's not a lick to worry here however, as Samurai Warriors 4 has sailed back to its roots as a Playstation 3 and later Playstation 4 title.

GAME MODES

Samurai Warriors 4 is divided into three main game modes, edit mode, gallery, encyclopedia and of course compulsory game options. For the sake of not detailing the unnecessary, I'm only going to focus on the main game modes as well as touch briefly on edit mode.

STORY MODE: The predominant Story Mode in Warriors games is like a child that can't make up its mind. One day it is character based, where stories are all divided up individually to every playable character. The other day it is region/clan based, where stories are bunched together as larger regions/clans. Samurai Warriors 4 goes back to being the less vast latter. This negatively cuts the longevity of Story Mode to a great deal in comparison to Samurai Warriors 3, which was thoroughly character based.

There are a few pros to being region/clan based, regardless. You have the freedom to swap out your characters prior to playing each stage, rather than be permanently affixed to one person the entire way through. If you're interested in playing this game for its historical retelling, I guess playing as regions/clans will offer you a much quicker knowledge and experience of the story, as opposed to playing individual character stories on at a time.

Story mode scenario selection

The implementation of Samurai Warriors 4's Story Mode is quite remarkably similar to that of Dynasty Warriors 8. Scenarios of specific regions/clans can be chosen, thereafter will be several episodes (stages) to clear from within. If enough scenarios are cleared, then additional ones are unlocked. A direct deposit from Dynasty Warriors 8 are also branching paths that are injected usually near the final bits of a story, usually swapping sides of the army you are playing for and against. Being in close proximity to the end means that separate branches are only up to two stages in size and moreover there are no three branch setups of any kind, shamefully. Additionally, once you travel up the to branch point, you can select which branch to play right off the bat without restriction. In other words, there are no requirements to unlock the top or bottom one as opposed to Dynasty Warriors 8. Gaiden episodes also makes a return in Samurai Warriors 4, filling in some extra bits for several scenarios.

Another problem of Story Mode lies within the amount of length and its annoying inconsistencies. The majority of scenarios are constructed of only three or four mere total episodes, dismissing Gaiden episodes. A few sprinkle of scenarios may establish more, but the lengthiest are only around eight episodes long. Coupled with the rather low amount of scenarios to chose from and unlock, don't be utmost surprised if you end up finishing the game's Story Mode swifter than prior Warriors games.

The game has a new conversation feature where certain characters will be interacting with one another face to face almost constantly throughout Story Mode. These bits aren't too terribly interesting, as characters are placed motionless on a blurry backdrop, talking to each other non-stop, while you have to listen or read and press a bunch of text dialogue boxes. Moreover, these "cutscenes" aren't exactly beneficial as you are never allowed to make choices during all the talking. That is a definite heavy blow to something that can be made substantial, as allowing the player to make choices that can effect the storyline and its consequent branches would be glorious. Too bad they skimped over that.

The conversations aren't actually detrimental to the game, as they help aid the storyline in places where battles aren't erupting and characters just simply need to talk with one another. The earlier games didn't have these drawn out bits nevertheless and the storyline experience fared about the same. The less time spent out of battle the better. No one wants to always sit around idle while there is another enormous battlefield to slay thousands upon!

Talk is cheap, just bring it!

Speaking of cutscenes, I regret to say that Samurai Warriors 4 has just about the least amount of CGI cutscenes in comparison to any current Warriors game. In the past, all endings were done in dazzling CGI, whereas in this game only a hand selected few endings are actually honored with that prize; the rest dumped with in-game rendering.

All in all, while Story Mode gets the job adequately done, I'm not ecstatic to reach a conclusion that this game's Story Mode is quite an inferiority compared to Dynasty Warriors 8's. Then again, Dynasty Warriors 8 has one of the best story modes in any Warriors game for a long time, so it will be a challenge to match it. Still, I expect KOEI TECMO to at least carry on a great establishment, rather than taking lots of step backwards for their next game.

FREE MODE: There isn't much I need to say much about this mode, really. If you played the many multitude of Warriors games, you'll realize that Free Mode is simply a mode where you are essentially freed from your chains and shackles of restriction in other modes such as Story Mode. In other words, you are free to select any character and play in any stage without restrictions. Capeesh?

CHRONICLE MODE: Chronicle Mode is designed specifically for CAW, or Create-a-Warrior, which is what we like to call the custom characters we design in Warriors games.

It basically tries to reenact Mercenary Mode seen in other Warriors games, borrowing traits from Samurai Warriors Chronicles' main story mode.

After selecting your CAW, you start off as a mercenary and are given the choice to start under several factions that are mentioned in story mode. After pledging your allegiance, you can then travel through different provinces of Japan's Warring States in order to complete various requests given to you by the main cast.

Map of the Warring States of Japan in Chronicle Mode

Characters from the main cast are scattered throughout specific points on the map, giving you options of befriending or alienating them through personal conversations, fighting them in battle or traveling with them. Personal conversations that are engaged carry the same setup as ones that occur in story mode. The only notable difference here is that your character can actually make a two choice statement or decision during the chit-chat, with one raising your affinity with a character and the other lowering it. By raising your affinity high enough with a certain character, his or her conversation will change during battle. By raising it to max, you can then unlock that character's moveset/weapon to use within character creation. A secondary character can also accompany you through your travels depending on your relationship with them, fighting alongside you on the battlefield.

There's a lot of choice making in Chronicle Mode, LOTS...

A nice feature of this mode is the ability to swap in and out characters as you please, even edit your CAWs during play. Hence, you are not locked to one character the entire time, which is a definite necessity as Chronicle Mode takes an enormously long time to finish.

EDIT MODE: If you sadly recalled the character creation from Samurai Warriors 3, you'll be laughing at yourself like a hyena if you consider calling it anything other than a giant pile of excrement. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. In fact, the sheer memory of editing any kind of "custom" character in Samurai Warriors 3 gives me brain cancer, from just even thinking of its limitation and very little actual customizing.

Well, I'd say if you yell at a company enough and lend them a chance, they can likely improve. Elation ensues, and I have to say KOEI TECMO delivered well in the character creation department of Samurai Warriors 4, offering the best yet editor in any of their Warriors games. Regardless, I will shudder and call inappropriate names at anyone even attempting to label this mode as new, as aside from a few minor features and new parts thrown in, it's an exact replica from Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires. But hey, why fix what's not broken right?

So if you happen to be joyful of the character creation in Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires, then be grateful that there's not much that's going to disappoint, with the exception of the obvious lack of Chinese clothing in exchange for Japanese (although some of these clothing may just scream "Chinapan!").

Looks familiar? You're not alone...

Okay, I will have to stop and briefly mention one of the more unique features that have been added in character creation in Samurai Warriors 4, which is the ability to upload custom photos from your Playstation 3's hard drive and display them in-game on a variety of decorations for your character. These can include your character's portrait, musou finisher symbol and even crest on your clothing. I bet in no time there's going to be a slew of inappropriate usages of this feature online, so much that KOEI TECMO may be needing to hire special personnel to monitor everyone's custom photos.

GAMEPLAY AND CHARACTERS

If there's one thing that rival game developers envy any Warriors game on, it would have to be the ridiculous amount of unique, playable characters that keeps piling up after every new trillionth release. Why am I not rolling my eyes that Samurai Warriors 4 continues that tradition by expanding that table of characters further?

So there it be—nine wholly new Japanese characters are introduced, including such names as Nobuyuki Sanada, Yoshitsugu Ōtani, Hisahide Matsunaga, Koshōshō‎‎, Lady Hayakawa, Kojūrō Katakura and others. Now is that a mouthful of foreign names or what? That's not all, adding further from Samurai Warriors 3's roster are returning new characters from Samurai Warriors Chronicles 2nd, including Takatora Tōdō (Ice Man), Naotora li (Japan's biggest stereotypical woman) and Munenori Yagyū (Japan's answer to Zhou Tai).

New cast of characters. Lots to like, some to despise... maybe.

A fellow viewer did brought up a valid complaint regarding the new characters, which was basically—"RECYCLED WEAPONS, RECYCLED WEAPONS AND RECYCLED WEAPONS!!!". True, some of the weapons these new characters wield look as if they blatantly stole them from existing Dynasty Warriors characters and re-equip them with new movesets (those cheeky bastards!), but come on... How many types of weaponry exist on Earth that are actually unique to one another? After a few hundred movesets, there's no doubt that some weapons start appearing scarily similar to one another. In fact, a better statement would have simply been—"Thanks Japan for not going too crazy ape sh*t with us on the weapons, as if they are not already unrealistic enough!".

What KOEI TECMO did go a little overboard on however was rather character design. Take Koshōshō‎‎ for example, which is just about the most unconvincing Japanese person one can imagine, feudal wise. She's a love woman alright and surely an undeniable great sex demon, but why does her shockingly realistic orange pink hair resembles an afro?!

A long time ago in Japan, once lived this very woman...

Jokes aside, the majority of new characters are actually great and uniquely done from their attires, personalities and weapons/movesets. The only other character I tend to cringe at is Hisahide Matsunaga, which is like KOEI TECMO attempting to craft their own Spider Man, ugh...

Gameplay wise, you won't find it a surprise of the century that Samurai Warriors 4 behaves largely identical to Samurai Warriors 3 in the gameplay department. Of course, that foundation is both improved and dug upon with the implementation of the new and scrapping of the old.

Let's take a step back and reminiscent a bit for unfamiliar folks who have never touched a Warriors game, and lightly skim over the basics of gameplay:

In any Warriors game, after you selected your killing machine of choice, you are placed upon an usually overly large battlefield that are comprised of minions of your own army as well as the enemy's. You are free to roam around the battlefield, either by traveling via foot or more fortunate methods such as horses and bears, slaying army peon fodder and occasionally higher class officers as you please. Completing a stage requires you to complete one or more missions, that will usually guide you step by step through the stage from point A to point B. The final mission will predominately involve killing off a boss NPC or reaching an escape point.

But the point of these games are not strictly about a one man/woman army massacring everything, as you are also required to feed attention and focus to your own army, including assuring important officers are kept alive, escorting them or defending crucial areas of the map such as your main camp from enemy attacks. This is also where your morale bar comes into play, as ensuring it is kept high through killing and successful missions will more guarantee you success of your army being victorious.

If you like this screenshot, this game may be for you.

The combat system in Warriors games are comprised of two primary types of attacks—normal and strong (sometimes also referred to as charge attacks). Normal attacks are regular attacks executed using the square button (up to 8 consecutive times), but can be immediately followed up with a strong attack by pressing the triangle button after a certain amount of normal attacks are executed, which will vary dependent on character. Thus, a variety of combos can be developed using these attacks. Also in your combat arsenal is Musou, or a more powerful attack that will require your Musou bar to be filled by at least one bar (raised by killing enemies, using items or collecting pickups). In Samurai Warriors 3, Ultimate Musou was additionally added that was unleashed when the newly introduced spirit bar was fully maxed and a Musou was performed.

In your defense arsenal, you have the ability to guard and side step. In Samurai Warriors 3, you also had a roll, which allowed you to evade farther than a side step. This roll has been removed from Samurai Warriors 4, which is completely silly, as both the side step and roll serves different purposes and should not really be interchangeable.

In Samurai Warriors 4, an entirely new attack string was added aside from normal and strong, called "Hyper Attack" or "Shinsoku Action", initiated using solely the triangle button. Therefore, this also entirely eliminates the C1 (first strong attack) of every character. This is a faster type of attack that continuously rushes the enemy at swift speeds and allows easier group damage; however, are completely ineffective against officers. Hyper Attack works similarly to normal attacks in which a new attack can be executed following every successful one. Finally, different attacks can be carried out by using the square button instead of triangle after every Hyper Attack (e.g. triangle, triangle, square), much like how normal and strong works.

Confused or think the above is all a bunch of mumbo jumbo? Why don't you take a look at the video above, which exemplifies both normal and strong attacks as well as Hyper Attack in the first few minutes of gameplay.

Hyper Attack does add a bit of intricacy and benefit in the combat system that helps elevate Samurai Warriors 4's combat system further away from dullness. I'm sure players will appreciate another welcomed ability to not only kill groups of enemies faster without any sacrifice (because what is a thousand enemies if you can't kill them screamingly fast?), but also help plow through the battlefield without the constant need to hop on and off a horse all the time.

Hyper attacks are a completely new set of attacks with lots of possibilities.

Samurai Warriors 4's Musou takes on several unexpected twists. The most noteworthy is that all characters are now blessed with an elaborate finisher that is injected at the end of their regular Musous, adding on further possible damage from the set in stone original Musou attacks, which has not surprisingly been altered. A few unwanted negatives have reared their ugly heads up because of this. First of which is that Musous can no longer be manually and tightly controlled like in previous Samurai Warriors. What do I mean by that exactly? In previous Samurai Warriors, one could press the Musou button, release it, still be in their invulnerable Musou state and carry out regular normal and strong attacks, even travel until their Musou bar was depleted. They could also return to their Musou attack animation by pressing and holding the Musou button again during the Musou. This has been entirely thrown out the window in Samurai Warriors 4 for no particular reason, and one of the first reasons of why I consider the combat system being simplified in the depth department. Another minor gripe is that all Musou finishers contains several seconds of stylish, close-up shots of the character posing before the actual attack that you are required to always watch. Sure, it looks pretty sweet and awesome the first time you see it, but after being forced to watch it every time you pull off your Musou, it almost urges you to not wish to execute your Musou anymore. Simply being able to skip such useless interruption would be a welcomed addition.

Musou finisher close-ups: Awesome and annoying at the same time.

A feature called "Rage" has returned from Dynasty Warriors 8 and works how you expect it to. When you max out your spirit gauge, you can use it to instantly dive into rage mode, temporarily increasing your overall stats such as attack power, attack speed and defense. May you imagine what on Earth happens when you perform a Musou in this rage state? Yup, you perform your Ultimate Musou, which has not been tampered with from Samurai Warriors 3. Because of rage implementation, you can no longer execute your Ultimate Musou simply by maxing your spirit gauge. You now have to enter rage mode and only then can you unleash your ultimate attack of death and destruction you so love.

Say, have you ever desired to instant kill an enemy, especially when their health is so low they should be considered graveyard material already? Well rejoice, as you now can with a new ability called "Mighty Strike", which is just that—instant kill an enemy (officer only) when their health is low. Triggering Mighty Strike requires you to just wail on your poor victim until their health becomes low enough to pop up the an alert icon above their heads, and then executing them in devilish ways with the triangle button. Mighty Strikes can also be manually triggered all the time by side stepping into their attacks. If you time it just right, you can immediately break their guards and perform a Mighty Strike that way. Of course, instant killing with Mighty Strike is only available if the officer's health is low, so performing a Mighty Strike anytime else and the officer will very likely still be well breathing afterwards. Nevertheless, Mighty Strikes that doesn't instant kill can be beneficial to help open up for your initial attacks on officers (so long as you aren't actually pressing triangle to perform them).

Mighty Strike is not perfectly well implemented. For instance, there should definitely more open time and less punishment to execute them. Often times, you're so busy wailing on an officer that you don't even realize the opportunity for Mighty Strike pops up until it's too late. If you simply do a consecutive attack during the trigger time and hit the officer, the option for performing Mighty Strike will go away instantly. It will not return either until you manually trigger it with side step or attempt to wail on them again until it pops up. Sometimes the latter fails to work; so you're back to square one killing the officer the long way.

Mighty Strike is also a potential to lower the overall difficulty of the game, as it becomes easier to kill officers quickly and triggering it with side step is undeniably easy to perform. If you master the art of Mighty Strike with side step, officers will not even have a chance to attack you.

Something a lot more interesting than Mighty Strike is the game implementing straight out character switching in midst of battle. No, this isn't your expected Musou Orochi style character switching where all characters are meshed up together in one being all the time like some mutant bizarre freak, but works more in the lines of Samurai Warriors Chronicles. Two characters are always needed to be selected prior to entering the battlefield, but they remain completely independent beings from one another, traveling and fighting on the battlefield separately. Switching between another character is instant without any delays, and you can easily monitor your secondary character's location and stats including health and defense all the time. While you control one character, the other character will be controlled by the AI. This artificial controlling can pose a problem on higher difficulties, where the AI of your other character will sometimes not act the way you want them to. In the worst case scenario they can get themselves killed, ending your game abruptly.

Two characters are allowed for selection, allowing instant switching during gameplay.

Proficiency levels are now present in this game, but affixed to character attacks categorized in—normal attack, strong attack, special skill, and hyper attack. Wait, you have to level up certain types of attack for each character?! Yes, that does seem a bit weird to you, correct? Well, in a game sense it's sensible as players can build up stronger attacks in which they frequently use the most. Regrettably, leveling any category to the max 20 is definitely no walk in the park and requires much dedicated effort. Therefore, if you hated the grinding in previous games, the grinding here with these proficiency levels will make you hate them more... Oh so much more.

Consumable items gets a bit of an overhaul in Samurai Warriors 4, but not to an enormous extent. The most significant change is that you can now freely choose and customize each item you want to take with you on the battlefield. Yeah, I ain't dreaming a good dream here, but there is absolutely no more of that ludicrous three items presets for each stage from the third game. An abundance of new items are also introduced, but more particular noteworthy are that each item has three sets of levels, increasing in their efficiency the higher the level. Individual special items cast into character's faces are available to equip, and these all do various different effects, but most are derived from an attack or special ability of that particular character.

The weapons system keeps it traditional by reusing the weapon system introduced in the third game, adding and subtracting a couple minor features, leaving it largely stagnant and rather displeasing. Any kind of tailored weapon customization is incredibly difficult and inane to even think about, as attributes are set in stone on every weapon purchased or picked up. Attack power can moreover only be increased with a certain type of attribute, which isn't guaranteed to be a selection for every weapon. Samurai Warriors 4 has additionally eliminated the three class weapon system from the third game; that is speed, normal and power. This class elimination can be considered a sin to some and a blessing for others. Players who appreciated a bit more depth and variability in the weapon system will likely be disappointed that their weapon choices are now more limited. Others will be glad that they no longer have to worry about weapon classes weighing them down, as all regular weapons are now created equal.

Developing weapon attributes to higher levels are done by utilizing gems collected or purchased. A big pro of the new weapon system are the ability to donate any weapon from any character to one another; however, all leveled attributes on that weapon will be lost during the transfer. A second pro is that any weapons picked up during gameplay will belong to the character who picked it up only, so it helps shed down the enormous randomness of weapon collecting in the past.

I honestly think having gone through so many iterations of Warriors games, including giving players much more freedom in customizing their weapons in newer Warriors games, KOEI TECMO has decided to stick with its annoying restricted weapon system that's antiquated and five years old. Why, why and why is the only thing I can say.

Finally, do you remember armor and boots that can be equipped in Samurai Warriors 3? Of course you do. Well, they are gone in Samurai Warriors 4. Just trashed, wiped off the face of the planet. If you have a fond memory, you'll recall that both armor and boots can add a significant amount of various attributes to your character when equipped, usually non-offensive related. The attributes range from increasing your spirit charge distance, allowing you to spirit charge without depleting your spirit gauge, increase invulnerability from side stepping/rolling and others. Now that both of these are annihilated, every attribute, even if they are not offensive related, have to be jammed into your weapons, creating sometimes a bloody mess. The worst part about all of this is that lots of beneficial attributes from Samurai Warriors 3 were lost because of the axe, including most of the ones I mentioned above. Moreover, you have less total attributes to develop your character, as again every attribute are derived from your weapons only.

AI AND DIFFICULTY

Samurai Warriors 4's difficulty is definitely more challenging than Dynasty Warriors 8 and about equally challenging as Dynasty Warriors 8: XL, but regrettably lags behind in the AI department of literally almost any current Warriors release.

The game has four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Hell. The jump from one difficulty to another is sometimes abrupt and not as smooth as it should be. For instance, normal to hard has a more lenient difficulty increase that's somewhat discernible. From hard to hell however the jump in difficulty is much wider, as hell is almost literally twice as difficult as hard was.

There's always two primary ways to increase difficulty in most games—one is to increase the AI and have the player work harder to be successful, the other is to just ramp up enemy defense and damage. The best difficulty implementations in games are to have a perfect balance of the two.

Unfortunately, Samurai Warriors 4 does much more of the latter than the former, throwing on as much damage and defense amplification to the enemies as possible on Hell difficulty while neglecting the actual AI. Who would have guessed, right? It's apparent that AI seems to be a particular problematic point for Warriors games since literally forever. On the other hand, this also makes me a bit frustrated and sad, because KOEI TECMO has almost perfected, or rather produced really great human-like AI in Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate, but only in Unlimited Mode. So why do they keep bringing in low quality AI that tarnishes the difficulty of their games?

The enemy AI, even on Hell difficulty, do not pose too much of a threat so long as you are avoiding their few attacks they throw from time to them. Officers almost never execute their musous, do long combos or dodge attacks. Be forewarned that some of them will love hyper attacking you to death, however. I dare to say that the most harsh part is actually avoiding being ganged up upon, as that usually causes instant death.

Officers also now have their usual ability to recover by somersaulting when they hit the ground or in the air during certain player attacks, rendering juggles much less efficient then previously. In Samurai Warriors 3, juggling officers could become infinite so long as you had enough spirit gauge and continuously abuse the spirit charge, because officers back then had literally zero recovery. The recovery speed for officers in this game is perhaps one of the fastest in any Warriors game. Hence, if you plan on pulling off combos via juggles, expect it to be prominently more difficult than ever.

Going back to character switching, you'll remember what I said earlier that this feature can impact difficulty in a great way. Basically, you now have to not only worry about your controlled character's well-being, but your partner's as well. Since your partner is automatically controlled by the AI when you aren't controlling them, and pairing that with not a game's greatest AI, you'll find common instances where they can just rush into a group of enemies and kill themselves. Thus, this game absolutely requires you to constantly switch back and forth characters all the time on higher difficulties to ensure you won't be suddenly greeted with the game over screen.

With the implementation of Hyper Attack, Rage, easily abused Mighty Strike and such broken weapon attributes as 克己 (self-control), a player can breeze through a max star stage in Hell difficulty without a weighty amount of sweat loss, not even mentioning all the items they can additionally bring along to help amplify their ownage.

Nevertheless, I'm not saying that Samurai Warriors 4 is an easy game. It is easy if you purposely make yourself broken and be abusing the combat system. That in itself is not easy due to the game's lottery styled weapon system and requirement of heavy grinding. If you go in unprepared or normally prepared, you can easily expect some of the best challenge you will experience in a Warriors game in awhile. Again, just don't expect miracles in the enemy AI.

GRAPHICS

Who actually talks about graphics in Warriors games should be ashamed of themselves, as these types of games are always focused on filling the screen with as much junk as possible without degrading frame rate. That of course comes at a cost of reducing overall graphics quality. Compared to other games where things are less hectic and much less has to get rendered, overall graphics will suffer in Warriors games in comparison simply because of its nature.

Still, KOEI TECMO seem to be always be hopping through hoops attempting to improve their graphics in Warriors games further and further. With the now next-gen Playstation 4 and Xbox One available, graphics for these games are better than they have ever been.

The PS3 version of Samurai Warriors 4 graphically is about what you'd expect for this type of game—not great and not terrible. Sure, it looks dated by at least one console generation in comparison to other games, but at least it's still a remarkable step up from the previous Samurai Warriors. I actually went and played Samurai Warriors 3 again for the first time in years on the Wii, and that game seriously made Samurai Warriors 4 look like a game that belonged on a future console, like a PS5!

Graphics aren't winning any awards, but still manages to please the eye.

The most important bit regarding graphics is at utmost the frame rate, which is surprisingly very solid. There is almost literally no hints of slow down regardless of how much stuff flies on the screen, and trust me, stuff are flying everywhere literally every second.

AUDIO AND MUSIC

Rock tunes mixed with oriental instruments fill the speakers in Dynasty Warriors games, but Samurai Warriors takes a different approach and shifts its music more towards club, dance and techno. Both genres are of course pumped and energetic enough to get most players excited towards ravaging the battlefields. A blend of Japanese instruments in conjunction with more mellow tracks makes the soundtrack to Samurai Warriors 4 very nice and diverse. You'll also be treated with the obligatory and popular remix tracks of Honda Tadakatsu's theme, Anegawa and others.

Japanese voice overs are unstained and phenomenal for the most part, with voice actors rarely ever changing their roles for returning characters unlike the sloppy mess that's embarrassingly evident in English localizations. Voice overs for the new characters fits their personality well, even if I have to admit some of them can be overly grating to the ears.

REPLAYABILITY

There is no denying the potential for virtually unlimited gameplay length given how much underlying stuff there is to accomplish and unlock in Samurai Warriors or virtually any other Warriors games. That is of course only if you are committed to and thoroughly enjoy the game in the first place.

Still, this isn't a type of game that is meant to be played hours on end without break. Literally any type of hack and slash game will wear out your fingers and thumbs and turn very monotonous and repetitive after a few hours, the exact same can be said to Samurai Warriors 4.

CONCLUSION

While Samurai Warriors 4 is a good Warriors game on its own, it doesn't necessarily exceed in rivaling its current Dynasty Warriors counterparts nor greatly improve upon Samurai Warriors 3 as one would have hoped. There's not a whole lot of new that's refreshing, and several areas of refreshment in the third game has been wholly scrapped in 4. The results is that Samurai Warriors 4 is simply just a sufficient step upwards from 3, while a step backwards in a few cases. Another unmentioned area is combat depth, where Samurai Warriors 4 is shamefully lacking, as the combat system hasn't been nearly evolved or contain as much intricacy as either Dynasty Warriors 7 or 8. In both Dynasty Warriors 7 and 8, many Earth shattering advanced combat techniques can be done because of the game's diverse weapon swapping system coupled with better character classes and types. The same cannot be said to Samurai Warriors 4's more back to roots, simplified combat style.

One thing can certainly be said however—never has a Warriors game been so stylish looking with so much on-screen flash. Samurai Warriors 4 is the utmost king of that at current for sure; the amount of bright lights and flashes this game throws at a mortal can render them blind, literally. But without a lot of depth tacked on the actual combat, that becomes less relevant as more advanced players will be more dreary of its not particularly deep combat system. There is no fighting game equivalent combat system to see here, basically.

Nevertheless, the majority of players who play any Warriors game usually don't play it to experience deep combat, do they? Of course not. They simply wish to just delve in, release tension and slay thousands of army fodders to satisfy their inner evilness. If that's your type of thing, then rest assured Samurai Warriors 4 will definitely make you a happy person. For the rest, I'm sure you'll find yourself more at home with Dynasty Warriors 7, 8, Musou Orochi or even the Sengoku Basara series.

OVERALL RATING: 7.0/10

 

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