Warriors Orochi 2

"The zazzy, star-studded crossover event got a little drunk at the after-party"

When I reviewed the original Warriors Orochi, I called it the perfect swan song to the Warriors games on the PS2. Well, Koei made me look like a total ass by announcing Warriors Orochi 2 less than a year later (they also announced PS2 ports of the PS3 games Dynasty Warriors 6 and Gundam, but I'm conveniently not counting those). Of course, being a Warriors fan, I picked this sucker up day one, and now it's time to see if the continuation of the cross-over event of the millennium is still star-studded, or if some of the zaz is starting to fizzle.

ZAZ-TASTIC STORY

WO2 takes place right after the defeat of the serpent king Orochi at the end of the original game by the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors. The warriors have saved their lives, re-united with their kinsmen, and brought peace to the evil dimension they were sucked into. The logical thing to do would be to work together to find a way back to their respective time periods and go on with their lives…..but NO! Time to choose sides and kill each other over the evil dimension, dammit!! Oh, and there's this thing about Orochi being resurrected, but whatever…

That's not all! There is also a special Orochi storyline, which chronicles the events before the original Warriors Orochi when the serpent king rose to power by defeating all of the mighty Dynasty and Samurai Warriors. It's a story full of twists, turns, betrayals, alliances, and the triumph of the human spri- Oh wait, Orochi just beats them all down with his giant scythe and that's pretty much it.

I sincerely hope no ones buys the Warriors games for their stories.

ZAZ-TASTIC GAMEPLAY

In story mode, you get to choose five different paths to take: Wei, Wu, Shu, Samurai, and Orochi. After that, the game plays pretty much exactly like it's predecessor. You take three warriors, go out onto a battlefield, destroy anything with a red life bar, and defeat the head general (most of the time) to complete the level. Controls remain untouched: combo attacks, strong attacks, musou attacks, and special attacks all return, and each character pretty much retains the same moves that they had in the previous game. The best thing about WO2 is that not only do all 77 warriors from the previous game return, but they are joined by 15 new warriors, some made especially for this game but most taken from Samurai Warriors 2: Xtreme Legends. Most notable characters include Nu Wa and Fu Xi, who finally return to a Warriors game after sitting them all out since Dynasty Warriors 3, and Sun Wukong, the monkey king of Chinese folklore (if you've seen the movie The Forbidden Kingdom, then you may be familiar with him). Also like the last game, all characters are divided up into three classes: power, speed, and tech, and their class determines the type of special attacks they can perform. I still also don't get why some speed class special attacks that do major damage require the use of the musou gauge with some characters, while the same type of attacks with other characters don't. A mystery for our time…

Anyway, if you thought that the original game threw fodder at you at alarming rates, wait until you play this bad boy! On every stage in all the story modes (8 stages per story), I always got at least 900 KOs. This is a great thing, since the leveling up system from the previous game makes a return as well. Killing enemies and collecting pick-ups during stages will raise the experience of the warrior you are currently using and level him up (each warrior still has to level up individually.) At the end of a stage, you'll get rewarded additional experience points to use depending on how well you did, and those points can then be used to level up ANY warrior you want. You'll also see what weapons you were able to get during the stage by defeating generals, and unlock abilities that can increase warrior stats like health, musou gauge, attack power, etc. As a matter of fact, if you have a Original Warriors Orochi save game on your memory card when you first play WO2, you'll unlock all the abilities you earned in that game for use in WO2! Finally, free mode returns so you can fulfill your Dynasty/Samurai cross-over fantasies. Also, unlocking characters is no longer a tedious trial of butt-hurt, as you now just have to clear stages to unlock pretty much every character! I may actually get to play as Tadakatsu Honda (actually, he may be unlocked from the beginning)! Overall, the core gameplay experience from the original WO remains intact, and if you had fun with that game or any other Warrior game, you will definitely have fun with this one.

Koei did add some new bells and whistles to WO2 besides characters to make it stand out from it's predecessor. Gameplay-wise, a technique called “strategy” has been added, where fulfilling certain conditions during battle will raise the stats of the entire army. A new triple attack has also been added, by pressing R2 and L2 together when one of your characters is in red health. An assist attack can now be preformed by blocking and pressing triangle or square when attacked, which calls out one of your reserve characters to blow back enemies at the expense of their musou gauge. The weapon fusion system introduced in WO has also seen an upgrade here: you can now add and upgrade different skills to fused weapons by finding treasures during battle by fulfilling certain conditions. As far as modes go, dream mode lets you play a special stage with three specific warriors who share a trait in common (for example, Zhou Tai, Ranmaru Mori, and Dian Wei team up in a stage since they are bodyguards for their respective lords). More dream stages become unlocked as you unlock more characters and level them up. Survival mode is a…survival mode…no more explanation needed really. Finally, a 2-player Vs. mode has been added, including 4 different modes of play. While this is all good on Koei's part, for me personally, none of this stuff added much to the overall game. Strategies didn't really do anything special, I never had to use the triple or assist attacks, weapon fusion is useless since you pick up tons of good weapons the regular way, dream mode stages could easily be done in free mode, survival mode gets boring fast, and Vs. modes…well, who gets friends together to have a Warriors game Vs. mode party, really? I'm sure there are some out there who welcome these additions, but for me these did nothing and left me feeling like I'm only playing a Warriors Orochi expansion pack. Other than that, basic Warriors game complaints remain: Brain dead AI and repetitiveness is at an all time high.

ZAZ-TASTIC GRAPHICS

Yeah, right. Ugly, bland, poor, recycled, and any other terms you can think of for graphics that have been painful to look at for years now. Cut-scenes and character models still don't cut it either. Worst of all, WO2 sees the return of freakin' SLOWDOWN! I haven't seen slowdown in a warriors game since DW3! Not even the PSP version of Warriors Orochi had slowdown! The last level in the Wu story mode plays like it's underwater! Thank god I still find the gameplay fun.

ZAZ-TASTIC SOUND

Generic butt-rock reused from previous game…Check! Very bad English voice acting with no Japanese voice option…Double Check! Orochi himself being one of the worst voice-overs I've ever heard in any game ever…*BARF* Check!! At least we get nice sound effects in Dolby Digital and Pro Logic II surround.

THE ZAZ BOTTLE IS ABOUT HALF-WAY FULL…

Warriors games do excel at one thing: replay value. Leveling up all your favorite characters, collecting all the hidden items, unlocking all the dream stages, and so on will keep any fan busy for ages. For only 30 bucks, it's a pretty good bargain.

Still, I can't help but feel that I'm playing an Xtreme Legends title and not a full-fledged sequel. All the added gameplay mechanics and modes are nice, but I found them to be pretty useless. However, I still find the basic gameplay fun as hell and a lot of the new characters are cool to play as. In the end, this one is for fans only. Hopefully the inevitable Warriors Orochi 3 (built for more powerful systems…hopefully) fills the ZAZ bottle back up to full.

KEWL
+God help me, the gameplay is still fun as hell!
+92 total characters with tons of variety!
+Unlocking characters no longer tedious and crazy!
+Replay value through the stratosphere!
+Only thirty bucks!
+Exclamation point!

LAME
Second verse, same as the first:
-Repetitive
-Poor AI
-Baaaaaaad graphics...and slowdown *sighs*
-Terrible sound and voice acting

-Added modes and gameplay mechanics don't add much and are pretty useless
-Feels more like an add-on than a full-fledged sequel

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/01/08

Game Release: Warriors Orochi 2 (US, 09/23/08)