Samurai Warriors

"An average hack & slash with minimal replay value"

Samurai Warriors is a hack & slash set in Japanese legend. You fight hordes of enemies, and find your way through excessively confusing castles. I would not recommend this game to anybody due to the fact that there are much better games out there.

The main part of Samurai Warriors is choosing a character and playing through their disjointed, 5-mission-long "story" mode. You can also bring a friend to suffer alongside you as you watch poorly acted cutscenes and chop away at hundreds of standard enemies. One thing that makes this differ from some other action games is a decent variety of enemies, although there are a good deal of unfair foes, like Sky Ninjas who hit the ground to send you flying, then hit you again in midair. The majority of enemies are some type of ninja, from bomb-throwing fire ninjas to fat, charging strike ninjas. There are 3 types of battles: linear, boring field battles, confusing, boring castle battles, and siege battles, which let you "enjoy" both types, together in one excruciatingly long level!

There are many items and weapons that you find randomly, adding some luck to the mix. One of the things that can make the gameplay different is some other things to ride, like horses, which appear in practically every non-castle level. In one semi-fun level, I found a weird cannon thing that I could ride around and shoot. However, these things barely reduce the enormous level of repetition in the game. The music in this game is subdued and unnoticeable, but at least it isn't annoying.

One thing that will almost definitely annoy you in the game is the repetition of levels. You will climb the same castle and fight in the same battle on the same side many times. There are 16 characters, so you would assume there would be 80 missions. Well, there aren't. For example, one standard battle, the Battle of Ise, you will fight 4 times from the same side if you play everyone's story mode.

Despite a large number of modes, all boil down to the same 3-button gameplay that can become tiresome if not taking place in big, open-ended battles. For example, one very similar game to Samurai Warriors is Dynasty Warriors. In Samurai Warriors, you will get objectives that you must complete to beat the level. In Dynasty Warriors, completing sub-missions will help, but it is not forced on you like it is in Samurai Warriors.

If you buy Samurai Warriors, you will regret it. The game has almost no outstanding features, and the few it has are bogged down by thick layers of mediocrity and monotony.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/24/05