Off the Shelf Media

This is the part of the review where I tell you I’m obsessed with samurai and the only thing harder than picking this game apart is me mispelling samurai every single time. Thank God for spellcheck! 

This review will include the first Samurai Warriors as well as the Xtreme Legends expansion. So let’s get started. 

Gameplay: 1

There’s a lot to love about this game, but there’s also a lot, and I mean a lot, to hate. 

Let’s start with the positives because I’m ever the optimist. The hack-and-slash mechanic never gets old. I love walking up to a swarm of samurai and wiping 10 at one with a simple combo. It’s fun and it makes me feel like a God among peasants. 

The controls are easy to pick up, and before you know it, you’ll find a combo you like and use it endlessly. Each character has different weapons, so knowing which combo to use with each character is key. Sanada has a long spear, which can be used to take out multiple enemies or launch a general in the air and slam him back down to the ground with authority. Then, there are characters like Hanzo, who rely on stealth and speed since he’s a ninja. 

I like the variety and feel for each of the 15 characters in the base game alone. They each have different stats, different weapons, and different styles for you to learn and figure out what you like best. 

The problem is that’s where the variety ends. You’ll quickly find yourself playing the same levels on the same maps, fighting similar enemies time and time again. The game follows certain battles throughout Japanese history. If you don’t understand what’s happening the first time, hang in there. You’ll be playing that same battle a lot from all different angles and on both sides of the battlefield. 

Some of the levels take a long time. One of them clocked in at 60 minutes. That’s way too long for a single mission in this game. That’s because you have to go through the castle and make it to the 5th floor to fight the final boss. Oh, and there’s a time limit, so you’re racing against the clock, fighting endless waves of enemies completely alone. 

There was one mission where I killed over 800 enemies in one run. It was absurd. Part of me felt like a God, but the other part was exhausted and wanted to go to bed. 

Another thing Samurai Warriors lack is clarity. What exactly is my mission? How exactly do I complete it? And how do I unlock the other levels for these characters? Yes, there’s a map, and yes, there is a title card telling you what your mission is, but sometimes there are multiple missions at once, and there’s a lot of chatter from the generals that is sometimes helpful. 

On top of that, certain character missions will branch off into upper and lower paths, and good luck trying to figure out how to unlock the other path. The game will not tell you a thing. I had to Google it, and luckily, I found forums that were almost 20 years old. Shout-out to those guys. 

I wasn’t a fan of the leveling-up system either. At the end of each mission, you get experience points based on the difficulty you chose, the missions you complete, the number of enemies you kill, and the time it took you to finish the level. All of that adds up to a letter grade and points to spend on new combos or abilities. You unlock new weapons by picking them up from defeated enemies or boxes around the map. 

All of that is fine. However, if you died or didn’t complete the mission, you lose all of that experience and can’t buy anything to upgrade your character. All the weapons you picked up are gone, and you’re back at square one. There were a few missions I was stuck on, and the only thing I could do was replay old missions or lower the difficulty. And since the game already has a level variety and repeatability problem, I went with the lowered difficulty. 

Overall, the gameplay is fun but flawed. The game throws you into the deep end, and it’s up to you to sink, swim, or go to the internet for help. 

Story: 1

Samurai Warriors is set during Japan’s Warring States Period. If you’re unfamiliar, just know it’s the time period most pop culture pulls from. 

The cool thing about this game is that it uses real-life people and romanticizes their story. Oda Nobunaga, Uesugi Kenshin, and Takeda Shingen were all real people during this period, so seeing them come to life was fun, even if it’s cartoonish and bombastic versions of history. 

Unfortunately, that’s where the cool factor ends because I couldn’t tell you the first thing about the overall story to this game outside of it’s about the rise and fall of Nobunaga in the unification of Japan’s rivaling clans. 

Each character has their tale where you either fight alongside or against Nobunaga, which is cool, but sometimes there’s a mission where you’re on his side, and then the next mission, you have to kill him. There isn’t much of a story progression told through cutscenes or character development. The best you get is a few paragraphs history brief before each mission. 

On top of that, you’ll be watching the same cutscenes for different characters multiple times, and let’s just say, the developers were smart to add a skip button to their cutscenes. 

I get it, you don’t play this game for the story, but here at Off the Shelf, we critique the story whether it has one or not, and this game tries and fails. 

Atmosphere: 1

I mentioned this earlier, but you play the same levels over and over again. The maps are huge, which is great, but a lot of them look the same. 

Most missions take place outside, with a river and some mountains nearby, with a few camps or strongholds on either side of the map.  As a one-off mission, that’s ok, but the developers are asking the player to play and replay the same mission with different characters for the sake of perspective. That’s a no-go for me and a giant red flag for a game. 

Then, there are the castle missions, which only look different from the outside. The inside all has the same wall, the same decorations, and a similar layout. Each castle is like a corn maze. Sure, they all have a different way to get to the middle, but a corn maze is still a corn maze. 

The color palette is dim and faded like an old shirt that’s been through the wash too many times, but you’re too stubborn to throw it out. The landscapes are dark and it doens’t mix in with the colors and personality of your main characters.

The heroes in this game look fantastic. Nobunaga is menacing, and they gave him a cape with a dark aura around him. He looks badass. Akechi wears all purple and has hair straight out of your favorite anime. Keji Maeda was my favorite character design. A jacked tank who was out of his mind. 

The characters themselves were great, and the voice acting, attention to detail, and maneuverability of each of them is a 10/10. The problem is that the world the developers put them in is a 2/10 and needs a lot of work.

Value: 2

If you paid full price for this game in 2004, you got your money’s worth. Hell, if I spent $50 on this game today, I’d say I got my money’s worth. There is a lot to do in this game if you’re a completionist. 

Each mission has missions you can beat. There are many characters and missions to unlock, and all of that is just one game mode. This whole review has been about Story mode, but there are many more modes, including Free Mode, which is a single battle. Survival Mode, which is a series of challenges. Abyss mode, Tower mode, and Officer mode. 

I didn’t play any of those other modes because I was exhausted by the time I finished the story mode. I was ready to put this game down and never touch it again. 

Duration: 1

You’d get your money’s worth, but that doesn’t mean it was worth every second. I put well over 50 hours into this game, and by the time I got to 30-40 hours, I was waiting for it to end. I got to a point where I finished a character’s tale and had my fingers crossed that there wouldn’t be another character unlocked. Lo and behold, there it was. Another character to replay the same battles I’ve played five times already. 

There was an expansion pack where you could play as 4 more characters in case the previous 15 weren’t enough. That’s just what this game needed: the same maps, the same cutscenes, but with minor characters. I played the first character, and then I put it down. I was done. 

Total Score: 6/10

I beat this game up pretty hard, but Samurai Warriors deserves its flowers. This started out as a spinoff game to Dynasty Warriors and turned into a 5-game collection with multiple expansion packs and spinoffs of its own. 

This is the game that started it all, and luckily, it built a strong enough foundation in the hack-and-slash genre with memorable and likeable characters. I hope the other games correct the mistakes of this game and make improvements. I’ll be sure to write a review for them, but not right now, I’m all samurai-ed out. 

Next time, I’ll be going back to the PlayStation 3 with a review of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, which, funny enough, is not technically in the past since the game takes place before 2025. 

We’ll break it all down soon enough. I’ll see ya there, but until then, y’all take care.