Tecmo Koei has been giving gamers the Warriors series for quite some time now, through four gaming generations to be exact. The games have taken us from China to Japan and even to Hyrule, and they rarely change their formula in the games, which has made them quite successful. Samurai Warriors 4 is their latest release and it certainly stays true to form.
If you’ve not played a Warriors game before, you will not have a difficult time getting into the swing of things. The game is one huge hack and slash, combined with some RPG elements that gives you bonuses for replaying levels over and over. Hardcore gamers love this series because of how many hours they can lose to the game, and casual gamers can pick up a controller and make fifty guys go flying into the air with the swing of a pike. The Warriors games, whether you love them or hate them, do have something for everybody. We were lucky to be given an advanced copy of the game, however not all of the gameplay elements were unlocked in the download. So I am reviewing what I was allowed to play, and I will explain what else will come with the full release, even though I never got to play it.
Unlike Dynasty Warriors, which takes place in China, Samurai Warriors takes place in Japan, which is nice. One can only hear about all the battles in China during the Feudal Era so often. With Samurai Warriors 4, I got to learn about all the battles that took place in Japan. I do realize they have been sensationalized, but there are some facts drifting around during the narrated cut scenes. Assassins Creed takes characters from history and plugs them into the game, the Warriors game does the same thing, only you get to play as those characters, not just assassinate or befriend them. So, in a way, as you play Samurai Warriors 4, you are getting a Japanese history lesson.
The controls are quite simple and easy to pick up. Square is your normal attack that you’ll repeatedly press to down enemies. Triangle is your power attack that takes more damage off of foes, and flings plenty of them into the air. Depending on which character you are playing at the moment, triangle could be a hyper attack for certain characters. R1 is special skill which uses a meter that builds up as you kill countless minions, and L1 is block. Nothing too difficult there, which is a good thing, if you had to fight hundreds of enemies at the same time with horrible controls, the game would suffer greatly. Anyone could pick this game up and have some fun, they may not be proficient at it, but they’ll enjoy slaughtering hundreds of people. That is one of the huge draw to this series, hardcore gamers can unlock everything and shoot for every trophy, where casual gamers can plan and blow off steam from their day. Everyone is a winner.
Unfortunately I was only able to play the first level in all the character’s story modes. This allowed me to learn about feudal Japan, and a lot about the game. Controls are easy to pick up, history is easy to pick up, and the game looks great. Tecmo has always had very pretty graphics, so seeing them on the PS4 hardware makes them even better. You can also take two characters into the level and switch off between them to defeat your foes. This helps you obtain the objectives faster, and will help you win your battles.
While you play as one character, the other one goes on a path and does its own thing, when you take over, you are where they are. So if your second character happens to be at a mission point, you can switch to them and beat that mission before any time limit runs out. This duel character enhancement to the game makes Story Mode much more enjoyable and easier to maneuver through. Story Mode is probably tent-pole to this game, this is where you power up your main character and unlock weapons, moves and mounts to use when you replay levels. Tecmo loves to make sure that as a gamer, you get your sixty dollars worth.
The three modes that I was unable to play seem pretty interesting to me. In Free Mode, you can play any story level with any character. This means you can level up your characters without having to grind over and over in their certain story levels. In Chronicle Mode you can take a character into Feudal Japan and run missions and level up more.
Finally, in Dojo Mode, you can create your own character and use them in the game. All of these modes add hours more onto an already monumental game. I cannot imagine how much more time I would have put into this game, had all the Modes been available to me. The Warriors games are yet to let me down. I am fairly new to the series, but when I hear about them, I get a little excited to play them. I hope that Tecmo Koei has some more of these entries up their sleeves, so that I can set them next to this game on my shelf.